★The long-awaited magnum opus from Han Huai-zong, author of the perennial bestseller “Specialty Coffee” and widely regarded as the godfather of Chinese-language coffee writing.
★With razor-sharp insight the book maps the tectonic shifts now reordering the coffee world, coining and detailing the “fourth wave”: fresh origins, newly bred cultivars, revolutionary processing, next-generation brewing, and emerging markets. Old frameworks are dismantled; professionals and enthusiasts alike receive a future-proof knowledge upgrade.
★The last five years have rewritten more than the previous fifty. Yesterday’s lexicon can no longer describe tomorrow’s cup; this volume rebuilds your coffee knowledge from the ground up.

Coffee’s last half-decade has upended its last half-century. Climate change has pushed the ancient coffee belt beyond the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn into cooler, higher latitudes—southern California and Sicily now grow viable commercial lots—while Ethiopia, Brazil and other traditional powerhouses watch their arable acreage shrink or migrate. Kenya, once hailed as the “Champagne region” of coffee, is in visible decline. Simultaneously, farmers and research institutes are releasing a torrent of high-quality new cultivars and processing protocols that unlock dazzling terroir-specific flavors and push the sensory map into uncharted territory. The decades-old Gold Cup dogma and roast-color orthodoxy are being revised or abandoned; baristas and hobbyists are routinely brewing better cups outside the old matrix. The fourth wave is no longer a forecast—it is the lived reality of the industry. This is the pragmatic, one-volume toolkit that brings every reader up to speed and spells out where specialty coffee goes next.

Coffee-Wave:
First Wave (1945-1960): Mass-market canned and instant coffee—quantity over quality.

Second Wave (1966-1990):
• In-store fresh, dark-roasted, high-grown Arabica;
• Rejection of first-wave canned coffee;
• Birth of Italian-style café chains;
• Global latte & cappuccino craze.

Third Wave (2000-2015):
• Light-to-medium roasts eclipse dark;
• Rejection of “burnt” second-wave profiles;
• Revival of pour-over and siphon brewing;
• Bright acidity, fruit-forward single-estate espressos replace chocolate-bitter norms;
• Cupping protocols and formal coffee education flourish.

Fourth Wave (2016-present):
• Continues light-medium roast ethos;
• Breeds heat-tolerant cultivars to outrun global warming;
• Fermentation alchemy for explosive floral/fruit cups;
• Rediscovery and re-mapping of Ethiopian landraces and micro-regions;
• Re-examination of Gold Cup metrics and cupping rituals;
• Scaling specialty without diluting quality.