Sydney Shootings

There have been an inordinate number of shootings in Sydney lately.
Not mass shootings but more like targeted assassinations.
Almost up to one a day, in public, in busy areas.
The latest was one of more than a dozen gangland murders since late 2020.
Got a lot of people thinking, given the strict gun laws in this country, how Sydney, a major Australian city, compares with those in the rest of the world.
Of course TV news projects these latest rounds of shootings as the city’s descent into lawlessness.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In reply a Sydney Morning Herald article produced the graph below.

Update: 28th July: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/27/sydney-shootings-gang-war-greenacre

1000 Blog Posts!

It’s taken almost 20 years to get there but here we are.

1000 posts!

This blog was originally set up mainly to keep distant family and friends up to date with our day to day lives. 

It was also a personal diary (journal) of our trips around Australia and the world.

Compared to the vast majority of blogs, visitor numbers with a total of just over 265,000 so far, are minuscule.

Comments have not even cracked 200!

The stats show the wine oriented subjects were the most popular. 

One, Fish, Milk, Eggs and Nuts in Wine, was on top of a Google search list on that subject for many years and is still right up there, #3 at the moment.

The 19/20 bushfires created a fair bit of interest as did Australia’s ‘battle’ with Covid-19.

The audience demographic is interesting.

Vast majority have come from the USA followed, disturbingly, by Russia.

Hackers?

Thankfully my ‘local’ audience came in third.

The question is now should I continue the blog.

Our lives have quietened down substantially and the wine growing has ended which has reduced the frequency of posts considerably.

But I guess the odd one now and again is not too much of a chore.

Thanks to those who have taken an interest in our lives. 

Decaffeinated Coffee

The co driver is into decaffeinated coffee, mainly the afternoon one.
I’m not.

Got me to wondering how coffee is actually decaffeinated.

There appears to be two processes.

One is called the sugar cane process where the coffee is steamed for 30 minutes which opens the pores of the beans allowing full caffeine removal.

The beans are then soaked in a solution of water and ethyl acetate (EA).

The EA bonds to the chlorogenic acids within the coffee and the caffeine begins to migrate away from the beans. 

The last of the caffeine is removed after 8 hours.

Low pressure steam removes all traces of EA.

Coming from an industrial chemical background I wondered about the ethyl acetate.

I generally know it as a solvent for use in paint, adhesives etc and is manufactured large scale generally by the esterification of ethanol (alcohol) and acetic acid ie. The Fischer Method.

A bit of research established that the EA used in decaffeination comes from alcohol created by the fermentation of molasses derived from sugar cane which is then mixed with acetic acid.

I was also aware of this alcohol/acetic acid reaction from wine making where a certain amount of EA, especially in young white wine, creates a ‘sweetness’. However excess EA in wine is a fault.

The second process is called the Swiss Water Process.

This involves hydrating the raw coffee then continuously circulating Green Coffee Extract (GCE) around the coffee for 8-10 hours which causes the caffeine to migrate to the GCE.

The coffee 99.9% caffeine free is then dried, polished and packed.

This process ensures that if the raw coffee had organic certification prior, it will retain that certification post process.