Hi all,

So let’s address the elephant in the room straight away. I’ve been away. I’ve been away for a very long time. Since I last posted life’s changed a lot. The love of coffee is still strong, but I can’t have as much as I’d like anymore.

Life, in general, has also changed a lot for me in the 13 months since I last posted. As well as lif in general, I’ve managed to shoehorn in a house move, become a cat parent and help plan my wedding, which is less than 6 months away (help!) and there’s also been a pretty big event in my family life too, which hasn’t been so great which I’ll talk about another time.

So life’s changed a lot, but I’ve finally caught the blogging bug again and can’t wait to start experimenting with all things coffee. Even though I haven’t been saying much here lately, it’s been really nice to see that people have still been giving the website the time of day, so whether it’s procrastinating about brewing new beans, learning more about the production process of the little bean we know and love or it’s me keeping you guys up to date with the latest coffee news, I’m back and hopefully, here to stay.

So where have I been?

Like I’ve already mentioned, I still love coffee, but can’t have as much as I used to. Around March/ April last year I started getting quite a few stomach problems. I was getting extreme heartburn in the middle of the day that only got worse once I’d momentarily fallen asleep at night.

It got to a point where being sick in the night was the norm and I couldn’t figure out why. So, being a typical guy, I didn’t go to the doctor, I thought I’d know best so I started taking anti-acid tablets, which helped during the day but did little to relieve the symptoms after I’d fallen asleep.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so after I felt like I’d tried everything, I thought, “It’s time to try the coffee”. So, that’s what I did, over the course of a couple of weeks, I started experimenting, cutting back on the amount of coffee I was having (from the usual 5-6 cups down to just 2 or 3), I even started adding milk, which, to me was like rooting for Manchester City when anyone who knows me, knows I’m United through and through.

Cut a long sob story short, my experimenting paid off, the midnight dash for tablets started to decrease, I was getting more sleep, but I also felt like a failure and so the blog took a back seat.

It was a weird feeling, I’d always been a bit of a coffee snob, if you didn’t drink it black, I felt like you weren’t getting the full flavour and that it was a coffee ruined. I had this in the back of mind every time I sipped on a flat white during my experimentation period and so I felt like I couldn’t blog about coffee and preach about full-bodied beans if I was sat there ‘decreasing the quality’ with milk.

This all changed when I started reading The Barista’s Guide to Coffee. That book showed me what an idiot I’d been, and that coffee is there for anyone to enjoy however they like. There’s no right way, there’s no wrong way.

Coffee is what it is today because of the way people have experimented with it over hundreds of years and so that made me feel like now’s the time to blow the dust off the blog and get it up and running again.

So here we are and I can’t wait to get started on my next post.

I’ve been to plenty of places around the UK that do delicious coffee that I can’t wait to tell you more about and Chester itself has had a huge influx of top quality coffee houses that you need to hear about ASAP!

But for now, that’s it. Until next time, have a great day everyone.

Leave a comment, let me know what I’ve missed or hit me up on Facebook to let me know what’s been going on in the coffee world whilst I’ve been gone.

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O5