My name is Neil, I’m in my 50’s and live in Springwood near Sydney, Australia.
My main occupation is being a full time Pastor at an evangelical church in the Beautiful Blue Mountains, just west of Sydney.
I love this work, and it’s a real privilege to work in it, but everyone needs a hobby to relax with.
Hence my growing interest in not only drinking, but the preparation and roasting of coffee. In fact, for me, coffee is perfect interest to combine with my first passion: Jesus Christ.
The name of this site is drawn from these two passions.
The secret is in the beans.
The key to discovering a whole world of coffee taste that you probably never realised existed is the beans.
Most people have never tasted truly fresh coffee. That is, coffee beans roasted up to 10-14 days ago, and ground just prior to brewing. When you do, it is a revelation.
As you browse this site, you will find lots of information and links relating to preparing and drinking freshly roasted, high quality coffee. I hope you enjoy it.
The social nature of drinking coffee means that people often ask me to supply them with delicious, fresh roasted coffee. Initially this was very hard given my very limited roasting capacity. But after building my drum roaster early in 2005, this was something I was willing and able to do. The beginnings of Ministry Grounds was starting to develop…
Why? Because I enjoy roasting, and increasing my turnover of beans means I get to buy and taste lots more different beans! It also gives me lots of opportunities to talk to people about Jesus. You can read more about that in the blog section of this site, but this is how I ‘got into’ coffee:
From habit to hobby
In my early days of ministry, I did youth ministry full time. That was when I developed my coffee drinking habit. Around fifteen years ago, I really couldn’t take instant coffee any more and ‘graduated’ to ground coffee bought at the supermarket, and brewed in a plunger (french press).
On a whim one day I bought a Krups espresso machine – thinking this was the height of sophistication – but try as I may, I couldn’t produce anything drinkable from it using my supermarket Vittoria!
So the Krups went back, and the plunger reigned on for a few more years…
And then I found a great source of fresh coffee on the internet, and started ordering some for special occasions.
I was hooked…
While I drink and enjoy plunger coffee, I ventured into the world of espresso seriously for the first time with Sylvia, and a basic Lux grinder.
Grappling with the challenge of producing a consistent cup from Sylvia kept me busy for about six months, and was an enjoyable time in itself. But the cost of buying roasted beans to keep up became prohibitive….
Which led to my journey into home roasting. Which is a whole other story…
