Category: Blog

Why instant coffee is making a come back

Posted on by Sara Walker

Instant coffee isn’t new – in fact, its roots go back to 1771, when a ‘coffee compound’ was granted a patent by the British government. It was invented as a simple, practical alternative for when it’s too difficult to brew up probably, an attribute which made it hugely popular during both world wars. Instant coffee took a bit step forward with the advent of freeze drying technology in the 1960s, but connoisseurs have always agreed that the taste is inferior to fresh coffee. That’s why we were intrigued when we heard that it’s enjoying a resurgence.

You’ve heard of ‘coffee snobbery’, where consumers demand to know the exact provenance of their beans, protect their own blend recipes and process the results with the attention to detail of NASA going into space? The smaller, independent roasters who are flourishing in this market are now turning their attention to using freeze drying technology to produce their own instant coffee.

Traditionally, instant coffee has been made with low quality beans, often the cheaper robusta variety rather than the more expensive arabica. This causes it to taste bitter. Now, independent roasters are experimenting to produce an instant coffee that preserves its depth and delicacy of flavour, producing it in small batches. They are using the freeze drying process as opposed to the quicker and cheaper hot air spray drying favoured by mass manufacturers, as heating the coffee beans risks damaging the flavour. Although freeze dried instant coffee has been on the shelves for a long time, it’s only recently that independent roasters are producing their own.
We’re currently not convinced that instant coffee is ever going to take the place of a freshly made cup of the real thing, but there’ll always be a place for instant coffee in terms of convenience and the fact that it’s getting better can only be a good thing.

If you prefer your coffee fresh, then take a look at our Shop page where you’ll find a wide range of top quality beans, all available at great wholesale prices.

Coffee fads: candyfloss coffee

Posted on by Sara Walker

We’re always on the lookout for the latest coffee fad – not because we want to follow suit, but because they make us smile! After all, when something’s as perfect as a good cup of coffee, why try and improve it? The rise of social media platform Instagram has a lot of answer for, with users posting pictures of rainbow coffee, coffee mixed with turmeric or green matcha powder. The latest ‘innovation’, though, comes from Shanghai, China. A café has paired up the very childish treat of candyfloss with the very adult treat of coffee. They’re offering a cup of coffee with a cloud of candyfloss suspended over it on a sort of metal rack. The idea is that as the heat from the coffee melts the candyfloss it drops little drips of sugary sweetness into your coffee. It’s called ‘Sweet Little Rain’ coffee, and it’s currently big on Instagram.

It’s more expensive than a regular cuppa, currently priced at around 58 Chinese yen or £6. And it does look interesting – but if you’re a coffee purist like us, we can’t help wondering if it’s actually adding anything to the drink, other than an undefinable amount of sugar. It doesn’t look that controllable, either – surely all that candyfloss would melt over the cup, spoon, saucer and table rather than being confined to your cup? We’re not sure it’s worth the effort of all the wet wipes you’d have to use afterwards!

If you’re looking for a great cup of coffee with no gimmicks attached, then you’ve come to the right place. We supply wholesale coffee for use in businesses and cafes, and we pride ourselves on the high quality of our products as well as our customer service. To find out more, or to browse our range of products, take a look at our main website at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk – and sorry, there’s no candyfloss on sale!

Coffee and cancer health scare warning overturned

Posted on by Sara Walker

Here’s more good news for coffee lovers. Early last year, a court in California sent shockwaves through the caffeine community by ruling that coffee contains carcinogens – substances that contribute to causing cancer in living tissue. As a result, all cafes in California were required to display warning notices that espressos could cause cancer.

As you can imagine, the coffee community not only in the USA but all over the world rose up to try and disprove the ruling, which sparked a year-long debate. Now, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has come to its senses and agreed that the ruling is not appropriate. It did at first appear that there may have been some basis for concern, as when coffee is heated a chemical, acrylamide, is produced which is in fact a carcinogen. However, on further investigation over the year the OEHHA found that coffee contained the chemical at such low levels that it posed on threat at all, and that the original court ruling appeared to be an overreaction.

Acrylamide has appeared on a list of carcinogens since the 1990s, and under state law California has to issue public warnings about everything that includes a listed chemical. This includes foodstuffs which may contain one of the chemicals but has never been associated with cancer via a direct link. In fact, both chips and toast contain more of the acrylamide than coffee, and so far no-one has suggested labelling them!

Leading authority the International Agency for Cancer said that there were no direct links between coffee and cancer, and research had shown that coffee could actually help prevent certain types of cancer.

Phew, only in California! Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we’re delighted to supply top quality, great value coffee to some of the best cafes, restaurants and offices in Britain. To find out more, take a look at our main website at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.

Coffee helped 11-year-old boy recover from rare condition

Posted on by Sara Walker

Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we do love a positive coffee story – and this tale from Paris takes some beating. In a recently published case study, researchers have released the details of an 11-year-old boy in Paris, diagnosed with a rare condition called ADCY5-related dyskinesia, which is an abnormality or impairment of voluntary movement and causes the sufferer to have severe shakes similar to those caused by Parkinson’s disease.

Scientists at the university hospital Hopitaux de Paris tried the unusual step of asking the young patient to drink coffee, as caffeine is a muscle relaxant and also helps boost an enzyme that helps muscles to contract. The results were extraordinary. One standard 60ml shot of espresso, which contains around 100mg of caffeine, stopped the shakes for around seven hours. Adding another cup and a half gave the youngster almost a whole day of relief from his condition. The child had been suffering with the condition since he was three, and by the time he was 11 was having up to 30 episodes a day which were having a severe effect on his everyday life.
During the trial, the boy’s parents accidentally gave him decaffeinated coffee and only realised with the alarming symptoms returned, as badly as before. Once they realised, they switched back to ‘full fat’ coffee and the symptoms were once more alleviated. The authors of the report said that the accident went to support the theory that caffeine was responsible for the improvement. They went on to say that caffeine ‘should be considered in all patients with ADCY5-related dyskinesia’.

We do like a positive story about the health benefits of coffee, which is a great mood booster and pick me up. If you’d like to discuss what we can do for your commercial coffee business, café, restaurant or office, then do give us a call on 0800 0121226 or browse our range of coffee supplies online.

US sweet company launches caffeinated gummy bears

Posted on by Sara Walker

Every time we think we’ve heard it all, we’re given a reminder that we haven’t yet. In California (where else?) a sweet company called Sugarfina have teamed up with a coffee chain called Alfred to produce the caffeinated gummy bears. For those of you not familiar with the gummy bear, it’s a small teddy bear shaped sweet made from gelatine and sugar and normally flavoured with fruit. The new caffeinated versions are even available in different flavours – bourbon cold brew, iced vanilla latte and cold brew. And yes, the bourbon flavour does apparently contain real whiskey.

Each 100g serving of the sweets contains the same amount of caffeine as a cup of espresso.

According to the coffee shop, they pride themselves on ‘staying ahead of trends’ – and we think they certainly have! The sweets took two years to develop and have been made with real coffee. They retail at around £5.70 for 100g – a lot more than most espressos.

Alfred has collaborated on all sorts of coffee-themed collections in the past, with their partnership with Sugarfina being the latest partnership.

We’re not entirely sure who these sweets are aimed at – although obviously not children! We guess they’re more portable and practical than a cup of hot drink can sometimes be – after all, you couldn’t stick a cup of coffee in your pocket or handbag – and they mean you can get an instant caffeine fix wherever you are. On the downside, though, they contain a lot more than just coffee, including sugar, so aren’t a like-for-like substitute. The sweets are nicely packaged in a miniature coffee cup or a paperbag, and are already proving popular on social media. We think, though, that we’ll stick to the real deal and drink actual coffee!

If you’d like to browse our range of top quality coffee beans, coffee accessories and coffee supplies, all aimed at cafes and coffee businesses, then take a look at our main website at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.

Glasgow café sells ‘camelccinos’ for charity

Posted on by Sara Walker

In amongst all the ‘avocado lattes’, ‘rainbow lattes’ and ice cream serving cups, sometimes there’s a coffee trend we can really appreciate. Yes, it’s a bit of a gimmick – but it’s a gimmick with a purpose. A café in Glasgow has invented ‘camelccinos’ – yes, that’s right, coffee with added camels’ milk – to help support traders in Kenya.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen trends for adding almost anything to coffee, including yak butter, salt and various non-dairy milks such as almond. This is a new one on us, though! Camels’ milk is said to be more nutritious than cows’ milk, containing more iron and vitamin C. Although we’re not used to it here in the UK, it’s commonly drunk across Africa and the Middle East and can be used as a substitute for human breast milk as it’s nutritionally the closest type of milk. It can have health benefits, including reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke.

The initiative to bring ‘camelcchinos’ to Scotland is funded by the British government’s Department for International Development, and is being run by Mercy Corps, a global team of humanitarians with offices in Edinburgh. They’re helping female Kenyan traders to increase the shelf life of their camels’ milk, which can spoil rapidly in the high temperatures, leading to a lot of wastage. So far, the project has funded solar-powered cooling units as well as refrigerated transport. The Willow Tea Rooms, where the drink is on sale for £2.40, say it’s proved popular so far. The project aims to raise funds by donating 10 per cent of the profits from each drink, but also to highlight awareness for the traders.

Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we’ve got everything you need to offer your customers a fantastic cup of coffee – except, possibly, camels’ milk! Take a look at our range of coffee beans, coffee accessories and coffee supplies at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.

Paid coffee breaks under threat in Spain

Posted on by Sara Walker

We like to keep our eye on coffee news worldwide, and, this story reached us from Spain. Many Spanish employees have a late-morning ritual of leaving the office and meeting colleagues for a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Although they’re not paid for this break specifically, employees have been able to take advantage of up to two hours of paid breaks a day, whatever they want to use it for.

Now, a new law has been introduced that ironically aimed to protect working hours. The Socialist government now requires employers to clock their staff in and out in an effort to prevent them trying to make employees work unpaid overtime. An unintended consequence for the workers, though, is that now employers have the option not to count coffee breaks, smoking breaks or other downtime as part of the paid working day, as has been the case so far.

Spaniards are believed to work around a staggering 2.6 million hours of unpaid overtime a week, so the new legislation would offer them better protection. Unions have on the whole welcomed the new move, but are believed to be looking at options for monitoring how much time at work is actually spent working. The government have suggested trying to differentiate between time spent working and time on breaks which should be unpaid. It’s worth mentioning that the breaks in question are not statuary legal breaks but voluntary breaks for meals or a quick coffee. The new proposal may see workers required to clock in and out whenever they leave their desks, so that they don’t exceed a total break time.

While it’s important for productivity that employees don’t regularly exceed their break times, spending a few minutes stretching your legs and grabbing a coffee can help re-focus the mind and boosting performance. From our point of view, the ideal solution would seem to be installing a coffee machine in the office!

Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we’ve got all your commercial coffee supplies covered. Visit our main website to browse our selection of coffee beans and accessories for your coffee business.

Why it’s so hard to give up sugar in your coffee

Posted on by Sara Walker

If you’re thinking of getting fitter for summer, one of the lifestyle changes you may have considered is giving up sugar in your coffee. It’s one of those things that sounds simple but is surprisingly difficult in practice – in fact, people who successfully manage to cut down sugar in other areas, such as eating cakes and biscuits, find they still can’t give up sugar in coffee. Now, research has shown just why this is.

The study, carried out at the University of York, has discovered that the sugar isn’t just addictive in its own right, it also changes the basic chemistry of the coffee to improve the taste. The research studied how the molecules of water, caffeine and sugar interact together to affect the final taste of the drink.

Coffee (and to a lesser extent, tea) contains caffeine, which can cause it to have a bitter taste, especially if over brewed or inexpertly prepared. When you add sugar, the molecules of caffeine group together reducing their overall surface area. In turn, this means they cause less reaction on the taste buds and reduces the impression of a bitterness.

The author of the study, Dr Shimizu, said: “It’s a bit like if you were asked to look for two one penny coins and they were both stuck together – they can be mistaken for just one.” He went on to say that the findings revealed just how complex the interaction of foods can be, and how science was helping us to understand it.

If you’re serious about trying to cut down on sugar, then the best ‘tried and tested’ method seems to be reducing the amount you take over about a week to give your taste buds a chance to adapt. In the meantime, stock up on everything coffee-related at our main website over at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk, where we’ve everything from beans…yes, to sugar!

Drinking coffee could help protect against breast cancer, new study suggests

Posted on by Sara Walker

Researchers from two Spanish universities have found evidence that eating more phenolic acids in your diet can help protect against post-menopausal breast cancer.

Scientists have found evidence of a protective effect from a diet full of phenolic acids on the risk of post-menopausal breast cancer. Phenolic acids are plant compounds found in a variety of plant-based foods, usually in the leaves of vegetables and the skins and seeds of fruit. The study found that the phenolic acid with the strongest effect was chlorogenic acid, which is mostly found in coffee, especially green coffee beans, and some other fruit and vegetables. It shares some health benefits with caffeine, but is less potent.

The study looked at the link between phenolic acids and the incidence of breast cancer in over 11,000 women. All the participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire to confirm how often they ate 136 particular types of food. Researchers followed them over a period of around 12 years, and found that just over 100 women were diagnosed with breast cancer. Scientists worked out how much phenolic acid each woman had in their diet by matching up the incidence of consumption of each food type with a database containing the amount of phenolic acid each food contained.
Depending on the results of the food matching, researchers put the participants into groups.

Researchers split women into three groups according to their intake of specific phenolic acids. Those who consumed the most hydroxycinnamic acid in their diets had a 62 per cent reduction in their risk of getting breast cancer, compared to those who consumed the least.

Those who included the most chlorogenic acids in their diet saw their risk reduce to 65 per cent less than the group who consumed the least.
The study concluded that eating more phenolic acids, particularly chlorogenic acids found in coffee, fruit and vegetables, was associated with a decreased risk of post-menopausal breast cancer. Researchers concluded that the high levels of phenolic acids may possibly work to reduce fat tissue inflammation or resistance to insulin, both of which could make women more susceptible to breast cancer.

Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we’re coffee experts. Over at our online shop you’ll find everything you need for your coffee business, including coffee beans, coffee machines and a range accessories for your restaurant, café, office or retail space.

Like sugar in your coffee? It might be in your genes.

Posted on by Sara Walker

New research carried out at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago has revealed that your preference for taking sugar in your coffee and sweetening other drinks could be genetic. Since 2007, scientists have known that a certain variant of the mysterious ‘FTO gene’ is linked to an increased tendency to obesity. People who have a different variant of the gene are at a lower risk of the disease. This same ‘lower risk’ variant also seems to be linked to a preference for sweetened drinks, which scientists agree is counter intuitive.

Lead researcher Marilyn Cornelis, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the university believes that the gene variant could be linked to behaviour which is why carriers were less likely to put on weight despite their sweet tooth.

In general, though, the study found that with the one exception of the FTO gene variant, our preferences for whether we like drinks sweetened or not are more to do with association and feeling rather than taste. Psychologically, you could be craving the increased alertness of a caffeine buzz rather than the taste itself. The study also showed that there’s a large ‘reward’ component to what we choose to drink. For example, if we’ve had a really nasty journey to work, we might choose to ‘reward’ ourselves with an extra cup of coffee.

The results of the study were published recently in a scientific journal, and included data from around 336,000 people who’d been asked to record their drink intake. The study classed ‘bitter’ drinks as coffee, tea, beer, red wine and grapefruit juice, and ‘sweet’ as other fruit juices and soft drinks.

Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company we’re coffee experts, and we’ve got everything in stock to keep your coffee business running smoothly. Our range includes top quality coffee beans, syrups, cups, accessories – and sugar! To find out more, visit www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.