A Bag of Coffee and a Hundred Ways to Use It

You receive a bag of specialty coffee. Maybe a friend brought it back from a trip, or you picked it up from a roaster you trust. You know how to brew it one way, perhaps a pour-over, perhaps a French press. The bag sits on your counter, and you work through it cup by cup, the same method every morning.

What else could you do with it?

But First, Coffee: A Guide to Brewing from the Kitchen to the Bar by Jordan Michelman and Zachary Carlsen, released October 18, 2026, answers that question with dozens of original recipes and adapted favourites. The book treats coffee not as a single-use ingredient but as a creative medium, one that belongs in the kitchen, the dessert menu, and the cocktail bar.

From Theory to Practice

In Sofia, where specialty cafes have multiplied across neighbourhoods from Oborishte to Lozenets, home brewing has followed the same trajectory. Roasteries like Aroma Coffee, where owner Georgi Gagov holds an SCA Roastery Diploma and roasts from green beans, supply the raw material. What readers often lack is a practical guide to exploring those beans beyond the morning ritual.

This is where But First, Coffee positions itself. Michelman and Carlsen describe their 2018 book, The New Rules of Coffee, as theory, a brief history of coffee culture in the early 21st century. This second volume is practice: a working pathfinder built on a simple premise. The authors put it directly:

Reclaim coffee as an ingredient! Make coffee fun!

The approach is deliberately non-snobbish. The book calls itself a big tent, inclusive, frequently mirthful, and accessible to anyone from the curious beginner to the seasoned home barista. Brew as part of a daily mindfulness practice, as fuel for your life, or for the sheer love of it. The instruction is clear: take nothing too seriously.

What the Book Actually Contains

The scope runs wider than most coffee guides. Brewing methods include Chemex, Nel Drip (the Japanese flannel filter technique), and home siphon brewing, which the authors describe as chemistry lab adventure realness. Espresso at home gets its own section, as does cold brew.

Then the book moves beyond the cup. Recipes include:

• Affogato
• Cold brew tiramisu
• Coffee spice rubs for cooking
• Zero-proof Irish coffees
• Coffee Negronis
• Hot Toddys
• Chartreuse cappuccinos

Three espresso martini recipes appear, because, as the authors note, of course we had to.

Practical guidance fills the margins: how to develop a mug collection, playlists of songs to brew by, and the chemistry behind extraction. The photography, shot in full colour by Zachary Carlsen (Sprudge co-founder), treats each recipe as a visual composition.

The Voices Behind the Recipes

Kyle Glanville, US Barista Champion and co-founder of Go Get Em Tiger, appears alongside Freda Yuan of Sip & Slurp and Andrea Allen, US Barista Champion and co-founder of Onyx Coffee Lab. Daniel Brown of Gilly Brew Bar, Jonathan Rubinstein of Joe Coffee Company, and Karla Boza of Finca San Antonio Amatapec add perspectives from roasting, café ownership, and origin farming.

The ceramics collaborators, Jess Faulk, Ben Mendansky, McKenna Ritter, Ross Martini, Suay Ceramics, and Worn Path, elevate the experience beyond the liquid itself. The vessel matters. The ritual matters. The book treats both as part of the craft.

This book is perfect for anyone who loves coffee and wants to learn how to make delicious things with it at home.

Chris Fischer, James Beard Award-winning chef

A Resource for the Curious

For Sofia's growing community of home coffee enthusiasts, those who have discovered good coffee locally and want to deepen their engagement, this book offers a practical next step. A bag from a local roaster becomes raw material for a dozen experiments. The Chemex recipe works with the same beans you might use for a coffee Negroni.

The book's core message is permission. Coffee is both a daily practice and a creative playground. It belongs to the curious, the playful, and anyone willing to go deeper than the morning cup.