THE COFFEE PURIST

A coffee impresario looks back on his long love affair with great beans in this rousing memoir.

Franklin, host of the Archaic World podcast, recaps his career as founder of the DoubleShot Coffee Company, a celebrated cafe and gourmet coffee-roasting operation in Tulsa. After much do-it-yourself experimentation roasting his own beans, the author realized that people might pay for coffee that tastes good without milk and sugar and embarked on a shoestring startup odyssey—scrounging for money, working endless hours, gaining skills and savvy, and almost going to war over soured business deals. (“I met with him in person at the construction site, sat him down, and paced around in front of him with my red baseball bat, insisting that he finish the job and stop lying to me.”) The book also serves as a colorful, sometimes dramatic travelogue of Franklin’s journeys in search of exotic beans from India to Guatemala, where he encountered coffee growers who had formed a death squad to kill bandits who were trying to extort them and was himself robbed at gunpoint. The work is also a testament to one man’s uncompromising, almost religious commitment to fresh-roasted brew that transcends the desire for profit. (Franklin once sternly confiscated a customer’s espresso and refunded his money because he took too long sipping it and thus allowed the evanescent flavors to dissipate.) The author’s reminiscences expose the commercial niceties and corruptions of the coffee business—like payola scams in which coffee critics confer stellar reviews in exchange for lucrative “sponsorships” by coffee companies—while diving deep into the art and science of creating great coffee in richly redolent prose. (“The final temperature is absolutely crucial. One degree less and the coffee tastes grassy. One degree more and the coffee tastes burnt.”) Franklin’s color photos of verdant coffee plantations and atmospheric cafes offer a vibrant visual accompaniment to the text. People in the trade as well as coffee afficionados of all stripes will savor the result.

A tasty, stimulating look at the coffee business that pairs canny life lessons with caffeinated connoisseurship.