We all love a good coffee, especially here at Your Coffee Break (the clue’s in the name!).
So when a new sustainable, award-winning coffee hits the shelves, it’s only polite for us to give it a shout…..
Aldi has just expanded its range of sustainable food items, by launching a new speciality coffee from leading Irish roastery Velo Coffee Roasters.
Velo Tandem Specially Selected is created using 100% speciality Arabica coffee beans roasted in small batches in Velo’s roastery in Cork. A delicious coffee blend, it has a rich, smooth body, giving notes of dark chocolate and sweet grapes.
Velo roastery was created a few years ago, when Cork café owners Rob Horgan and Suzanne Casey realised their bought-in coffee was not up to scratch, from a taste or sustainability perspective. Rob went to Germany to take a roasting course with Probat Roasters and Velo Tandem was born, first created in a 12kg roaster at the side of their café. The coffee was so popular and sales were so good that just one year later, Rob moved from roasting in the café to creating a purpose-built roastery just outside the city, with three members of staff.
Today, that Cork roastery has 15 full-time employees and Velo Coffee Roasters produces 12 coffees from regions all over the world. The B Corp coffee company is already hugely popular in Ireland – where they’ve just sold their millionth bag in Aldi, and now you can it in UK stores as well.
But why does coffee make us feel so good?
Rob explains: “Caffeine is very clever. It acts as a stimulant on your central nervous system. Its molecules look like Adenosine molecules to your brain – these help to regulate your sleep cycle, so the receptors in your brain bind with the caffeine rather than the adenosine. Caffeine also influences your body to create additional adrenaline, increasing your energy levels and making you feel more awake and energised, improving your reaction timings.”
It’s all about the science! Well, almost. “There’s also something incredibly comforting about a rich, tasty hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning,” continues Rob. “Our Velo Tandem is a delicious coffee blend with a rich, smooth body, giving notes of dark chocolate and sweet grapes. It’s the perfect choice all year round and the fact that it is now in Aldi all over the UK, means even more customers can bring home all of the quality they love to get from their favourite artisanal cafés and roasters.”
Timing
The key to the best cup of coffee is to drink it at the right time of day. If you are a straight out of bed to the cup kind of person, you might want to rethink that routine. Says Rob: “Right when we wake up, our cortisol (stress hormone) levels are naturally high. Cortisol is in charge of “readiness” and “alertness”; this is our bodies’ natural way to get us pedalling throughout the day.
“Drinking coffee when the cortisol levels are at their peak will actually decrease caffeine’s energising effects, making you feel tired later on – and more coffee could be needed. You should drink your coffee AFTER cortisol levels naturally decrease, as caffeine produces more cortisol, and cortisol receptors need to be available to receive this newly generated hormone.”
So, when is the best time to drink coffee?
Therefore, optimum time to enjoy your cuppa, according to Rob and the Velo Roasters team, is one hour after you wake up, when cortisol levels are starting to decrease. For example, if you wake up between 6 – 8 am the best time will be between 9 – 11am. For an afternoon cuppa, the best time will be between 1 – 5pm since cortisol levels rise again from 12 – 1 pm.
But what happens if you wake up at any other time? Well, cortisol levels will rise as soon as you wake up regardless of the time. Therefore, the perfect time to have a cup of your favourite Velo coffee will always be one hour after waking up.
Rob’s advice? Get up and go for a walk to get your morning fresh air, then have an energising shower – THEN have your lovely hot cup of Velo Roasters Tandem coffee.
It will taste all the sweeter for the wait – and your body will thank you for it!
Velo Tandem is available in whole bean or ground format, 200g bags cost £3.09.
Velo believes that contributing to and organising projects at origin that are meaningful to the local community are imperative to make the biggest impact to its suppliers – for example, the company is working with its grower in El Salvador to bring STEM education to the local schools with the help of teachers in Cork.
Velo Tandem is available in whole bean or ground format, 200g bags cost £3.09.
