Scott Rao started his first cafe & roastery in Amherst, MA when he was 22. That first cafe quickly became an institution, serving well over 1000 customers per day and tripling the sales volume of the Starbucks down the street. After selling his first cafe, Scott went on to work in the New Zealand coffee industry. He then returned to the US to open a restaurant and coffee roastery inspired by his travels down under. Scott later founded a pioneering cafe in Montreal that influenced coffee making worldwide.
Upon selling his second business, Scott began writing books about coffee making in the hopes of helping roasters and baristas become more educated and systematic in their approach to coffee. Scott parlayed those books into a consulting career and now spends his time consulting for coffee roasters around the world, teaching the world's most advanced roasting masterclasses, and designing next-generation coffee equipment.
Coffee Roasting: Best Practices is the culmination of Scott's 25 years roasting and consulting. It's the most advanced guide ever written about expert-level coffee roasting. There is little overlap with The Coffee Roaster's Companion, which focused on the basics of roasting and different roasting machines. CR:BP focuses solely on advanced techniques to craft and control roast curves, with numerous pages devoted to strategies to avoid "ROR" crashes and flicks, baked coffee, unnecessary roasty-ness, and other roast defects. This book sets the standard for third-wave coffee roasting methodology.