Lecture by Dr John Bruce of The Bean Shop on the science of coffee roasting, part of the Curious Minds Lecture Series.
Dr John Bruce is taking the stage at AK Bell Library on Friday 29 January 2027, for a talk titled Coffee: Chemistry or Alchemy?. He runs The Bean Shop here in Perth, and the whole evening is about the science behind coffee roasting — the stuff that happens inside the roaster before the beans ever reach your cup.
It's part of the Curious Minds lecture series, which Culture Perth & Kinross puts on with the Perthshire Society of Natural Science. The society is one of the oldest scientific societies in Scotland, and their annual series runs under the theme 'Contemporary Science in Scotland'. Over the years, it's covered a wide range of ground: dinosaur fossils in Skye, the human genome, black holes, gravitational waves, and the science of consciousness. This one brings that same curiosity down to something most of us have in our kitchens every morning.
Bruce is well-placed to talk about it, too. He's not just the man behind The Bean Shop; he holds a PhD in Biochemistry, so he can walk you through the actual chemistry of the roast rather than just the craft of it. If you've ever wondered why a light roast tastes so different from a dark one, or what's actually changing inside the bean as it heats up, that's exactly where this sits.
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The talk starts at 19:30 and runs for about 90 minutes, so you'll be out well before the night is over. It's at AK Bell Library in Perth, on Friday 29 January.
