H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. founded 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

Home Coffee Roasting: Romance and Revival by Kenneth Davids, 2003

By Kenneth Davids · 2003 · St. Martin’s Griffin (presumed; verify in-hand)

Bibliographic detail

  • Title: Home Coffee Roasting: Romance and Revival
  • Author: Kenneth Davids
  • Edition held: 2003 (likely a revised edition; first edition published 1996)
  • Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin (presumed — Davids’s standard publisher; verify on title page)
  • ISBN: TBD — to be confirmed in-hand
  • Pagination: TBD — to be confirmed in-hand
  • Format: Paperback (presumed; verify in-hand)

Physical description

Standard trade paperback in the coffee-enthusiast genre.

Provenance

Physically in-hand prior to formal library accessioning; registered to the library 2026-05-24. Accessioned as HH-BOOK-2026-0010.

Why it matters

Davids’s Home Coffee Roasting is the modern craft-side reference for understanding roast level, freshness, and roaster-equipment variables — the same variables that historic H and H labels and tins make claims about (“freshly roasted,” roast-level callouts on Master Chef and H and H Blend, etc.).

For H and H research, the book is the interpretive layer for evaluating period roast claims:

  1. Roast-level vocabulary calibration — when H and H ad copy says “rich” or “full-bodied” or specifies a particular roast color, Davids’s terminology helps map that period language onto modern roast-level conventions.
  2. Roaster-equipment context — Davids covers small drums and popcorn-popper roasting, but his explanations of how roasters work (heat transfer, drum vs. air, profiling) ground the equipment-attribution research on the H and H factory roaster (see the Huntley Monitor catalog).
  3. Freshness-and-storage discussions — directly relevant to the H and H Crystalvac jar story. The Crystalvac’s selling point was vacuum-preserved freshness; Davids explains why that mattered then and matters now.

Pairs in the library with the rest of the modern coffee-enthusiast shelf: The Art and Craft of Coffee (Sinnott), The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee (Freeman), The Coffeeist Manifesto (Ward), and Uncommon Grounds (Pendergrast).

Notable contents

  • Roaster-equipment taxonomy (small drums, air roasters, popcorn-popper hacks).
  • Roast-profile theory: time-temperature curves, first-and-second crack.
  • Origin and varietal primer.
  • Tasting / cupping basics.
  • Discussion of why freshness matters and how to preserve it.

Related: The Art and Craft of Coffee (Sinnott, 2010) · The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee (Freeman, 2012) · Uncommon Grounds (Pendergrast) · Huntley Mfg. Monitor catalog (1925) · Library