A LITTLE ABOUT ME…
I’m a professional drummer and songwriter touring the world with different artists. I have always had a big love for food and drink. My travels have given me great opportunity to follow this passion and implement the knowledge gained in my own passion for cooking. My family have been equally involved in music and food professionally which has more than rubbed off on me and my love for these two things.
In 2012 I was gravely ill through not taking care of myself, fatigue, bad diet and the excesses of the road! I re-took control of my health and discovered juicing through Joe Cross (Fat Sick And Nearly Dead). At Joe’s movie premier in London I met some inspirational people like Karl Whitfield, a big coffee lover like me. Karl runs Mother Natures Diet and is a seriously knowledgable guy when it comes to health, natural food and nutrition. I have attended Karl’s seminars and learned a lot. I was inspired to strive for the best produce and ingredients to maintain optimal health and nutrition. So within a year of being ill I was working hard on my health. I was juicing and cut out all processed food and refined sugar. Three years on from that and no sign of a common cold or other illnesses. I was thankfully healthier than I’d ever been. Hurrah!
I spent some time learning about the affects of processed foods on the body and how mass produced processed foods and intensive agriculture is killing us and the planet. Enter my love for natural food, of which coffee features highly. In every city I visit I spend time trying to find the best coffee! I realised very quickly after roasting my own that not all coffee is equal.
Fast forward a few years…
On tour in the USA my friend and Saxaphone player Francis Walden mentioned that he roasts his own coffee. I’d always wanted to try it. Frank kindly gifted me a kilo of green Ethiopian coffee beans and so I started my journey of roasting coffee. I quickly realised that the coffee I’d been drinking all these years in “high end” coffee shops was far from the best in terms of quality and most importantly, freshness. Drinking freshly ground coffee within 7 days of roasting is a far superior product and something I wanted more people to experience as it hardly ever happens in coffee shops or with large online roasters. I spent some considerable time testing different temperatures, medium roasts and dark roasts until I settled on what I think is the best roast for my grade 1 Arabica, Sidama Beans. I called it “Ben’s Blend”. It’s not a traditional blend in the common sense of the word. I don’t blend different types of beans together. StoneHouse coffee is single origin which means I use one type of bean from the same crop and blend a dark and medium roast of that bean together (in a secret ratio) to bring out the best sweat complex flavours.
My Story