Your need for your Co-Go fix in the morning could be traced back to your genes, according to new research released this week.

As USA Today reports, scientists have identified two genes that decide your susceptibility to coffee. Essentially, depending on whether you carry a “high-consumption” variant or “low-consumption” variant of either gene determines just how fast or slow you metabolize caffeine, and thus, just how much Coffee it takes to get your motor kick started in the morning.

So next time you’re at the pod, blame your parents for your high consumption genes!  But I guess it is something you can live with; the need for delicious coffee isn’t that bad of a gene trait.

The legend goes that Ethiopian shepherds as early as the 9th century first noticed the stimulating effects of the coffee berries when they saw their goats becoming frisky and dancing after eating them. One popular account is of a shepherd named Kaldi who took the beans to a holy man in a nearby monastery. The holy man disapproved and threw them into the fire.
Within minutes the monastery filled with the heavenly aroma of roasting beans, and the other monks became intrigued. In order to preserve their goodness the Monk ordered the remains be collected and covered with hot water. That night the monks sat up drinking the rich and fragrant brew, and from that day vowed they would drink it daily to keep them awake during their long, nocturnal devotions.

While the legends attempt to condense the discovery of coffee and its development into a beverage into one story, it is more likely that the monks chewed on the berries as a stimulant for centuries before it was brewed as a hot drink. The earliest credible evidence of coffee being roasted, brewed and drunk as a hot beverage comes from the middle of the fifteenth century. Much later coffee was brought into Europe through Venice and became available in England by the 16^th Century. Having fought off it’s many religious opponents coffee survived to become the world’s most popular non alcoholic drink. It’s reported that more than 400 billion cups are consumed each year and only oil is a more traded commodity.

All throughout January we’re giving you the chance to win some free drinks.. Helping you get your Co-Go Fix and boosting your alertness during this exam period!

When the pictures are released just tag yourself as the drink you desire .. if your the first to comment below.. you WIN it! Simple. Click here.

A cup of coffee first thing in the morning is one of the most popular ways of starting the day, and the caffeine in that first cup of coffee can make you feel more alert and ready to face the challenges of the day ahead. We all know what it is like to get back to our desks or other work places after lunch and to suddenly feel lethargic. It’s not just your imagination, you are experiencing what is commonly called ‘the post lunch dip’, which is actually nothing to do with lunch at all. The bodies “circadian rhythm” (often known as our body clock) has high and lows throughout the day and night, and one of the lows is around 2.00pm; hence the ‘post lunch dip’. A cup or two of coffee is not just an excuse to put off the task in hand!
The caffeine in your coffee helps to restore levels of alertness, improving performance and mood, just what we all need to get through the second half of the working day… go on, grab your Co-Go Fix, I’m sure the boss won’t mind!

Ever wondered where the caffeine in a the decaff coffee goes, next time your drinking a can of cola your drinking it!

Decaf coffee is just one of the growing segments in the coffee market. The extraction of coffee is an intricate process where the removed caffeine is converted into items that we enjoy in our everyday lives from sodas, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products.

The aim of decaffeination is to produce a blend, which retains its aroma and taste despite the processes, which are necessary to remove the caffeine. Since most flavor components develop during roasting, coffee is almost always decaffeinated in the green bean form
The decaffeination process involves removing caffeine from coffee beans, mate, cocoa, tea leaves and other materials containing caffeine. (While caffeine-free soft drinks are occasionally referred to as ‘decaffeinated,’ some are actually prepared by simply omitting caffeine from production.) With all the consumption of decaffeinated beverages, it is interesting to wonder where the caffeine goes after extraction.

Once the caffeine is extracted companies sell its properties for various usages. The caffeine is recovered using evaporation and crystallization, there are no waste streams out of the process. Diet pills and cosmetic companies are the largest consumers of caffeine. The recent trend in caffeine-enhanced cosmetics has been getting international recognition, with everyone from morning news shows to large beauty magazines investigating the effects of the additive. Beauty companies use caffeine that has properties believed to do everything from reduce cellulite to enhance lips, but the three main ways caffeine is said to work on the skin is: as a vasoconstrictor, an antioxidant and a diuretic. Because of this, caffeine can be found in body wash, soap, lip balm, facial scrubs and several other products such as caffeine lipstick. Caffeine is also found in sprays and facial toners, de-puffing eye creams and gels and in hundreds of face and body creams, which claim to give bodies a lift, or improve our contours.

Here at Co-Go our decaffeinated coffee is from the Gayo Highlands with a rounded, chocolately flavour and is decaffeinated using The Swiss Water method which is 100% chemical free using pure water. The caffeine in the coffee beans is gently removed until they are 99.9% caffeine free, without compromising the coffee’s unique origin flavor, body and aroma.

Coffee can keep your skin healthy in a lot of different ways. Other than preventing skin cancer and melanoma-related diseases, coffee has anti-oxidant ingredients that can help:

- Your skin be free of different radicals that can cause acne, eczema and other skin diseases

- Improve the flow of micro-cellulars in your skin

- Break up fatty deposits which cause those ugly cellulites

- Clear up your skin of acne and other blemishes

- Act as sunblock and prevent sunburn and wrinkles

- Absorb and neutralize strong odors such as fish and other smells

How can you get all these skin benefits from coffee? There are two ways. One is to go to a spa that offers coffee treatment, and the other option is to make your own homemade coffee skin care treatment. Here are some suggestions taken from the web on how to prepare your own coffee skin care products:

1. Use coffee beans to rub on your damp skin before taking a steam bath or going in a sauna bath. Coffee beans can lightly exfoliate your skin and its rich oils can soften it.
2. After having your fill of your morning coffee, used coffee grounds can be reused into a variety of skin products:

- Coffee grounds mixed with olive oil – Apply this mixture all over your cellulite regions, and wrap these areas using plastic wrap. Leave this on for at least 5 minutes, remove the plastic and shower off. This can help reduce cellulites from your body.

- Coffee grounds mixed with egg white – Apply this on your skin as an exfoliant for softer skin.

- Coffee grounds mixed with your skin cleanser - This mixture can be your very own coffee exfoliating scrub.

- Coffee grounds mixed with cocoa powder and whole milk or cream – This mixture is a great smelling facial mask.

Just another reason we love coffee…

Tanzania Footprint

We here at Co-Go are always on the search for good coffee in the right season. At present our Filter coffee is Tanzania Footprint. Intense yet refined in character. The fragrance is lively and buttery, with winey blackcurrant flavours leading to an almost liquorice like, lasting finish.

One of East Africa’s most distinguished coffee plantations, the Blackburn Estate is owned and managed by passionate husband and wife team Michael and Tina Gehrken. It can be found on the western slopes of Mount Oldeani in Northern Tanzania, an idyllic farm gazing down on the wide valley below. Being located near to the scenic Ngorongoro conservation area, both elephants and water buffalo are frequent “trespassers” on the estate. The huge elephant footprint found one morning inspired the name of this exceptional coffee. They’d actually taken an overnight liking to one of the estates underground water pipes and had impressively excavated it to create a spontaneous watering hole!

We here at Co-Go believe we should uphold strong relationship with our suppliers to ensure quality at every stage of the coffee making process. From Bean to Cup.

On Friday the 12th November three of  Co-Go’s finest , Myself(Vishal), Simon and Olly took a trip to our Coffee Roaster in Huddersfield. As well as learning how our Co-Go coffee beans are blended and roasted,  we conducted a Latte Art Competition which drew a close call between Olly and Simon – you can judge who won here. To build our coffee knowledge and see what new tastes are coming through this winter we participated in a coffee cupping session tasting various different coffees and discussing what actually makes a good cup of coffee.

In all maintaining quality was the main mission of our trip ensuring that your coffee is of the highest standard.  We came away from experience fulfilled that our suppliers are just as passionate about good coffee as we are! We can look forward to our future together in finding new coffees that have the Co-Go seal of approval!

Simon observing the beans being cooled after roasting.

Our cupping session tasting coffees from around the world!

A bit of double blogging occurring here at Co-Go HQ, Co-Go‘s very own Simon McCann has signed up to blog with inafishbowl.com – a business reality website which is following three entrepreneurs and their start up businesses.

Here’s the Co-Go story so far…

Normally the body uses carbohydrates (stored as glycogen in the liver), as the preferred fuel for exercise. Only when those stores run dry, fat metabolised as a source of energy,  which makes you lose weight. But researchers at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra found that substances in caffeine triggered the muscles to use fat to fuel exercise instead of the usual carbohydrate stores.

They also found athletes who were given caffeine showed that they could exercise up to 30 per cent longer than those without the stimulant and perform up to 3.5 per cent beyond their normal capacity.

The fat-metabolising effect was discovered during research on sports performance. Researchers found that cyclists who sipped flat cola or coffee while riding were able to keep pedalling for longer and faster than those who drank water. So those sessions at the gym won’t be in vain gaining the body of an Adonis isn’t far out of reach with Co-Go here to help.

… just another reason we love coffee.