What happens when you own a coffee roasting business but can’t drink caffeine?

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Last year my pre-existing anxiety started to get even worse. I was frequently having debilitating feelings of panic, and occasional panic attacks. This was on top of waking up in the night drenched in sweat, and slightly raised blood pressure. Some of you may recognise this straight away as perimenopause which my doctor diagnosed after a lot of appointments and ruling other things out.

I already knew I was sensitive to caffeine, it’s why I drink good coffee. If you can only have one or two, you might as well make it count and have the good stuff. As my anxiety was spiking in the morning, along with hot flashes, I started to suspect I’d have to give up the caffeine. From reading online forums and talking to others experiencing perimenopause, it seems fairly common for caffeine to exacerbate symptoms. Obviously I was reluctant at first. I switched to half regular/half decaf, or half caf as we call it here. That helped for a bit until it didn’t and I was yet again sweaty and panicking.

So for the last few months I’ve been drinking decaf exclusively and it has made such a huge difference. My day time hot flushes have almost gone and when I do have them they’re much more minor. But the biggest impacts have been in my anxiety which is back down to manageable level prior and my blood pressure which is back within the healthy range.

With this experience in mind, when it came to placing our next big green coffee order I knew that we had to increase our decaf range, not just for my own drinking pleasure but also for others who for whatever reason can’t have caffeine but don’t want to give up good coffee. Our decafs come from the same high quality speciality growers that our regular coffee does, and have their caffeine removed using gentle CO2 or sugar cane methods which leave behind the flavour and aroma molecules.

But fear not caffeine-lovers. One half of this business is still a regular coffee drinker so we can still cup the coffees so we know what they taste like. We just have even more options available for decaf drinkers too now.

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