Oh My Gosh Coffee is a small batch coffee roaster based in the historic market town of Newark-On-Trent.
The Story of Oh My Gosh Coffee goes back to the heady days of Lockdown in 2020…
I knew very little about coffee roasting back then, but as a full-time software developer, I knew a lot about drinking coffee, especially self-medicating my at that point undiagnosed ADHD.
As the ADHD once again insisted it needed a new project to hyperfocus on, I had the idea of creating a brand of coffee aimed at software developers and other ‘tech’ coffee drinkers, and so Code Coffee was born!
Code Coffee was roasted by a roastery in London, so I was only responsible for the branding, and choosing the coffee. Experiencing the vastly different tasting coffees from different blends, origins, processes and roast levels, awakened a new curiosity and therefore hyperfocus and instantly a new hobby was added to the list: Coffee roasting!
My tolerant wife fuelled this by buying me a basic electric pan roaster for Christmas, and soon I was burning beans like an amateur…
After a lot of intense research and experimentation, I could produce small quantities of drinkable coffee, and so as expensive hobbies often demand, the next step was to invest in a larger, fancier coffee roaster, which I did with the purchase of a second-hand Freshroast SR800.
This fluid bed roaster (using air to move and heat the beans at the same time) allowed me to really learn how to recognise the stages of roasting, from drying and yellowing to first crack, and development. I was now producing good coffee of different origins, and learning how to improve the flavour by removing defects through hand-sorting the beans, and adjusting roasts to create interesting combinations of the bean’s natural flavours and those added by the roasting process.
At this point I was also running a pet photography business in a small studio in Long Eaton (as well as still working full-time as a software developer) when the set of studios where I was based, ran an ‘open doors’ events where people were invited in to see the studios and maybe purchase works, but with my pet photography more about being a service to the pet owners than about selling the photos, I decided to see if anyone else would be interested in my coffee, so put together a basic label and decided to wear a vintage-style apron to roast, as I’m one of those people who was probably born in the wrong era, and enjoy dressing like what I imagined a coffee roaster would have worn in the early part of the 20th century.
To add to this style, I invested in a chalk A-board to advertise the coffee but left decorating the board to my then 5-year-old son. In decorating the board, as well as drawing a very cute coffee bean, he’d also written “Oh My Gosh Coffee” which was very charming, and the name stuck! After a very quick visit to an online logo designer and then a local printer, we had branding!
And so, Oh My Gosh Coffee was born!
People enjoyed my coffee and I reluctantly sold a fair amount of bags that I secretly would rather have kept to myself, but I was also able to demonstrate the roasting process to interested watchers and talked them through the sights and smells of roasting coffee.
I particularly enjoyed the ‘Oh My Gosh’ reaction of people tasting my coffee, both from the difference between freshly roasted speciality coffee and stale supermarket coffee, but also the huge difference between a lightly-roasted natural Ethiopian, and a darker roasted Brazilian, and even my talking people’s ear off about how soil, elevation and species can affect the flavour of coffee, helping me realise I love educating people in the magic of coffee.
I followed this up with other markets both at the studios, and a Christmas market at The Victoria in Beeston where I leaned into the vintage branding, and even had enquiries about trading at other markets
Shortly afterwards, we moved to Newark-On-Trent for work, but the coffee roasting was a passion now.
Being in a market town with a relatively bustling marketplace, the idea of a market stall was still bubbling away until the Newark SteamPunk market came around and I realised my branding would fit quite nicely with the aesthetic!
And so I applied, had to jump through all the hoops of electrical device testing in order to run the roaster on the stall, and had a great time selling coffee!
About this time, the Newark Artisan Market started up in the Buttermarket building, so I joined that and ended up with a regular monthly market, building up my experience and customer base.
Soon, the limitations of the Freshroast SR800 were starting to show. While the coffee was great, having to roast each bag individually in my limited spare time led to less stock for markets, so limited my ability to expand and reach new markets, or offer online sales eventually!
There was much researching and wanting of higher capacity roasters, with the Aillio Bullet and Dalian Amazon being two roasters of reasonable price (for a roaster) and 4 times the capacity at 1kg!
Then, in the busy run-up to Christmas, it happened… The Freshroast quit on me and refused to roast. In a panic, I found a second-hand 2kg capacity roaster not too far away, so after a discussion with my wife, arranged a loan and made an offer that was accepted! Oh My Gosh Coffee was expanding!
…But not yet. The seller needed the roaster to be collected sooner than I could get the funds in-hand, and another buyer was able to collect much earlier, so unfortunately the roaster got away. But, as I had some reservations about how flexible the roaster would be, there was a small amount of relief too. however, the decision had been made, a new roaster funded with some low-risk financing!
And so here we are, Oh My Gosh Coffee now has not one, but two Aillio Bullet roasters for speed, flexibility and a degree of automation, and the coffee is available to buy here online, or at markets all around Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire!