What the Buck: Coffee News Round Up

What's hitting the coffee headlines this week I hear you shout. Fear not, all will be revealed below:

Over to MILAN, Italy – Robusta farmers have a new open-access resource at their fingertips—World Coffee Research’s (WCR) Robusta Variety Catalog. The catalog, which is available in not only English but also Spanish, no less. The catalog profiles 47 robusta varieties—from origins such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Uganda, Mexico, and Vietnam—using 20+ variables, like yield potential, stature, bean size, nutrition requirements, lineage, susceptibility to pests/diseases, and many more. Big stuff. 

Illy Cafe reports DOUBLE DIGIT growth! (the only double digit growth we see are the weeds outside our roastery). Consolidated revenue grew by 13.2% compared to the previous year thanks to solid organic growth, led by all the main markets and distribution channels. Well done Illy. 

GLASGOW coffee festival is back on! This 2 day coffee extravaganza promises to be bigger and better than ever before, showcasing over 100 vendors. Love coffee? Check it out or Google Glasgow Coffee Festival. 

AH AND NOW THE BIG ONE. Coffee and tea (we'll ignore tea from now on) is good for your BRAIN! As if we needed an excuse to drink more? New research led by Dr Lisa Zhuoting Zhu, Principal Investigator of the Ophthalmic Epidemiology team at the Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA) in Melbourne, has found a positive link between coffee consumption and the thickness of our macular retinal nerve fibre layer. You don't know what the macular retinal nerve fibre is?? Luckily I do:

The macula is the central part of the retina at the back of the eye that gives us sharp central vision. The retinal nerve fibre layer is a thin layer of nerve cells that transmit visual information from the eye to the brain. The study used the macular retinal nerve fibre layer thickness as a measure of the brain’s health: “The thinner the layer, the higher risk of neurodegeneration.”!

Remember coffee first, scheme later.