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Hey Essence Of Coffee friends, we are excited to let you know that we have started fund raising for the devastating fires affecting all of Australia. There is not one State that does not have a major fire being battled by the amazing first responders. Our prayers and thoughts are with them all.   A natural disaster like this is very close to Michaels heart as he was a teenager in Darwin, when on Christmas Eve, 1974 Cyclone Tracy hit and decimated the whole city. Every person had to be evacuated and he remembers the Salvation Army, being on hand...

Do you ever find yourself needing a little pick-me-up in the middle of your day? You take a long nap only to wake up feeling rundown and more tired than before you rested. In your body, you have adenosine and adenosine receptors. When the adenosine binds to the receptor, it leaves you feeling drowsy. BUT, after sipping a cup of joe, caffeine enters your system (roughly 15-20 minutes) and binds to your adenosine receptor, preventing the adenosine from binding to the receptor. This allows you to feel more energized. When you sleep, your body eliminates adenosine. This results in fewer...

How long is a piece of string? You see coffee is so entwined into our life that it actually evokes more emotion than we probably think. If you were to ask the next person you see what the best coffee they’ve ever had was, they will probably have a story to go with it. One of the best coffees I’ve had was in Tanzania sitting on a hotel balcony after a busy day at a conference. We were looking down at the fenced in courtyard watching the resident turtles walking around. I don’t actually remember what coffee we were drinking....

Since in the previous post I mentioned two coffee machines on my wedding day I guess I could start by telling you the story. Opening wedding presents after returning from our honeymoon, Lesley (my young bride) noted we had received two coffee brewing machines. Being very practical she informed me that two coffee makers was one too many. Now I know this to be a false premise, but back then I was young and naive. (Now I’m just old :P) The fact is, you can never have too many coffee making apparatuses. Anyway, having been informed of the redundancy of a second machine,...

If you are anything like me your initial coffee drinking experiences meant that coffee was simply a caffeine delivery system and your aim was to find the most palatable way to imbibe that caffeine. Then, one day, boom! you discover specialty coffee and realise that, rather than being a carrier for caffeine and sugar and syrups, coffee is actually an amazing drink. You no longer have to settle for bitter, ashy or sour covered over by sweeteners. Instead you can taste cocoa notes, berry, caramel, and a host of other nuanced flavors thanks to the wide variety of specialty  beans grown around the...