April/May 2021 Newsletter
A time of troubles came upon us mid-March when both our website and email systems fell over simultaneously. The cause was easy to identify, something had gone wrong with our top level domain name service (the bit of the internet where the name coffeeco.com.au actually lives.)
The current domain host had performed an "update" which broke the links between coffeeco.com.au and our website and email servers. Unfortunately it had also wound back the information it kept about the domain, so the conversation(s) went something like this. "Your update broke our domain links, please fix it." "We need the permission of the Domain Admin, Mr. ABC to do that." "Mr. ABC is the former Admin, I am the current Admin, you have loaded an old backup file." "We know sir but we need the permission of the Domain Admin, Mr. ABC to fix that."
An endless catch-22, getting us nowhere. Only the commencement of a claim for loss of business through the Small Claims Tribunal finally shook loose someone senior enough to authorise an actual skilled technical person to fix things.
The root cause of our problem was the age of our domain and the servers it was stored on. We originally bought coffeeco.com.au from Melbourne IT (then the ONLY seller of .au domains) 25 years ago. Since then many commercial domain resellers have sprung up and bought, sold, combined and divorced each other, passing the ownership of the original name servers along as they went. Someone at the current managers decided to turn off the old servers after backing them up, and BANG! we were caught.
Anyway, on to brighter things. We have been literally scouring the market for green coffees, not so much for specials as to keep our current range in stock. Alas, the shattering of the world's supply chains means that some of our green coffees will simply be unavailable until mid-year or later. The good news is that we have been able to find one 60kg bag each of Kenya and Ethiopian Harar, and they should be in stock soon. The bad news is that we have run out of Nicaraguan green beans, with none in sight until July at the earliest.
So there are going to be substitutions, and sometimes in multiples. We'll keep you informed of the new coffees as they come into stock by sending out short emails as we did for the Domain problem.
So the first major substitute, and this month's special, is
$56 Per Kilogram
Medium/Strong
Sweet, high acid coffee with a vibrant, mouth-filling flavour balanced with good body and a smooth, creamy aftertaste. Most suited to plunger or filter brewing.
It's slightly more fruity and less malty than the Nicaraguan it replaces but it definitely has the right balance of body and acidity. Even as a lighter roasted coffee it also has a more intense flavour and aroma.
Finally, I get a lot of requests for newsletters on certain topics, but the most common one (especially in the last year) is "what sort of machine should I buy?" It's been 7 years since I last sold an espresso machine, and I freely admit to having lost touch with what is available. Off the top of my head, the Breville 900 series machines (not the Oracle) are good value when on sale, the Nuova Simonelli Oscar is a proven performer, and the basic Lelit machines are still around, albeit at much higher prices than I used to sell them.
Until next time,
Alan
