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Celebrating Natural Wine & Coffee Cocktails At Clever Polly’s Melbourne

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clever polly wine melbourne australia market lane coffee sprudge

On the last Sunday of March—what may well have been the last warm Sunday of 2015—West Melbourne’s popular bottle shop and wine bar Clever Polly’s hosted its first birthday party. In that first year, Clever Polly’s has developed a reputation among Melbournians as the place to be for natural wine, specialty drink, and fine food; think of it as a nighttime inverse to the city’s world class specialty coffee scene, well-trafficked by its rank and file members who consider themselves coffee pros by day, wine lovers by night. Owner Lou Chalmers talks about wine philosophy using much of the same intention as top coffee buyers: “In a nutshell, the main criteria that we now apply to buying wines are integrity, personality (terroir), and value. Oh and of course, they have to be delicious!” She speaks with passion and fervor about what she sees as a challenge within the Australian agricultural industry: a disconnect between makers and consumers and too significant a focus on the end product, rather than the process. Sounds familiar?

Clever Polly’s first birthday party was not your typical one-year-old’s shindig. The evening started with 12 winemakers offering tastings. These winemakers are each in the throws of harvest, their busiest season, and so it’s meaningful for them to come into the city to pour the fruits of their labor (Chalmers and her partners later thanked the winemakers with an impassioned speech atop the bar). With tasting stations scattered around the full-to-the-brim shop, each winemaker offered generous tastes of between one and four wines from their collections. Most were poured from bottles often scattered along the well-stocked Clever Polly’s shelves, but there were notable unicorns. Quealy Winemakers, for example, poured cloudy, still-fermenting 2015 friulano picked and pressed the day prior, from a plastic thermos. Similarly, the Chapter Wines team poured the first vintage of their winemaking collaboration with Clever Polly’s, a nero d’avolo fermented with moscato skins. Patrick Sullivan was behind the bar, pouring a blend of freshly pressed reds from a tap into glasses at first, and then directly into the mouths of a lucky few.

clever polly wine melbourne australia market lane coffee sprudge

As a supplement to the wines, Clever Polly’s chef Renee Trudeau was busily slinging pork buns with plum barbeque sauce, roasted cabbage, and mayo served with sweet potato fries. Pickled jalapeño and a roasted cauliflower salad were also available for purchase. For those who simply wanted to pair their wines with a requisite snack, there was a notable hunk of Comté, sourdough bread, and dried grapes (from the same vines as the Chapter Wines/Clever Polly’s collaboration) on which to munch.

Perhaps the most surprising menu item of the evening, and most germane to Sprudge readers, was a coffee cocktail courtesy of Market Lane, a quality-focused Melbourne specialty coffee roasting and cafe brand. Market Lane’s Jenni Bryant was on scene mixing the cocktails for the wine-fueled masses, and was kind enough to share her recipe with Sprudge.

clever polly wine melbourne australia market lane coffee sprudge

Jenni Bryant of Market Lane Coffee.

Market Lane Coffee Cocktail recipe, care of Jenni Bryant:

– 1 large ice cube (with fig slice inside)
– 65 milliliters of Market Lane’s Ethiopia Duromina, brewed on the Espro Press.
– 25 milliliters rum
– 7 milliliters fig leaf—infused simple syrup.

The fig leaf that Bryant suggests using to garnish lent an interesting vegetal quality to the cocktail, which got sweeter as the ice cube melted, diluted the drink, and exposed the fig slice. It was clean, precise, and refreshing; the perfect little pick-me-up to keep the good times rolling.

Ah but why coffee at the wine party? It turns out that prior to her wine career, Lou Chalmers was a working barista at Proud Mary, another popular Melbourne roaster/retailer. These days she gets her daily morning coffee from Market Lane’s Faraday Street shop, a charmingly lilliputian coffee bar just down the block from Clever Polly’s. A dialogue was struck, and Chalmers spoke often with the baristas in the lead-up to the birthday party. When one Market Lane barista suggested a coffee cocktail, Chalmers loved the idea, citing inter-industrial collaboration as the impetus: “If we share and support one another, each industry can help the other to move forward, whilst learning a lot from each other at the same time.”

clever polly wine melbourne australia market lane coffee sprudge

Lou Chalmers of Clever Polly’s.

The overlap between the natural wine and specialty coffee industries is evident, and the parallels are to do with not only a palate for terroir-driven products, but a shared philosophy among devout fans, many of whom quite rightly enjoy delicious coffees and wines with equal verve. Many regulars at Clever Polly’s  work in hospitality themselves, and the boutique coffee contingent was represented in strong numbers.  “I think that the two industries attract lots of enthusiastic, experimental, and passionate people who value community,” Market Lane’s Bryant told me, and she’s right, of course. Another party attendee (and Clever Polly’s regular) Nedim Rahmanovic of Twenty & Six Espresso agrees, saying, “I think both industries are interested in doing things on a smaller scale, and are interested in the source of the product. Who made it? Who grew it? In a growing society at times more interested in the bottom line, many of us are starting to ask these questions about our food, our wines, our coffee, our milk, etc.”

Like many of the producers Clever Polly’s features, Tom and Sally Belford of Bobar make (delicious) minimal intervention wines. They said that they extend their winemaking values to other areas of their lives, including their choice of a coffee roaster. “We seek independent suppliers and producers of the food and drinks we consume, the clothes we wear, how we furnish our home or any other aspect of life,” Tom Belford said. “There is a huge crossover in the boutique coffee and natural wine scenes. We are all small operations run by individuals or small partnerships seeking sustainable businesses with real human interaction, who build honest relationships with their own suppliers as well as their customers while taking part in business transactions which in turn fortify communities.” He said that visiting his local coffee roaster to purchase for their family is a rewarding experience, and for drinkers of Bobar wines, a visit to Clever Polly’s is much the same.

clever polly wine melbourne australia market lane coffee sprudge

The Clever Polly’s first birthday celebration was a room filled with mutual appreciation and a rollicking (if only slightly debauched) good time. The event made clear what those into both natural wine and specialty coffee already know: appreciating products that showcase complex flavor profiles dictated by the land and tender loving care by producers and makers is universal. The gap between progressive wine and specialty coffee isn’t a gap at all; the scenes are borrowing from each other, sharing customers and enthusiasts, and inspiring radical experimentation and appreciation. It’s not an accident that the World Barista Championship has been won this year by an Australian coffee professional inspired by Australian winemakers. There is a burgeoning call for more like-minded collaboration between wine and coffee, and here, in a convivial setting in West Melbourne, on one sunny Sunday in the crisp first days of autumn, was answer to that bell. Let there be many more.

Phylisa Wisdom is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne. This is her first feature for Sprudge. 


Top Pours From The 2015 New Zealand Latte Art Championship

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new zealand latte art championship coffee sprudge atomic roasters

You thought the 2015 coffee competition season was over? You thought wrong! The 2015 World Of Coffee event happens this June in Gothenburg, Sweden, gathering national champions from the Cup Tasters, Latte Art, and Brewers Cup disciplines all around the world. We’ll be profiling some of these national events in the coming weeks on Sprudge.

The 2015 New Zealand Latte Art Championship was on the 19th and 20th of March in Wellington, in conjunction with Caffeination—a major Kiwi coffee trade show—and the New Zealand Barista Championship. The winner this year, Sam Low of Atomic Coffee Roasters, is no stranger in the World Latte Art Competition circuit, placing 6th in the world back in 2013. This year, Atomic Coffee dominated the competition at NZLAC, with Wayner Stalen, another barista at Atomic, placing third and Louise Chapman of Atomic wholesale client L’Oeuf placing second.

new zealand latte art championship coffee sprudge atomic roasters

From left: Sam Low, Louise Chapman and Wayner Stalen

Let’s learn more about the top routines from this event.

3rd place – Wayner Stalen – Atomic Coffee Roasters

new zealand latte art championship coffee sprudge atomic roasters

This is Wayner Stalen’s first national coffee competition and already he is proving to be one to watch at future latte art events. Stalen’s free pour was an inversion on stacked tulips, and his designer pour featured two etched “love birds” on top of an inverted six tiered tulip. Latte art fans here wowed at Wayner Stalen’s clear contrasting lines and steady free pour. Really great stuff!

2nd place – Louise Chapman – L’Oeuf Café

new zealand latte art championship coffee sprudge atomic roasters

Louise Chapman’s latte art echoes the house style found at Atomic Coffee Roasters, where super clean tulips are revered. Her free pour was a five-tier base with two diagonal two-tier tulips on top. For her designer pour, she built a tulip base with a flower-like pattern on top featuring some very edgy angles. Lastly, her macchiato was a clean five-tier inverted tulip. All three of these drinks showed great contrast.

Winner – Sam Low – Atomic Coffee Roasters

new zealand latte art championship coffee sprudge atomic roasters

As mentioned, Low is an experienced barista in the circuit. His free pours were dubbed “Tulips all around”; his designer pour resembled a bouquet of roses; and his macchiato sported a design that looked positively bug-like. Moth-esque, even!

new zealand latte art championship coffee sprudge atomic roasters

Congratulations to Sam Low for winning the 2015 NZ Latte Art Championship! Coffee competitors with previous experience are favored at the international level, from barista comps to brew-offs, and most certainly when it comes to latte art. Sam Low has been to the big stage before, and so he’s definitely one to watch in Sweden.

Albert Au is a Sprudge.com contributor based in Auckland, New Zealand. Read more Albert Au on Sprudge.

Photos by Michael CY Park, used with permission. 

Scott Rao Is One Of The World’s Most Influential Coffee Thinkers, And Here’s Why

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A few short weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a brewing class from noted coffee expert and author Scott Rao, hosted at Auction Rooms in Melbourne. Rao’s done quite a few of these sorts of classes around the world over the past few years, and also runs a series of roasting classes—his specialty being the mix of highly technical information with practical application.

Being able to attend the brewing master class was an absolute pleasure, but as I sat there—rather than getting all investigative and asking Mr. Rao about total dissolved solids (TDS) and methods of extraction—I instead found myself reminiscing on my own beginnings into analytically thinking about coffee brewing.

A bit over five years ago, living in Brisbane and working at a run-of-the-mill cafe, I ordered Rao’s Everything But Espresso, borrowed a siphon from a friend, and sat down to nerd out hardcore on high-and-dry grounds. If you told me then that I’d later get a chance to sit in on a class from the man himself in Melbourne, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.

My start into coffee-making was originally at an Australian coffee chain (that I won’t name here) nearly a decade ago, where the golden rule of pouring 30 milliliters of espresso in 30 seconds was still in effect, and dripping honey was used as an analogy for flow rate. Crema color was our only real indicator of quality (rather than taste).

In the last five years or so, Australia’s coffee scene has gone through something of a revolution. Where you were once lucky to find a set of scales being used in a coffee shop, now the expected kit of a specialty shop includes a high-tech refractometer alongside a machine decked out with shot timers, and a well-considered grinder.

With scientific advancements in any hospitality industry, there is a danger of losing other quality aspects of service; the quintessential example is the well-intentioned, quality-focused specialty coffee professional freaking out over extraction rates, and handing over their coffees with no interaction. I’m no luddite, and I don’t blame technology for these situations, but it’s fair to say that good things can definitely be used in evil ways.

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Funnily enough, Rao took a lot of this into account, while also arguably being somewhat responsible for all the fussiness in the first place. While it was my first time attending one of his talks, it felt like he’d adjusted his presentations over time to cater to the number of changing elements in the industry. From the very beginning, he promptly covered the controversial topic of preferring scientific numbers over flavor, pointing out that flavor and extraction are not matched in a linear sense. Something may taste good at an extraction yield of 17%, taste flat or dull at 19%, but peak in flavor at 21%—essentially, using the extraction scale in tandem with tasting has the potential to create a flavor quality and extraction map of sorts.

Rao dedicated a significant portion of time and a number of slides to the Mahlköenig EK 43 grinder, known as something of a cover girl in specialty coffee. It’s a grinder that found its way to stardom through talks from the inimitable Ben Kaminsky preaching its uniform particle distribution attributes, as well as use of it in barista competitions by Matt Perger. Widespread use of the EK43 has led many to re-evaluate the way they brew coffee and measure extraction, with the works of Kaminsky, Perger, and Rao resulting in an appreciable effect across fine coffee bars worldwide.

Once I got past the coffee-star-struckedness of my past self, hearing Scott Rao talk was, to my mind anyway, a perfect expression of where a lot of high-end coffee is today. If you make coffee for a living, and care about how it tastes, there are many tools at your disposal now to help. But for Rao, real progress can be made so long as coffee shops make an effort to focus on genuinely hospitable service alongside all this well-brewed coffee. So long as the refractometers don’t gain sentience, revolt, and take over the world, it’s a positive path ahead.

Eileen P. Kenny (@eileenpk) is a Sprudge.com staff writer and the publisher of Birds of Unusual Vitality, the coffee interview magazine. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

Inside The Tasteful World Of Wellington’s Acme & Co. Ceramics

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acme and co cups prefab wellington new zealand scaa coffee sprudge

Acme & Co. is a Wellington, New Zealand-based multidisciplinary company that has its hands in everything from roasting coffee to designing chairs to making olive oil. Their diverse array of products can be seen in action at their cafe, Prefab, and events space, Prefab Hall, all founded and owned by partners Jeff Kennedy and Bridget Dunn. Charmingly named as a tribute to Kennedy’s love for Wily Coyote and Road Runner cartoons, Acme & Co. is perhaps best known for its line of colorful ceramic cups and saucers which can be found in cafes around the world, including Tapped and Packed in London, The Barn in Berlin, Brother Baba Budan in Melbourne, and at several of Stumptown’s Ace Hotel locations.

acme and co cups prefab wellington new zealand scaa coffee sprudge

Complete with clean, slatted wood walls and a Chemex full of fresh flowers on the table, Acme’s booth at this year’s SCAA trade show was a refreshing sight for sore eyes amidst the dim yellow lighting and sea foam green carpet of the convention center. Acting as boothkeeper was Jessica Godfrey, a longtime coffee professional and Acme’s marketing manager, who is also a three-time World Barista Championship judge. I caught up with Godfrey to find out more about this Kiwi company’s latest ventures.

acme and co cups prefab wellington new zealand scaa coffee sprudge

What’s the design philosophy behind Acme ceramics?

We used to import cups into New Zealand when we were at Caffe L’affare, a large company the owners sold to a multinational in 2006. As a reasonably sized customer, we thought our supplier might be responsive to some of our feedback about the cups—quite small things like a saucer to fit tulip, cappuccino, and flat white sizes, or handles that you can actually put your fingers in, or being able to purchase cups separately from saucers. So these small but very real innovations are what drove the business. We brought in more colors, so it’s easy to mix and match—something we hadn’t seen happen before.

We’re going to keep working on these kinds of innovations—making the coffee experience an easier and more elegant ritual. I think our real difference is that we’re truly coffee and cafe people. I have worked in coffee all my working life: I worked as a barista through university, after I graduated I moved to Caffe L’affare where I was a barista trainer, then account manager, then marketing manager. I co-ran the New Zealand Barista Championships for many years and judged at the World Barista Championship in London, Vienna, and Melbourne. Prefab is our test lab and our customers give us very real feedback.

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Prefab in Wellington, New Zealand. Photo courtesy of Michael Hobbs.

Where do you find the inspiration for your products?

Everything stems from Prefab—it’s our creative hub. We attract a large number of creative people and we make it part of our role to get to know our customers. It’s not just our FOH staff that do this—the owners and I do it also. We have actors, directors, fashion designers, film makers, writers…in New Zealand, we work on a lot of functional design solutions to hospitality. All the furniture within Prefab was designed in-house and then the construction resolved with a very talented craftsman based in Nelson [a town on New Zealand’s South Island]. The chairs, for example, were designed so that it is easy for a customer to turn on the chair and look at different people in the room. Our design is very spare and functional, and we believe the customers provide the adornment to a space.

acme and co cups prefab wellington new zealand scaa coffee sprudge

Photo courtesy of Michael Farr.

Who’s on your design team? 

A number of people in the business are involved in the design process. Jeff, the co-owner, is interested particularly in form and draws freehand. I’m interested in the research side of design and document trends and inspirations whether current or historical. Our in-house technician is Paddy Kennedy, who uses solid works. He 3D-prints several iterations of a design before it’s sent for production.

Where are your cups produced?

We have a great relationship with a modern factory in China. Paddy visits them frequently and we employ an independent third party who checks production. The factory has been brilliant at achieving the exact colors we want to achieve, which can be sourced in some odd ways. Our blue, for instance, was from the masthead of a design magazine.

acme and co cups prefab wellington new zealand scaa coffee sprudge

You’re coming out with new cupping bowls in June. What makes them special?

We roast coffee everyday for Prefab so we do a lot of cupping. It seemed to us you could only either get bouillon bowls or use glassware. We wanted a cupping bowl that was stackable, that fitted within SCAA Cupping Protocols and we added color-coding to help with triangulations. We looked at adding a lid, but our intel was that no one uses them.

acme and co cups prefab wellington new zealand scaa coffee sprudge

It’s lovely that you support local baristas by sponsoring New Zealand barista competitions. What other work do you do within the New Zealand coffee community?

This year, we sponsored every coffee championship in New Zealand—latte art, cup tasters, brewers cup, and barista championship. It’s quite simply a great community to be a part of. We’ve done a number of different things, from providing competition cups, to sponsoring the volunteers’ dinner to actively helping run these events. If we can help get professional baristas into some really good cups and then have a relaxed social setting where we get candid feedback, it’s a win-win.

acme and co cups prefab wellington new zealand scaa coffee sprudge

What’s next for Acme & Co.?

In the next 12 months, we have aims to produce some items specific to different markets. The US, for instance, has some specific requirements that other parts of the world don’t: a larger cup offering. New Zealanders and Australians have never demanded anything larger than the 10-oz cups we currently do, and in fact it’s our smallest seller, but the US market requires bigger cups. We want to be responsive to all markets.

Joanna Han (@joannakarenina) is a Sprudge.com contributor based in New York City. Read more Joanna Han on Sprudge.

Inspired By Coffee In Melbourne At Mörk Chocolate Brew House

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mork mörk chocolate brew bar hot chocolate north melbourne australia sprudge

In Melbourne, sometimes the specialty coffee industry can go to extremes: no milk, no sugar, no skinny, and frequently, no hot chocolate. This is all well and good—the cafe three doors down will surely be happy to fulfill all of those needs—but sometimes all you want is a warm, milky, sweet, chocolatey beverage done at a high level of quality. There is nothing wrong with that.

To fulfill this need, Kiril Shaginov and Josefin Zernell of Mörk Chocolate have opened up what is the opposite of the militant specialty coffee shop: a concept store that serves exclusively chocolate. Located on Errol Street in the inner city suburb of North Melbourne, Mörk’s (Swedish for “dark”) brew house sits on an unassuming corner of a beautiful brick building, which was formerly a bakery warehouse.

mork mörk chocolate brew bar hot chocolate north melbourne australia sprudge

While this is their first permanent retail venture, Mörk Chocolate have been a staple in the Melbourne cafe scene for the past three years, supplying their delicious dark 70% cacao blend of drinking chocolate to shops all around Melbourne, such as Lune Croissanterie, Brother Baba Budan, and Assembly.

The space itself, designed by Danielle Oerman, is striking upon entry, with a stunning marble brew bar punctuated by brass elements and walnut wood. As there’s no coffee, there are no espresso machines to be seen, only an elegant set of brass wands extending from the counter: one for steaming beverages, the other for hot water. Around the corner, you’ll find a set of taps, one dispensing soda water infused with vanilla pods and another pouring sparkling chocolate soda. The rest of the space houses their communal table (with custom stools by Tuckbox Design), a comprehensive retail section, and a beautiful array of greenery curated by Looseleaf, a Collingwood-based nursery.

mork mörk chocolate brew bar hot chocolate north melbourne australia sprudge

In their new concept store, Mörk Chocolate have endeavored to create a total sensory experience, offering pure unsweetened chocolates alongside other fascinating creations. Zernell and Shaginov’s approach to crafting chocolate is incredibly thoughtful and respectful to the raw product; by way of example, their drinking chocolate is made using a blend of single-origin cacao liquor, with no refined sugar. One of the creations offered at Mörk is the “Campfire Hot Chocolate”, made with dark chocolate, beechwood smoke, smoked sea salt, and a flamed marshmallow—all of which you assemble yourself to suit your own tastes.

mork mörk chocolate brew bar hot chocolate north melbourne australia sprudge

mork mörk chocolate brew bar hot chocolate north melbourne australia sprudge

mork mörk chocolate brew bar hot chocolate north melbourne australia sprudge

Chatting to Shaginov, he outlined their goals for the venue, which encompasses their chocolate brew house as well as a workshop out the back. “We get to take people through our brewing stages and methods, the pure ingredients we use, and to reset the preconceptions there are on dark chocolate,” he told me. “With the brew house, we wanted to make chocolate an everyday beverage and for people of any age, not just kids.”

In the workshop, all sorts of wonderful chocolate creations are made, and it’s also where they are roasting cacao beans using custom-built, small-batch equipment for their bean-to-cup chocolate crafting. An important objective for Zernell and Shaginov is to represent quality chocolate and its origins in an accurate way through Mörk; one product that was in the works pre-opening was a water-based ganache-filled chocolate that incorporated green banana, an acknowledgement of the cultural and historical flavor associations of the chocolate’s origins.

mork mörk chocolate brew bar hot chocolate north melbourne australia sprudge

mork mörk chocolate brew bar hot chocolate north melbourne australia sprudge

It’s undeniable that Mörk have adapted some of the best parts about specialty coffee—reverence, respect, interior design elegance and delicious drinks—and applied them to a specialty chocolate cafe experience. In Shaginov & Zernell’s capable hands, an engrossing and frankly delicious experience has been crafted, one that elevates chocolate while retaining a sense of playful whimsy. There must be thousands of cafes in Melbourne by now, but there is only one Mörk Chocolate.

Eileen P. Kenny (@eileenpk) is a Sprudge.com staff writer and the publisher of Birds of Unusual Vitality, the coffee interview magazine. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

Photos by Heather Lighton for Sprudge.com. 

Adelaide: You’ll Want Coffee From Monday’s, Even On A Sunday

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Monday is inarguably the worst day of the week. From Garfield to The Boomtown Rats to Office Space, the word is associated with being bummed out, wishing it was still the weekend, and feelings of malaise: “a case of the Mondays“. You can’t change the tide of popular thought, but with a wink and a smile one new cafe in Adelaide, South Australia has set out to try and redefine the week’s most hated day.

Monday’s Coffee Store is a brand new coffee bar with sleek design serving top Australian roasters from a bevy of professional coffee making equipment. Adelaide, or “The City of Churches” (its nickname for the last 150 years) is Australia’s fifth-largest city, located around 8 hours northwest by car from Melbourne. This part of the country is perhaps better known for wine, but the coffee scene is starting to come on strong with top shops like Please Say Please, Exchange Specialty Coffee, A Mother’s Milk, Kafe Komodo and more.

Add to that list Monday’s, opened in April of 2015 by Jarrad Sharrock, an Adelaide native who is a veteran of Melbourne’s Market Lane Coffee and Everyday Coffee, two of that city’s very best specialty coffee brands. We’d be remiss not to mention that Sharrock is also a friend of this website, and the partner of Sprudge staff writer Eileen P. Kenny.

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Jarrad Sharrock behind the counter at Monday’s.

Not unlike his alma mater Everyday in Melbourne’s hip Fitzroy neighborhood, Monday’s is a multi-roaster cafe sourcing coffees from some of the best roasters in Australia, including Small Batch’s Candyman espresso as a menu anchor, supplemented by fine coffees from Coffee Supreme, Seven Seeds, Market Lane and others. A bit more of the best of Melbourne has been brought by way of Assembly’s line of fine teas, and drinking chocolate from Mörk Chocolate.

Filter coffee is served in beautiful handmade cups from 4th Market, a Japanese ceramics company, while espresso service happens in vessels by Wellington’s Acme & Co. Espressos are pulled from a La Marzocco Linea Classic, served by Nuova Simonelli Mythos 1 and Mahlkonig EK43 grinders. All filter coffee service happens via Fetco batch brew system, a rarity in Australia and rarer still in Adelaide. Pastries come courtesy of Adelaide local favorites Abbots & Kinney.

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Thanks to the wonders of electronic mail, we sat down digitally with Monday’s founder Jarrad Sharrock to learn more about the project, its origins, and the differences (big and small) between coffee in Melbourne and Adelaide.

Sprudge: Batch brew is something still fairly new for specialty coffee in Australia. Tell us about your decision to only serve filter coffee via a batch brew system.

Jarrad Sharrock: Batch brew for us is a way of making a somewhat challenging concept more approachable. The idea of filter coffee being a whole song and dance can be quite alienating for most customers, kinda like ordering a champagne tower at a fancy bar: expensive and showy. The ability to give people a sip of coffee they are considering purchasing for home is also a major benefit.

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What were some of the design inspirations for Monday’s, in terms of branding and interiors?

The branding for Monday’s was super fun. The name “Monday’s” was a joke at first—I try not to take myself too seriously, and I wanted Monday’s to be an extension of that attitude. I met with the designer Max Blackmore one morning over coffee to give him an outline of what I had in mind, at this point I just wanted a few fun illustrations to use as promotional material. Roughly 2 hours later Max sent me a drawing of the now-Monday’s logo and from there Monday’s grew its own personality.
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I feel I should give special mention to Coffee Supreme and to my former employers and good mates Everyday Coffee. Their approach to branding and coffee in general were constant points of reference for me with every aspect of Monday’s, and I think that’s fairly self-evident.
From a design point of view, I’ve had the great fortune of working in some of the most well-thought-out, beautiful spaces in the world. Market Lane and Everyday were huge inspirations on how I wanted the space to feel. I spent so much time with these two companies and they left me with such amazing experiences, I think a part of me wanted to recreate both of them. Several times throughout the build I had these visions of [Market Lane founder] Fleur Studd walking through the front door and rearranging furniture, talking about flower arrangements and weighing in on workflow problems.
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What are some of the biggest differences between the coffee scenes in Adelaide and Melbourne? 

I haven’t found any real comparable difference between the two cities, not because they are too similar but because I don’t think you can compare the two. Adelaide is ready and has been for a while now. A few years back Adelaide had a huge youth exodus problem but today we can see that turning around. It’s exciting here! Adelaide is just now forming this really great identity.

When you look at Melbourne it already has its identity. It’s a big city with an ever-swelling population, always excited about the next big trend. Compare this to Adelaide, a city that considers the rejection of one of the world’s biggest coffee chains to be one of its greatest achievements. This is why Monday’s had to be so approachable; if I had come back guns blazing trying to evangelise a vision of the Melbourne coffee scene it wouldn’t have been true to Adelaide or myself.

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Monday’s Coffee Store is located at 7/38 Gawler Place in Adelaide City, South Australia. On Instagram at @mondayscoffeestore

Photos by Eileen P. Kenny for Sprudge.com. 

Go Inside Coffee Supreme’s New Cafe In Christchurch, New Zealand

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Coffee Supreme are on the march again. Born in Wellington in the early 1990s and now bi-national, the New Zealand / Australia brand have just opened their latest cafe, located in the city of Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island. Christchurch made global headlines back in 2011 when the city was struck by a devastating earthquake, and while recovery narratives may not drive clicks, the stories that come after a disaster are often the most intriguing. This is one of those; our friends & partners at Supreme lost their original Christchurch cafe in the quake, and now nearly four years later, here they are another brick in the wall to help rebuild Christchurch.

This is Coffee Supreme’s largest and most ambitious cafe yet, featuring a full service kitchen and bar. It may be why they named it twice: Supreme Supreme is the shop’s formal title. To learn more, we sat down digitally with Al Keating, Coffee Supreme’s managing & creative director, for a bit of Q&A back and forth across the international date line.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

For starters, give us the big picture overview for folks around the world who might not be familiar with the Coffee Supreme brand. Where are you based? What do you do?

We are Coffee Supreme. We began roasting coffee in New Zealand over twenty years ago, around the time Gandalf and Frodo had just taken back Middle Earth from the loathsome talons of The Dark Lord Sauron, and the grass and trees and stuff was beginning to grow back.

It started without a business plan or growth strategy as a small but salty little cafe called Reds, and has grown to become one of the region’s most respected specialty coffee roasters—which is quite an achievement given there are more coffee roasters in these parts than there are coffee drinkers.

We roast and/or brew coffee in Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland, Melbourne, and Brisbane, serving coffee in our own sites, or supplying and supporting independent cafes around Australia and New Zealand. We also have a bustling online store that ships our wares to far away places like the UK and the USA. We love sharing our coffees, and our enthusiasm for all things coffee—be it roasting, brewing, hospitality, ideas, and good design—all of it.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

Al Keating (at left, in flannel).

Talk to us about the Supreme Supreme space. It used to be an Asian grocery warehouse?

Land Rovers, skyrockets, and bulk hoisin sauce—these are some of the symbols representing the rich tapestry of the building we now call home. It was built last century as the South Island’s Land Rover dealership. Then it became Hop Yik—a busy Chinese supermarket famous for its dried shiitake mushrooms and annual fireworks sale. After the earthquake in 2011, both the building and neighborhood sustained crippling damage and sadly, as a result, they had to close up shop. This was the case for many parts of Christchurch’s CBD, and now, we are proud to be playing our part in bringing business and life back to the city’s center.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

Who did the distinctive neon work for you?

The term “Double Happy” strikes a deep chord with us Kiwis. Back in the days before the politicians banned everything—like flying foxes, bare feet, smoking in the library—we had an amazing little firecracker called a Double Happy. It was like a miniature stick of dynamite, and would go off with a pretty impressive bang. As young men, however, we did silly and dangerous things with our Double Happys, often resulting in minor injuries, until eventually they too were banned and replaced with sparklers and more handrails.

Double Happy is our nod to those good ol’ days, but with a Supreme Supreme—”twice as good”— twist.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

The neon sign was designed by our uber talented Doug Johns, and made by Frampton Signs in Wellington. These guys have been around since before Gandolf even, and have erected some of the city’s best known signs like Thai House, and OfficeMax. They’ve even once made a sign for Wellington’s only Starbucks in the central business district (or, CBD).

How is this cafe different from your other locations (Good One, Customs)? How is it the same?

We’ve learned some tough lessons in all our years of opening cafes. One of the lessons we learned is that if you don’t have anything to sell, you won’t make very much money. So with that in mind, we decided to go all out, build a decent kitchen so we could sit folks down for a proper meal. Supreme Supreme is by far the biggest thing we have ever done, and is the first cafe we have built that has a full kitchen and menu, is licensed, and has enough chairs to seat the throngs of Cantaburians looking for good food and coffee.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

Christchurch was devastated by an earthquake, but is now rebuilding. How is Supreme Supreme part of that? What are your brand’s roots in the city?

In 2011, Christchurch was devastated by a massive earthquake, leaving much of the city destroyed or damaged, 185 dead, and all of us deeply affected. We had a cool little cafe in the city then too, not far from where we are now—but we lost that like many others. Slowly but surely, the people of Christchurch have been rebuilding the city. What was once the city’s central hub, has spread out and changed shape, but the visionaries, the builders, and the doers are pouring back in to set up shop again. We are by no means the first, but we have taken some risk and have built Supreme Supreme in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with the other leaders of the rebuild. We wanted to put our roots down once again in the center of the city, to make it clear that we are here for the long game—we’re a part of this great city for good.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

This is your only cafe on the south island, correct? Notice any big differences?

There are a number of interesting differences, but being an Aucklander, I’m not at liberty to discuss these. However, among many of the positive responses from locals, one common theme has been very encouraging for us—”Thank you for building something light, modern, and permanent.”

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

Supreme Supreme reviews have alternately called it “Scandinavian” but then also “American diner retro”—which is it?

That’s a good question. It’s neither of those really. But, that’s not to say we drew no inspiration from our love of your diner culture. We have used American Ash throughout and have tipped our hat to many things diner-esque in the fit out, from the coffee mugs and crockery and corned beef hash, to being served breakfast up at the bar with a good stiff APA. For our aesthetic, we drew more from the heritage of the building, and our love of weaving those pages of the story into our own.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

Who designed the cafe? Who built the chairs and things?

The café was designed by our dear friend Jessica Barter from Bureaux. She was also the architectural genius behind Good One. Her and I designed the furniture together. Doug designed the brand, and all of the collateral and touches that we love, and we hope will cause others to fall in love with it too. We make a great team.

It all started when we’d just signed the lease. We rummaged through a skip bin full of the last tenant’s cast-offs, as you do, and found an old accounts ledger book. It was a beautiful old book with blue and red gridded pages, and Chinese characters. We fell in love with it straight away and declared that it would be a central part of the brief.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

You don’t have to look too closely to see how those elements are in fact the DNA of Supreme Supreme—the gridded wooden panels, the terracotta tiles in the bathrooms, the grid pattern on a coaster, or the tables lined up straight in the main dining room.

Gordon, our neighbor (not the sex shop right next door, but a couple of doors down on the other side), made us our steel sign on the building’s front. He had a pretty impressive mathematical system for working out how the sun’s shadow would create the other “Supreme” to create “Supreme Supreme”. He’s still working on something for cloudy days.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

What espresso machine are you using? What filter options do you offer?

We have a La Marzocco Linea PB. It’s a great workhorse, and is serving us well.

We also offer batch brewing through our Fetco. Great coffee, and super easy even in the busiest service periods. Everybody’s happy.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

Al Keating (left, still in flannel).

Is this your first cafe with a liquor license? What have you got planned there?

Well, we’re glad you asked… We’ve teamed up with one of the fine local brewers—Three Boys—to produce two beers for Supreme Supreme. We wanted the “double theme” to spill through into other aspects of what we do, so this was an easy one. We pitched the concept of “The Old One Two” to Three Boys and they were into it. What they have produced are two beers as a combo. The Old One (the jab) is a lightweight easy drinking golden ale, a session beer, and The Old Two (the right hook) is a strong hoppy red ale. They’re being labeled as I write, so available to spar with in a couple of weeks.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

What’s the local press response been like so far? 

The best line we’ve read so far has to be this one from The Christchurch Press: “…Supreme, we’ve missed you…” You can’t buy that kind of love. Well, you probably can—at the sex shop next door.

coffee supreme christchurch double happy new zealand sprudge

Where to next for Supreme?

We got a few pots bubbling away, as we strive to make things better. We have some projects on this year that will keep us busy, keep our customers coming back happy, and keep the financial controller up all night—everybody’s a winner!

Shortly, we’ll relocate our Wellington retail store from its historic site on Woodward Street to just across the road. A bold move given we’ve been selling coffee from there since we began more than 21 years ago, but a move we’re confident will make it better. We just love making sh*t better.

All photos courtesy of Coffee Supreme / Simon Devitt. 

Black Coffee Takes Center Stage At Aunty Peg’s In Melbourne

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aunty pegs proud mary coffee roasters melbourne australia sprudge

You should not be surprised to learn that the newest venture from Proud Mary Coffee Roasters‘ Nolan Hirte, a prolific influencer in Melbourne’s specialty coffee scene, is doing quite well. The new cafe is dubbed Aunty Peg’s—Hirte thinks of it as the “cellar door” to his other business—is unlike its older cafe siblings. Positioned in a quiet commercial building just around the corner from Proud Mary on Wellington Street, the focus at Aunty Peg’s is all coffee. In fact, they only serve black coffee in an effort to refocus customers’ attention on the coffee and “show it in its purest form,” says cafe manager Jane Waring. On offer are a variety of filter methods and espresso, plus an exceptional nitro cold brew.

The ample two-story warehouse space boasts a green coffee storage room, a roasting area, a “genius” bar, an office space, a bakery, and an espresso training area, and a coffee bar at which customers enjoy their coffee and chat to the baristas throughout the process. Upstairs, bakery staff (headed up by chef Gad Assayag, most recently of Green Park) creates baked goods for the cafes and wholesale. The bakery overlooks an espresso training area, where individual baristas or groups can book classes with the Aunty Peg’s experts. Downstairs is the green storage room, 15-kilogram and 22-kilogram Probat roasters, and the cupping area. During my visit, there were a handful of people in a roasting class while a Tina Turner record looked on from atop an ample collection. Gangster rap spat through the speakers, but the vibe was decidedly ambient.

aunty pegs proud mary coffee roasters melbourne australia sprudge

aunty pegs proud mary coffee roasters melbourne australia sprudge

Waring poured me a nitro cold brew from one of the bar’s taps (they also serve iced tea). Aunty Peg’s sends the coffee down to a brewery in Geelong, where it’s brewed for 40–55 hours in four-degree-Celsius water. It’s then filtered, charged with nitrogen, and kegged. The Rwandan/Brazilian blend I tried was also charged with argon, which is used to preserve wine. Waring explained that this method produces a cleaner, clearer aroma. The result was aromatic, creamy, and crisp.

Philosophically, Aunty Peg’s strives in its attempt to change the farm-customer disconnect by bringing the stories of the farmers to the forefront of customers’ minds. Front and center on the menus are paragraphs about each of the farms from where the beans were sourced. Waring excitedly told me the story of HR61, a rare variety isolated at Hacienda El Roble in Colombia. HR61 cups like a Gesha, but experts agree that it is decidedly not, and its origins remain unknown. In 2013, Hirte purchased the entire 18-kilogram lot, and now Aunty Peg’s exclusively serves what the label describes as “one of the world’s most intriguing varietals.”

aunty pegs proud mary coffee roasters melbourne australia sprudge

aunty pegs proud mary coffee roasters melbourne australia sprudge

Hirte’s comment about Aunty Peg’s acting as a kind of cellar door for Proud Mary coffee products and cafes, where customers can go to critically engage with coffee, may sound like the pinnacle of coffee snobbery. It’s not. Rather, it’s a playground for anyone from the “biggest coffee geek” (their words, not mine) to a casual passerby. The “genius bar” (stay back, Apple lawyers) is a place for coffee lovers to bring their equipment—be it a French press or an AeroPress or their gold-plated Belgian brewer—and receive tutorials. “Espresso is really hard to make at home,” Waring told me. They want to encourage comfort with any of the easier, cheaper filter methods that produce equally delicious coffee.

Although the focus is zoomed in on the highest quality coffee and its preparation, Aunty Peg’s mission is to be as inclusive a space as possible. Waring said, simply: “We want to open up the space and show people what we do.”

aunty pegs proud mary coffee roasters melbourne australia sprudge

And wherever you sit at the twelve-seat bar, you can see one of the three Synesso single-group machines, taps, and various other filter mechanisms. This is to invite conversation and engagement. It’s a space to talk about coffee farmers, methods, and culture in a beautiful space with open, knowledgeable people—whether it’s an early gateway to deeper knowledge, or simply your new favorite place to hang out.

Phylisa Wisdom (@phylisajoy) is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne. Read more Phylisa Wisdom on Sprudge.

Photos by Eileen P. Kenny for Sprudge.com.


Art, Music, Pinball and Black Coffee In Newtown, New Zealand

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black coffee newtown wellington new zealand sprudge

The suburb of Newtown, New Zealand is not far from the thriving city of Wellington; the two are so close it’s like clasped hands and intertwined fingers, with Adelaide Road stretching out towards the Basin Reserve and taking you all the way into Newtown proper. It’s a half hour walk between the two, give or take, or a very short bus ride. Whether you find yourself in Newtown by chance or choice, if you’re after excellent coffee, you are in luck.

Black Coffee on Riddiford Street is here to wake up this sometimes sleepy little town. This small space with wooden floors and bright white walls brings a charming mix of sleekly-minimalist and grungily-scruffy, with an ethos that encompasses a lot more than simply caffeinating the locals—crucial though that is.

black coffee newtown wellington new zealand sprudge

Jon Dimery, who started Black Coffee around a year ago, wanted a space where music, art, arcade games, and coffee could be found; the sort of place where your friends could hang out for ages while you simultaneously build up a stream of regulars, after a takeaway coffee on their work break perhaps, or camping with laptops and their own social circle. Dimery, having embarked on some world travel, has since handed the business over to a friend, Carmel Levy, who has kept the place running exactly the same as it started. It’s an ideal place to just sit and watch the world go by, but there are also steady regulars—especially with Wellington’s hospital and medical center nearby—who absolutely make the place, according to Levy.

A monthly rotating lineup of art is on display across the walls, providing a space for local artists to exhibit work, such as Pinky Fang and Grimoire who held an event here for their joint showcase, or the Soul Photography project The Beat Goes On, which features photos of NZ musicians in their element on stage. There is vinyl for sale across the back wall and classic arcade games to lose yourself in (two massive pinball games and Street Fighter, currently). However, if you simply want to read a book or do some quiet work, it caters to you too, with wide black tables and a deliciously squashy couch by the window and—important!—free Wi-Fi. Toasted sandwiches are available with the fillings changing often, from the most old-school comfort of spaghetti and cheese to the more elegant combination of spiced pork, smoked cheddar and tomato.

black coffee newtown wellington new zealand sprudge

Havana Coffee is served here; Dimery worked for years at Deluxe, one of the cafes in Wellington affiliated with this roastery, and had their support from the start. Black Coffee is the only cafe in Newtown serving Havana, and they go through bags and bags of the beans daily. You might as well order the drink that the place is named for, especially since a long black—a double shot of espresso made “long” by topping it up with hot water—is perfectly executed, dark and smooth and blanketed in a rich, thick, caramel-tinted crema.

As well as boosting up artists and musicians, Black Coffee also supports and is supported by other businesses in Newtown. The vinyl is supplied by Death Ray Records around the corner—records that are available exclusively at Black Coffee, showing just how real the relationships are between the two places. Moon, a nearby bar and music venue, provides pizza for their customers on Saturdays, and all the food and beverages sold are as local as possible. They serve the Bootleggers range of organic sodas, which Levy herself helped a friend brew. Even the milk they use is local, from a dairy just a few towns over in Lower Hutt.

black coffee newtown wellington new zealand sprudge

This collective vibe reflects the nature of Newtown, which is compact and full of family-run businesses. There’s a whole world of art and soul, coffee and photography, and potentially endless pinball to be found within these walls.

This is Laura Vincent’s first feature for Sprudge.

Coffee At The Handmade Wine Festival In Melbourne

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handmade melbourne wine coffee single origin sprudge

Delicious wine and progressive coffee are two increasingly overlapping worlds—it’s something we’re endeavoring to document and cover as a matter of policy here at Sprudge—and also because great wine is just…really great, so why not write about it? I think there’s a couple of explanations for why wine & coffee are snuggling up together. One is that, over the years, coffee has increasingly gained a reputation as a product to be considered and served with respect to its origins. This has a profound echo with wine, and earns the respect of wine types around the world. Another is that baristas who care about quality coffee tend to gravitate towards other things that taste good—like wine—and in turn, sommeliers who care about quality wine and beer tend to gravitate towards good coffee (especially in the morning, after closing the wine bar the night before).

Maybe I’m just biased. Perhaps my own interest in wine has been catching up with my interest in coffee, and as such, the cross-cultural mingling of wine and coffee has become even more prevalent on my radar. Whatever the reason is, the gap between the wine industry and coffee industry seem to be quite a bit closer these days: from coffee cocktails at a wine bar’s first birthday, to WBC 2015 champion Sasa Sestic’s coffee utilizing carbonic maceration, to the head sommelier of one of the world’s best restaurants serving some of the best coffee in the world.

handmade melbourne wine coffee single origin sprudge

As such, when I found out that Handmade—a celebration of delicious wine (with a side of coffee)—was to be held at Builders Arms in Melbourne, the decision to cover this event was obvious. To contextualise, Builders Arms is a prolific bar and bistro in the inner-city suburb of Fitzroy by renowned chef Andrew McConnell (also of Supernormal, Cumulus Inc., Cutler & Co., and Luxembourg Bistro). Food here is deliberate and delicious, and the wine list, curated by in-house wine buyer Campbell Burton, is home to a number of quality wine producers.

Burton, the creator of Handmade, explained that the idea came from the footpath tastings often held at Caves Augé, one of the oldest wine bars in Paris, where they often feature winemakers pouring their own wines alongside charcuterie and conversation. “I really loved the notion of this,” Burton tells me, “lots of delicious things, not much money, and lots of great communication about good wine.”

handmade melbourne wine coffee single origin sprudge

With this in mind, he chose to create a similar event in Melbourne, bringing together local and international winemakers, as well as importers presenting some fascinating wines from around the world. This year, there were thirty importers and producers presenting their wares—and with a ticket price of $25 AUD allowing endless wine tasting and plentiful snacks, it was that rarest of Melbourne treats: a spectacular bargain.

Let me set the scene: you walk in, are given a glass, then directed to the many tables for tasting. First, there are the European wines, where many importers are pouring prolific drops from the likes of Jean-Pierre Robinot, Gut Oggau, Frank Cornelissen, Alexandre Jouveaux, and La Sorga—with many of these wines being made naturally and without any additions (and also quite rare to find in Australia). After this first bout of wine tasting, it’s time to take advantage of the delicious food moving around the rooms, such as tartare in mustard green leaves by Meatsmith, or one of the many delights from chefs Josh Murphy, Luke Burgess, or Andrew McConnell himself. Once sated, it’s time to perk up in the dedicated coffee corner with some self-serve batch-brewed filter roasted by Single Origin (from Sydney) before diving into more wine.

handmade melbourne wine coffee single origin sprudge

One of the most exciting things about this event was the opportunity to try numerous delicious Australian wines and talk to the producers of those wines, with many winemakers traveling across Australia to present at this event. Encompassed in one room you could drink wines and talk to the likes of Anton Von Klopper (Domaine Lucci and Lucy Margaux), James Erskine (Jauma), Gareth Belton (Gentle Folk), Patrick Sullivan, Tom Shobbrook, Alex Shulkin (The Other Right), and many more.

While to be fair, coffee wasn’t the focus of the event, the fact that there was a dedicated and quality coffee service speaks to the cross-industry interests of the Melbourne hospitality scene. In fact, the first time I met Burton properly was while serving him at Patricia Coffee Brewers, with his interest and fascination in the coffee he was being served sparking a conversation.

handmade melbourne wine coffee single origin sprudge

Chatting to Burton, it’s clear that this sort of industry crossover is something he feels strongly about, and he explained it to me like this: “I love a collective mentality that is about making everything more delicious, and for the experience in every Australian restaurant and cafe and bar to be constantly evolving and improving. I’m also very excited about the next decade in Melbourne and Australia, where this culture of really enjoying the work of others will become even more prevalent.”

This collective mentality is something that seems to pop up in many of Burton’s creations, with his next event, Soulfor Wine on July 5th, taking it to the next level. A celebration of sulfur-free wine, alongside delicious food and live music, the event will also be presenting a particularly special coffee service. Tim Varney of Small Batch Roasting Company and Jenni Bryant from Market Lane Coffee will be teaming up to brew and serve a carefully curated selection of filter coffee to the thirsty masses, while wines by prolific sulfur-free producers such as Gabrio Bini [one of this planet’s great natural wine producers in the worldEd.], Le Coste, and Pierre Overnoy are poured.

handmade melbourne wine coffee single origin sprudge

The word “celebration” tends to be a constant that’s used in much of the description of Burton’s events, and it’s one that rings true. We’re talking about the union of quality wine, coffee, and food under one roof, curated by people who care passionately about these elements and their origins. Who could possibly resist?

Eileen P. Kenny (@eileenpk) is a Sprudge staff writer and the publisher of Birds of Unusual Vitality, the coffee interview magazine. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

Is This Melbourne’s Most Curated Toast Cafe?

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crompton coffee toast richmond melbourne small batch sprudge

Melbourne is a city that finds inspiration all over the world, and takes elements that makes it its own—a characteristic that’s especially prevalent in the hospitality industry. There have been waves of burgers, ramen, doughnuts, and now, the intricacies of toast are finally beginning to be explored. In the US, toast cafes have been a thing for some time now, originating with the inimitable Trouble Coffee & Coconut Club in San Francisco. In such a breakfast-focused city like Melbourne, a cafe serving mainly toast and coffee makes a lot of sense, with the brand new Crompton Coffee setting out to be the first of its kind.

Situated on a corner block in the lovely suburb of Richmond, this beautifully designed cafe serves delicious coffee, juice, and toast with an array of mouth-watering toppings. Cameron Green, formerly of Seven Seeds and Twenty & Six (amongst others over the last decade), teamed up with his friend Nick Peters, former manager of an environmental commodity trading business, to free the people of Melbourne from the monotony of raw, unadorned bread slices.

crompton coffee toast richmond melbourne small batch sprudge

crompton coffee toast richmond melbourne small batch sprudge

After a trip to The Mill in San Francisco a couple of years ago, Peters found himself taken by the toast and coffee concept, and set out to create a similar thing in Melbourne as his first venture into the hospitality industry. As Peters explained, “It was humble, it was simple, and it was thriving. Just coffee and really good toast. With top-notch bakers popping up all over Melbourne, we knew Melbournians would relish the idea…and the business model was simple enough to be replicable.”

crompton coffee toast richmond melbourne small batch sprudge

The space is light, bright, and well laid-out by architects Edwards Moore, with a spectacular courtyard to soak up the sun in. The food menu is divided into two distinct toast categories: “Seasonal” and “Classic”, with bread sourced from Rustica Sourdough and GF Precinct. Seasonal creations currently include housemade chocolate-hazelnut spread with candied hazelnuts and fresh mint, alongside savory delights like hummus with cucumber and chili flakes, while the “Classic” toasts still border on fancy with homemade peanut butter topped by sea salt and honey, or vegemite with optional grilled cheese topping. If you’re toast-averse, there are options like their seasonal fruit and yoghurt or their daily salad creation.

crompton coffee toast richmond melbourne small batch sprudge

Coffee at Crompton is presented simply: black, white, or filter. Small Batch’s Candyman is the basis for their milky espresso coffees, with a rotating coffee for the black (often Seven Seeds, Coffee Supreme, and Small Batch), and a rotating coffee for filter. Espresso service is run through a La Marzocco Linea PB, with Candyman run through the Victoria Arduino Mythos 1, and guest espressos run through the Mahlkönig EK 43. All filter coffee is batch brewed using a Fetco—an increasingly popular piece of equipment in Melbourne’s specialty cafes.

Green has seen a lot of changes in Melbourne’s coffee scene throughout his years in the industry, and as such decided to approach Crompton’s coffee service with an emphasis on quality without too much fanfare, as he outlined: “Coffee really gets over-thought sometimes and we wanted to pare back our offering and really focus on the few coffees we do serve.”

crompton coffee toast richmond melbourne small batch sprudge

As Green and Peters made clear to me, the heart of Crompton Coffee is based on a simple but often hard-to-execute concept: doing only a few things, but setting out to do them very well. If their delicious products and unassuming service are anything to go by, then they’ve pretty much nailed the concept.

Eileen P. Kenny (@eileenpk) is a Sprudge.com staff writer and the publisher of Birds of Unusual Vitality, the coffee interview magazine. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

Photos by Heather Lighton for Sprudge.com. 

Be Drawn To Melbourne’s Sun Moth Canteen & Bar

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sun moth canteen and bar coffee melbourne cbd natural wines beer spirits sprudge

Wandering around Melbourne City Center, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by choice. Every street and corner has something new to look at, with many laneways filled to the brim with restaurants and cafes. Sometimes though, it’s the little hidden spots that are the most rewarding—like Sun Moth Canteen & Bar tucked away down the middle of Niagara Lane, identifiable from a distance by only an unassuming pot plant.

Upon entering Sun Moth, it’s immediately clear that making the curious venture down Niagara Lane is worth it. Surprisingly spacious and open, Sun Moth is an all-day canteen and bar that encompasses delicious and healthy food, quality coffee, and a carefully selected array of wine, beer, and spirits.

sun moth canteen and bar coffee melbourne cbd natural wines beer spirits sprudge

Run and owned by Luke Mutton and Kylie Mackinlay (former owners of Dead Man Espresso and Common Galaxia), Jackson Duxbury, and Tod La Mar, Sun Moth is a true collaborative effort. Mutton explained to me their goal in opening this new venture is “to be known for good coffee, beer, and wine in equal parts,” so that people can both start and end their days at Sun Moth.

It’s an ambitious goal, but one that seems achievable for this particular team. A regular day starts out with fresh juice, coffee, and breakfast. Coffee is sourced from the likes of Small Batch Roasting Company and Market Lane Coffee, with espressos pulled through a La Marzocco Linea Classic, and filter batch-brewed with a Fetco—all ground on the prolific Mahlkönig EK 43. Breakfast here is simple and satisfying, with the option of poached eggs, bircher muesli, porridge, or even a kale salad.

Sun Moth Melbourne Sprudge Coffee

Photo by Jason Paparoulas.

As it heads into lunchtime, the vibrant selection of wine, beer, and spirits becomes the focus, alongside hearty lunch fare. Here you’ll find five-grain risotto or chicken dumpling soup that you can pair with a glass of Jakot from Radikon, or a pot of Kölsch beer from Mornington Peninsula Brewery. Then, if you don’t want to leave, you can plug in your laptop and make use of the free Wi-Fi until you’re ready for dinner (and maybe another glass of wine).

sun moth canteen and bar coffee melbourne cbd natural wines beer spirits sprudge

The design inside Sun Moth is well considered, warm, and inviting, which isn’t surprising seeing as the folks behind the interior design were the same people who were going to work in the space—Mutton and Mackinlay, under the guise of their Sunkland Projects, Design | Own | Operate business. For the realisation of the design elements, Illogical Study built the stunning counter and stools, while Life Space Journey crafted the unique lights and beautiful chairs. All together, these individual features create an establishment that’s perfect for a quick morning coffee, a long working lunch, and even a casual dinner.

Chatting to Mutton, it’s clear that the task of combining specialty coffee alongside quality food, wine, beer, and spirits has been a rewarding one for the Sun Moth crew. As he explained, “It’s so exciting to see this natural progression from specialty coffee to natural wine. We feel our timing was spot on . . . on a Friday night, we can be full of all our buddies in the coffee industry: roasters, baristas, and cafe owners who love the beers and wines. A respect for good farming and transparency in coffee can give you a total appreciation for natural, organic, and biodynamic wines.”

sun moth canteen and bar coffee melbourne cbd natural wines beer spirits sprudge

While it’s only the beginning for Sun Moth Canteen & Bar, Mutton and the team have set out on a good foot. In the future, they intend to continue sourcing the most delicious and interesting beverages, with a long-term goal of getting a retail license to set up a little bottle shop within the venue. Essentially, it’s heading towards being a one-stop shop for all sorts of deliciousness in Melbourne’s CBD, which is great—just remember to duck out for a walk and some fresh air between meals.

Eileen P. Kenny (@eileenpk) is a Sprudge.com staff writer and the publisher of Birds of Unusual Vitality, the coffee interview magazine. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

Caleb Cha Wins The 2015 World Latte Art Championship

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The 2015 World Latte Art Championship pitted champion baristas from 36 nations against each other to see who could create the most beautiful, engaging latte art creations, using both free pour and etching techniques. From those 36 competitors, six finalists advanced to compete on Finals Thursday at the 2015 Nordic World of Coffee. From those six, Caleb Cha of Cafenatics in Australia emerged victorious as the 2015 World Latte Art Champion.

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Cha won with a free pour latte called the “Flirting Peacock”, a macchiato named the “Love Triangle”, and a latte involving intricate etching dubbed “The Caffeinated Zebra”.

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The top pours:

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Here is the full ranking of the top six finalists:

ranking latte art 2015 world

Enjoy more World Latte Art coverage on SprudgeLive.com, our global hub for all things coffee sports.

Sprudge Media Network’s coverage of the 2015 Coffee In Good Spirits Championship was produced with direct support from Square and Urnex Brands

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All photos by Zachary Carlsen for Sprudge.com. Want to use our photos? Contact us! 

18 Top Pours From The 2015 World Latte Art Championship

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The World Latte Art Championship is by far the most photographed competition in the entire World Coffee Events portfolio. And why not? It’s a living gallery of some of the finest consumable art in the world—and perhaps the only form of art with an expiration of less than three minutes. One can photograph the moment with the mind’s eye, but why not jump on stage and snap a pic for Instagram instead?

36 of the world’s top latte artists took the stage in Sweden to show off the very best of their abilities in the medium of espresso and milk. And show off they did!

Each competitor was required to pour a free-pour (using the pitcher only) macchiato-sized drink, a free-pour latte, and a “designer” latte that could incorporate the use of etching tools and other ingredients. In their routine, the competitors were asked to pour two sets of each drink, trying to exactly reproduce the reference designs that had been photographed during the somewhat more relaxed “Art Bar” pouring session that opened the competition.

Read on for our recap of the World Latte Art Championships final pours from the planet’s six best latte artists.

Sixth Place: Hong-Sheng Liao, Cafe Moment, Taiwan

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The audience cheered loud for Hong-Sheng Liao of Cafe Moment in Taiwan, who dazzled judges with his intricately etched flying butterfly pattern. Hong-Sheng Liao drew inspiration from the cinema for his free-pour latte, pouring a medieval coat of arms from his favorite films about the Middle Ages.

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All latte-art composite photos were taken less than 3 minutes after the drinks had been evaluated by judges.

Fifth Place: Arnon Thitiprasert, Ristr8tt0, Thailand

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Arnon? Oh yes! Arnon Thitiprasert asserted his command of the milk pitcher during his outstanding finals routine. Think fantastical depictions of gentle swans, mighty owls mid-flight, and mystical dragons with sinister smiles. Wait, don’t think, look!

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All latte-art composite photos were taken less than 3 minutes after the drinks had been evaluated by judges.

Fourth Place: Mao Nagura, Fonz, Japan

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Mao Nagura of Fonz in Japan wowed judges with a masterful display of latte artistry. The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the flamingo and depicted the creature in their art; Mao Nagura deftly depicted the bird in her designer drink etched latte art, and if the Moche were around now, we think they’d be buzzing over it. Mao Nagura poured three lovely tulips in a macchiato and a pleasant double double in the cappuccino free-pour.

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All latte-art composite photos were taken less than 3 minutes after the drinks had been evaluated by judges.

Third Place: Kyeong-woo Jung, South Korea

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Can-do Kyeong-Woo Jung was among the finalists to stand out for his application of an orange accent color in his creations. According to Empower Yourself With Color Psychology, the color orange radiates warmth and happiness, and you don’t have to be a color psychologist to tell that warmth and happiness radiated over the judges and audience in Sweden. Color flourishes and swirls, five hearts, and three rosettas with swirls filled the cup for Kyeong-Woo Jung’s designer latte. Coconuts were dangling from a carefully executed free-pour palm tree, and for the macchiato course? A pleasing three-part multi-tiered play on the tulip.

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All latte-art composite photos were taken less than 3 minutes after the drinks had been evaluated by judges.

Second Place: Xuechao Wang, Jiangbeilerean, China

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Hearts sang for Xuechao Wang, who finished second with a glorious treasure chest of heart-themed coffee drinks. One of the only finalists to actually name all beverages, we’re happy to report that the macchiato’s contrast was on point for “Heart In Heart”. “I am not alone. I have a team. We are one,” Xuechao Wang said of his macchiato course.

But how does one find Xuechao Wang’s wonderland? “Take a sparkling heart to find my wonderland,” he explained to the judges as he delivered a bordered flourish tulip named “Sparkling Heart”.

And the designer latte? That would be “Born of Fire”, in which the competitor encouraged each of us—all of us—to “abandon the past and start over.” Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, we sip our latte a few days after the event, contemplating what happened last week, and project full-color slides of his routine:

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All latte-art composite photos were taken less than 3 minutes after the drinks had been evaluated by judges.

First Place: Caleb Cha, Cafenatics, Australia

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Ha-Caleb Cha-cha-cha! The artist from Cafenatics in Australia took top prize at this year’s World Latte Art Championship. For a complete write-up of his winning pours, click this hyperlink.

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All latte-art composite photos were taken less than 3 minutes after the drinks had been evaluated by judges.

And that does it for the top 18 pours at the World Latte Art Championship in the Year of our Lord 2015. Enjoy more World Latte Art coverage on SprudgeLive.com, our global hub for all things coffee sports and creative coffee arts.

Sprudge Media Network’s coverage of the 2015 Coffee In Good Spirits Championship was produced with direct support from Square and Urnex Brands.

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Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge.com. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. 

All photos by Zachary Carlsen for Sprudge.com. Want to use our photos? Contact us! 

Melbourne: Archie’s All Day Is A Diner Coffee Dream

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What does the idea of an all-day eatery bring to mind for you? In my mind, I picture a diner like you’d see in Twin Peaks, serving black drip coffee alongside eggs sunny-side up. It’s a place that doesn’t necessarily serve the highest quality products, but ticks a number of necessary boxes nonetheless. In Melbourne, many all-day eateries are largely reminiscent of this style—places that do a lot, but not very well—which is all well and good when you’re hungover on a Tuesday and just need some damn eggs, but I’m here to tell you that there’s a better way: enter Archie’s All Day.

Opening its doors just over a month ago on Gertrude Street in Fitzroy, Archie’s All Day (named after owner Anthony Brem’s newborn son, Archie) is a many-hit wonder that is setting out to feed and sate hungry and thirsty folks from breakfast ’til after dinner drinks. It’s an ambitious business plan, but one we’re seeing more and more around Melbourne with places like Sun Moth Canteen & Bar also creating environments in which there’s something for every craving.

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While this is his first all-day space, Brem is no stranger to the hospitality world, having owned and run Bluebird Espresso on Johnston Street in Collingwood for the past four years—a haven for hearty and delicious breakfasts alongside simple but delicious coffee service. Both Bluebird and Brem could be described as quiet achievers; there’s not much in the way of hype surrounding this longstanding establishment, but it’s continuously packed with people waiting for a table on the weekend, and I can vouch that their food is worth the wait. Over the years, Brem and his team have built a cult following around his delightful mix of quality coffee, delicious drinks (watermelon and raspberry crush, anyone?), and eclectic food offerings: from brioche French toast to dukkah eggs, or toasted cornbread with salsa fresca.

The diverse and delicious offerings that are part of the success of Bluebird have been brought over to Archie’s All Day, and kicked up a notch in the process. Chatting to Brem, he explained to me that his goal for Archie’s is “to provide a consistently pleasing environment for people of all ages and backgrounds to come and enjoy for many years to come.” Is there any more admirable goal?

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The space itself (formerly a bar) was gutted and redesigned by Matt Goodman, taking design elements from Bluebird and other inspirations to create a light, airy, and comfortable fit-out. It’s a deceptively spacious venue, with a number of different micro-atmospheres and seating styles throughout, from high bench seating near the bar, to cosy booths in the vicinity of the kitchen, to a delightful Astroturfed outdoor area out the back. Bangs Boutique took care of the furniture design, while builder Jimmy Timber (yes, that’s his real name) managed many of the design details.

archies all day fitzroy melbourne coffee sprudge

archies all day fitzroy melbourne coffee sprudge

The food menu is split simply into three categories—”Morning”, “In Between”, and “Evening”—with all sorts of delicious creations to try. The Morning menu (running until 3 p.m.) offers up things like huevos sucios (dirty eggs) with tater tots, avocado, tomatillo salsa, and fried eggs, or a vanilla bean oatmeal with banana and blueberry—while In Between brings grilled flank steak or the “Juicy Lucy” Wagyu burger to make your decisions even harder from 10 a.m. If American Sprudge readers are thinking, “Hey, this sounds like U.S. diner food, “just know that American comfort food trends are quite hot right now in Melbourne, just as Australia’s own coffee & breakfast “brekkie” culture takes hold in cities like New York and Los Angeles.

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To keep the masses caffeinated throughout the day, Proud Mary coffee is carefully brewed through a powder-coated matte black Synesso Sabre espresso machine, with a Mazzer Robur E grinder for espresso, and a Mahlköenig EK 43 grinder and Kalita Wave combo for filter coffee. Hardly your standard dumpy diner mug!

In the evening, the offering turns into something you might see at an upmarket tapas bar, with sharing plates of oysters, curried cauliflower and paneer croquettes, or crispy kipflers available before you dive into a main of coq au Riesling or even a crispy hapuka with charred leeks. As well as coffee, an array of teas, juices, smoothies, cocktails, beers, and wine are available during the day and night—you can try a Negroni on tap, a pint of “Archie’s Ale”, or a glass of Chenin Blanc sourced from Millton (an iconic biodynamic winemaker in New Zealand).

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While Fitzroy has long been an area where cafes and bars abound, new establishments like Archie’s All Day—places where good food, wine, and coffee can be enjoyed in tandem—play an important role in further invigorating the area. In a city where the number of food and drink venues can be almost stifling for the indecisive few, it’s nice to know there’s a place offering a bit of everything your heart desires, under one roof, and available all day.

Eileen P. Kenny (@eileenpk) is a Sprudge staff writer and the publisher of Birds of Unusual Vitality, the coffee interview magazine. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.


For Coffee In Melbourne’s Fitzroy, A Star Is Burnside

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In Melbourne, the inner-city suburbs of Fitzroy and Collingwood are iconic. Chances are if you’ve received a postcard from someone in Melbourne, or seen any tourist material for the city, one of the images depicted would be of a tram trundling up bustling Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, or someone enjoying a drink at a bar on Gertrude Street on the cusp of Collingwood. While there are innumerable cafes to be found in Fitzroy and Collingwood, specialty coffee establishments still make up a minority. But as of this autumn, on the corner of Gertrude Street and Smith Street, there’s a fresh new face in the neighborhood making quality beverages, by the name of Burnside Coffee.

The collaborative effort of Jona Gunn, Sean Albers (both formerly of Seven Seeds), and Chris Handley (of Cheerio and previously Coffee Supreme), Burnside has some serious coffee acumen behind it. With their cumulative experiences, Gunn, Albers, and Handley have set out to make Burnside a welcoming establishment serving up good coffee and food with no pretense.

When I visited Gunn for a chat, he outlined their goals for the space. “Burnside is all about the experience,” he said. “The coffee is good, the food is tasty, the room is comfortable, the service is snappy, but most importantly, you have a good time.”

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With interior design by Lucas Catalano and brand design by Tom Clayton, Burnside is light, bright, and smartly laid out. The physical dimensions of the space itself—essentially a high-ceilinged isosceles triangle—creates an interesting dynamic and set of challenges in regards to design, all handled gracefully. Floor to ceiling glass windows allow incredible natural light into the space, with lovely pastel-toned chair legs, light wood benches and stools, and plant greenery contrasting against the expansive deep red concrete floor (an original feature of the space, long hidden underneath layers of floorboards).

burnside coffee fitzroy melbourne sprudge

burnside coffee fitzroy melbourne sprudge

In the middle of Burnside sit two counters—on the left bench Seven Seeds coffee is pulled through a La Marzocco Linea PB espresso machine (with the LM brand aptly replaced with a simple red perspex “Burnside”) and two Victoria Arduino Mythos 1 grinders, while the right counter is home to the till and a selection of delicious-looking sweets. While coffee service at Burnside is strictly espresso-based at this point, Gunn and the rest of the team hope to set up a batch brew system for filter coffee in the near future.

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Where the space narrows towards the peak of its triangle, a beautifully laid out kitchen has its home, with aqua tiles and frosted glass creating a lively contrast against the white walls and pale wood of the seating area. Here, a small selection of sandwiches, soups, and other savory and sweet delights are lovingly made for the hungry public to consume.

Just upon walking into Burnside, it’s clear that Gunn, Albers, and Handley nailed their objective for the venue. It’s a light, bright, and welcoming space—a perfect place to nestle into the corner next to the window, grab a coffee and a bite to eat, and spend the afternoon watching the world go by. In other words, while having a good time.

Burnside is located at 87 Smith Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne. Follow them on Instagram.

Eileen P. Kenny (@eileenpk) is a Sprudge.com staff writer and the publisher of Birds of Unusual Vitality, the coffee interview magazine. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

Revenge Of The Coffee Nerds: Geeks On Sainsbury In Suburban Auckland

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Shopping malls, factories, and . . . specialty coffee? Welcome to Geeks on Sainsbury, a new New Zealand coffee bar in collaboration with Red Rabbit Coffee Company.

A suburb where most Aucklanders go for its shopping malls and industrial needs, Saint Lukes is the last place you would think of when it comes to finding a specialty coffee cafe. But with the rapid growth in amount of cafes opening in Auckland nowadays, it wouldn’t be surprising to find just that! Where many new eateries are simply moving to a Melbourne-inspired design and menu and some even still thinking of coffee as being a secondary product that “just has to be there”, Geeks On Sainsbury have came out more unique with their choice to approach the market with genuine reverence.

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First thing’s first. Why the name? Owner and barista Tom Hong told me, “we are just a bunch of geeks both working in the kitchen and on coffee. We haven’t quite thought of the name as such and since we are on Sainsbury Road, we will just call it that.” Hong elaborated, “even though we are geeks, we still have a lot to learn to be even more geeky.” The Fit Out Company was in charge of the interior design, showcasing a bright and cozy yet classically Kiwi space. Through the two full-length sliding doors, you will see on your left a fully set-up barista space displaying a brand new La Marzocco Linea PB in white, a matte black EK 43 grinder and a Nuova Simonelli Mythos grinder. To separate the stations, you will find a “Coffee Geeks” sign above and right next to it, the window for the kitchen and the “Kitchen Geeks” sign. You will also see a full-sized blackboard directly facing the entrance with coffee information showing basic info on coffee extracting methods, including extraction ratios (for the truly geeky among us). The cozy interior echoes harmoniously with the outdoor garden space as both sliding doors fully open up to welcome anyone in.

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geeks on sainsbury st lukes auckland new zealand red rabbit coffee company sprudge

To satisfy Hong’s geekiness of coffee, he has chosen Red Rabbit Coffee Company from Wellington as his coffee supplier. As featured on Sprudge back in December 2013, Red Rabbit has grown from humble origins to become a popular name for coffee lovers here in New Zealand. Owner Steve Barrett is himself a dedicated coffee geek, roasting his “Hopper” seasonal blend and other single origins on a Probat vintage coffee roaster. Currently, Hong is just serving the seasonal blend for his espressos, made up from 30% Rwanda Gisuma and 70% Colombia Bucaramanga—it tastes like creamy milk chocolate and subtle orange peel as a flat white. A single origin program utilizing the EK 43 for filter and espresso is on the way, and Geeks rounds out their menu with a contemporary set of food offerings: think seasonal fruit waffles, pork salad with fresh edible flowers, and a “Geeks Beef Burger” with homemade chutney, ricotta, and rocket.

geeks on sainsbury st lukes auckland new zealand red rabbit coffee company sprudge

geeks on sainsbury st lukes auckland new zealand red rabbit coffee company sprudge

Having a cozy specialty coffee cafe in the suburb of Saint Lukes adds a refreshing twist to the area. I personally enjoyed just sitting there, enjoying my coffee; on that same visit, I observed a toddler who enjoyed his time so much that as his mum tried to leave the shop, he refused to budge, hanging tight to the door. A future geek in training, perhaps?

Albert Au is a Sprudge.com contributor based in Auckland, New Zealand. Read more Albert Au on Sprudge.

We Talk Sydney Expansion With Ben Bicknell Of 5 Senses Coffee

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Our longtime friends and partners at 5 Senses Coffee in Australia do things a little differently. Rather than open coffee bars, their model is collaborative, working as a dedicated wholesaler with a wide variety of small businesses, cafes, restaurants and shops across Australia. They support these wholesale partners from a series of training centers, operated as the Australian Barista Academy—ABAs have been open in Perth and Melbourne for several years, and in 2015, Five Senses opened their third in Sydney. And their work with green coffee at origin is widely respected across the specialty coffee industry—even in Australia, an industry milieu where respecting someone else’s coffee is no small feat.

In the excitement surrounding the launch of their Sydney barista academy, we sat down with Ben Bicknell, the Strategic Project Manager at 5 Senses who helped design the new space. Bicknell is also a long-serving World Barista Championship judge and friend of the site. We spoke with him via email from Sydney.

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First, give us a top-down overview of who Five Senses is, and what the Australian Barista Academy is in relation to it.

At the core of it, the people of Five Senses love collaborating with other passionate folk to help serve out excellent coffee experiences. We’re based in the sunny land down under and have roasteries in Perth and Melbourne from which we roast a range of delicious beans throughout the week and ship them to our café partners throughout the country. Truly excellent coffee experiences only come to life when all of the parts of the puzzle are put together and that’s what we’ve aimed to bring all into one place. We source and roast amazing direct trade coffees, work with leading brands like Marco and Synesso and then provide comprehensive, progressive training to the baristas and café owners slinging the shots. This is where our Australian Barista Academies come in: the ABA is the education arm of Five Senses. There’s a diverse curriculum to equip students with the skills and knowledge to go out into the world, engage with their customers and serve out cracking coffees. We now have Academies in Perth, Melbourne and, just recently, Sydney!

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So you guys don’t do cafes then? Just wholesale partnerships? What are some of your favorites?

Our focus over the past 15 years has been on being the best roaster partner we can be for our customers rather than splitting our head space between being great retail operators in addition to nailing the supplier side of things. It’s so difficult to choose favourite partnerships! Each of them are on such unique paths of their coffee journey and the variety is truly one of the most interesting parts of the job. One of our proudest relationships is a little bit of a hidden gem but it represents much of what we love—the crew at Corinthians—based around 23km southwest from Melbourne in the outer suburbs, is a great café launched by 2 brothers, George and Sarkis, with an insatiable passion for community and coffee. In a pretty unlikely spot, they’re showcasing specialty coffee at its most excellent; tricked out with a pressure-profiling Synesso Hydra, EK43 grinders, alternative brew methods and rotating microlot single-origins on offer, the guys at Corinthians are pairing these excellent extractions with an unending font of enthusiasm. People are loving it!

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We’re also big fans of what the Top Paddock crew do–we’ve been working with them on their coffee program since 2007 over 6 cafes: it’s been great to see our coffee being served out at such consistently high standards even under such heavy demand! While it’s hard to pick out all our favourites, some that jump to mind are Bar 9 in Adelaide, Harry’s Espresso Bar and Excelsior Jones in Sydney, Bunker in Queensland, and Voyage Kitchen and Bench Espresso in Perth. Many of these guys have been part of the Five Senses family for years.

Australian Barista Academy—is this like a coffee college, or more like a coffee trade school? Are attendees in class for months, or weeks, or just a few days or what?

The reality of the demand for baristas in Australia means that most of the time, people who attend our Academies already have a job in the hospitality industry. Given the short time they can break out to come along to a course, we’ve developed our content into intensive, half-day bite-size chunks. Each of the Academies is kitted out with top-end gear (our new Sydney space has 4 x Synesso Hydras, a swag of Mazzer grinders, EK43 grinders, Marco Uber Boiler, Marco SP9, Marco Jet Brewer and a whole bunch more!) and focuses on small classes which are able to get very hands on with focused attention from the trainer. The courses can be strung together into a pretty wide curriculum spreading from core espresso fundamentals to refractometry and alternative brew methods to sensory and palate development. For those wanting to explode their brain with coffee knowledge and sensory development, we also regularly host the weeklong Q Grader courses in conjunction with the Coffee Quality Institute.

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Tell us a bit about your new Sydney location. What’s the neighborhood like? What’s the space like? Who designed it?

I have to say, we’re pretty excited about our new Sydney location! We’ve been collaborating with some great café owners in Sydney for a number of years but have been needing to jump in to do training after hours, which is taxing for everyone–offsite training is WAY more of a win. The Sydney Academy in a way is a bit of a ‘thank you’ to all of our partners who have hung in there making do and a welcome to all those in the future who want to push their knowledge. Our space is at 2A Cannon St, Stanmore—it’s a beautiful, slightly older suburb of Sydney’s Inner West, about 6km west of the bottom of the Central Business District. An old warehouse building just off the main thoroughfare of Parramatta Road houses the space divided over 2 levels. On the ground floor, we’ve set up a technical workshop, where our service team wield their tools for healthy gear, along with a couple of ping-pong tables for burning off the caffeine. We’ve actually got a fair bit of room free down there but wanted to give ourselves a little bit of flex space as we figure out what we need over the coming years. Up on the first floor and we start seeing some more action—the bones of the building are what we initially fell in love with: the cyprus floorboards add an immediate warmth and the white-walled entrance hall dramatically widens to an open-plan warehouse space with exposed trusses.

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I was lucky enough to be entrusted with the design of the space and worked closely with a great young cabinetmaker/furniture maker/shop fitter, Steve from Porter and Maple. Together we’ve collaborated over the past 4 months to bring the vision to life, equipping it with a 7-meter-long, concrete-topped espresso bar, our now somewhat iconic mosaic-tiled ‘island’ brew bar and a lab space with blackened, rolled steel benchtops housing a 3-group Synesso Hydra and the new Marco SP9s. Almost everything was custom designed including the light fittings over the espresso bar and in the lab. We did, however, splurge out to get some amazing chairs by the talented Melbourne designer Adam Lynch.

Our goal in fitting out the space was to design an environment that represented the quality and attention to detail that is being exhibited by leading cafes and espresso bars around the world. High-quality, hard-wearing surfaces were accompanied by softer, more inviting textures of white-washed timber, leather, and cork. Just how the space and atmosphere of a café play into the serving of an excellent café experience, we wanted our Sydney ABA site to inspire students of all experience levels to take their craft seriously but to have fun exploring further.

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Five Senses is a multifaceted company: a roaster, a training academy headmaster, and also a mill owner in Indonesia. Tell us more about that project.

Our Tiga Raja mill in Simalungun, Sumatra has been running for 12 months now and we’ve been lucky enough to have some excellent results from the very beginning. The Tiga Raja, or ‘Three Kings’ project, developed fairly organically; searching for more traceable, consistent Sumatran coffees, our green buyer Rich Austin met with the amazing husband-wife team of Leo and Lisa Purba and stumbled upon an opportunity to not only achieve the cup quality we were after but to have a significant positive impact on the people and recognition of specialty coffee in the area. We joined forces, with Five Senses funding the fitout of the Tiga Raja mill, overseen by Leo and Lisa and sourcing coffee from the local Talenta cooperative. By working with a stable group of small holder producers and tweaking our mill processing, we’ve managed to eliminate many of the defect-inducing practices that often cloud the exciting flavour range of Sumatran coffees. Just recently, we were able to showcase a stellar coffee from Tiga Raja called Lima Putri. It’s a natural process, wet-hulled coffee carefully handled by our mill—producing a flavour bomb of tropical fruit, honeydew melon, and brown sugar but is still really clean and consistent; something people probably wouldn’t have been able to experience without the hands on involvement and infrastructure that’s been developed at Tiga Raja.

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What’s a good way for people to learn more about Tiga Raja?

The best way would be to drink some of the coffee! We’ve got a very small amount of the natural Lima Putri still on offer alongside the delightful Tiga Raja washed coffee. Otherwise, we’ve got some great blog posts up detailing our journey and learnings so far.

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What techniques do you train people in at the Academies? How has the curriculum been developed?

We’re aiming to help people create truly excellent coffee experiences so we’ve made sure to set up industry-leading equipment in the Academies. We’re lucky enough to be the exclusive distributors for some incredible equipment companies—all of our ABAs have Synesso espresso machines, Marco brewing and hot water systems, Mazzer grinders, Acaia scales and Baratza grinders. We train across a full breadth of both technique and knowledge bases needed by baristas working in the ever progressing specialty coffee scene. In terms of the curriculum, the content and focus has really evolved over the years as we continue to learn more about coffee and listen to what our customers need. Andy Easthope, our National Training Manager, has done some awesome stuff with our content over the past few years as we’ve honed in on our philosophies around what quality in the cup means to us. We cover zones starting at the bedrock of dialing in espresso shots—being able to measure success with both calibrated tasting and quantifiable metrics around brew ratios is critical. Beyond that, we delve into courses developing workflow, quality control, advanced equipment parameters of pressure and temperature, alternative brew methods, latte art, sensory skills, the use of refractometry, and a whole bunch more. At the end of the day, the focus of the courses is to make sure that students can go back out into the workplace and can turn out delicious coffees while having the backup knowledge to drive their program forward and help new consumers take their next steps along the coffee journey.

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Name us some famous graduates if you don’t mind!

The Academies have been used by a bunch of great café owners and baristas over the course of their lifetimes, however, we see the Academy more as a hub for learning and skill sharing rather than claiming the success of individuals as our own. While we’ve loved having world champions, celebrated chefs, and knowledgeable coffee pros come through our Academies, we find a whole bunch of satisfaction in helping raise the overall standard of specialty coffee preparation on a broader scale through the hundreds of hard-working baristas who complete the courses to go back out and serve better coffees to their day-to-day customers. It’s going to be great to see how we can help equip Sydney’s next generation of baristas to progress specialty coffee with our new Academy space!

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Where to next with the Academy model? Brisbane? Canberra? Singapore?

Our focus for the next little while is firmly focused on Sydney—we’ve only just launched and there’s so much potential that can be brought to life, so we’ll be putting a lot of energy into that. It’s already been pretty exciting seeing how the space can help build the specialty coffee community and create a new standard for learning. In Singapore, we’ve been part of bringing Common Man Coffee Roasters together and have actually already launched an Academy up there and boy, the people are hungry for knowledge! We don’t have any definite plans for the next Academy, but it’s obvious that the specialty coffee scene all around Australia is growing at a rapid pace—5 Senses and our Academies have always been in the thick of it and it’ll be great to be a part of things wherever the next community of coffee pros are looking to drive things forward.

Photos by Tim Pascoe courtesy Five Senses.

In Melbourne, Celebrating Immigration & Coffee In The Very Same Sip

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Visitors in the courtyard at Coffee Fest (part of the North South Feast West Festival) at Immigration Museum

Earlier this year, Melbourne’s Immigration Museum hosted Coffee Fest, the latest in its North South Feast West event series. North South Feast West—having previously hosted chili and chocolate-themed parties for the good people of Melbourne—aims to celebrate the contributions that various cultures and migrant groups have made to global cuisine in this international city.

Jo Daniell, Program Manager of Community Engagement at the Immigration Museum, called Coffee Fest a “community festival on all things coffee—from coffee tastings, ceremony and coffee readings according to Brazilian, Turkish, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, and Finnish traditions—to live music.” For the coffee lover who wants to mix their uppers and downers, there was a coffee cocktail-making workshop with Black Pearl’s Will Sleeman. And for those who love coffee so much that we want to rub it all over our bodies, there was a coffee scrub-making workshop by Frank Body.

immigration museum victoria melbourne coffee fest north south feast west sprudge

Visitors at Coffee Fest (part of the North South Feast West Festival) at Immigration Museum

The day opened with a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. “The ceremony used live coffee brewing, acting, song, narration, and dance to show how coffee and ceremony is used in a range of ways to promote community and relationship reconciliations, mediation, and to resolve conflict,” said Daniell. The day’s events were coordinated by a multi-cultural planning committee.

The museum’s courtyard was transformed into a live music tent and dining area, featuring stalls slinging traditional cuisine from the countries featured at Coffee Fest. I opted for injera, lentils, and veggie curry from the Ethiopian Community Association of Victoria paired with Finnish coffee from the Finnish Society of Melbourne, although the options for international (and perhaps unusual) pairings were plentiful. In the background, the LALIbelas—an Ethio-jazz collaboration—played lively genre-bending uptempo tunes.

immigration museum victoria melbourne coffee fest north south feast west sprudge

The LALIBELAS performing at Coffee Fest (part of the North South Feast West Festival) at Immigration Museum

I asked Riina Aapa, the Vice President of the Finnish Society of Melbourne, about the coffee they were pouring. She told me I was drinking the most popular coffee in Finland, Juhla-Mokka by Paulig. It was brewed in the traditional method:

“The traditional way to prepare the coffee is unfiltered, as we did yesterday: first you bring the water in the pot to the boil, then add the ground coffee. As soon as it ‘bubbles’, turn off the stove. You then let the grind settle to the bottom before pouring it. You check that the color is right by pouring some out and if not, let it sit a while longer before serving. (Only experience will tell you what the “right” color is!) The coffee pots used are stainless steel and come in different sizes.”

Paulig was started in 1876 by Finn Gustav Paulig, and has developed into a colossal operation. Small-scale and independent coffee it is not, but it is nostalgic for Finns in Melbourne who drink it via the Finnish Society, its sole local importer. Aapa told me that “the roast is very light, as that is what Finns are used to.” Finns, both Daniell and I were surprised to learn, are some of the biggest consumers of coffee in the world.

immigration museum victoria melbourne coffee fest north south feast west sprudge

Coffee Learning Lab with do it on the Roof at Coffee Fest (part of the North South Feast West Festival) at Immigration Museum

In addition to eating and drinking, there were educational and cultural events throughout the museum. In the Coffee Learning Lab, curated by Do It On The Roof, there were coffee plants on display and for sale, with experts on hand to answer questions about home coffee gardening. They sold varieties chosen specifically for their ability to tolerate Melbourne’s complicated weather, including Coffee K7 and Catui Dwarf. There were also film screenings: a six-minute documentary on coffee and climate change and the longer feature documentary Lygon Street: Si Parla Italiano, a fascinating look into Melbourne’s Italian espresso beginnings.

immigration museum victoria melbourne coffee fest north south feast west sprudge

Coffee served at at Coffee Fest (part of the North South Feast West Festival) at Immigration Museum

Melburnians know that Lygon Street in the inner north suburb of Carlton is the city’s Italian hub. Si Parla Italiano showcased the Italian immigrants in and around the 1950s who were responsible for creating the espresso-loving culture still prevalent throughout Australia. I asked Daniell about the inclusion of the feature-length documentary in the festival: “The Italian influence is so important to Melbourne coffee culture, and Melbourne/Australian coffee histories, and the film really highlights and celebrates that. On the day, we saw many people choose to watch the entire film as part of their festival experience on the day.” To this day, only serious coffee connoisseurs make filter coffee at home; Melburnians overwhelmingly get their caffeine fix via one of the many espresso machines peppered around the city. This is one of the myriad ways Melbourne’s coffee scene is unique, and a lens focused on the important social history of this phenomenon was most welcome.

Specialty coffee is ubiquitous in Melbourne. As an immigrant and coffee lover, I was immediately struck by the realization that you can’t swing a cat without hitting a cafe that serves really good coffee in this city. For that reason, and because Melbourne is a culinary cultural hub, coffee culture here is always challenging itself and its consumers with new methods and marriages with other facets of culinary life. Coffee Fest was an exercise in thinking critically about coffee in different ways than specialty coffee lovers may be used to. At places like Aunty Peg’s (and many other cafes), specialty coffee farmers, roasters, and brewers are celebrated; milk frothing techniques are discussed and analyzed; and filter methods are toyed with. At Coffee Fest, the communities that partake in and shape Melbourne’s coffee culture were exalted, and the energy was purely celebratory. When I asked Daniell what she hoped Melburnians took away from the bustling Coffee Fest, she told me, “We hope that Coffee Fest visitors learnt something about the different roles coffee plays in cultures from around the world, and that everyone got to taste some great coffee and enjoy Coffee Fest’s music, film, and food delights!”

We’ll call that a win, then.

Phylisa Wisdom (@phylisajoy) is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne. Read more Phylisa Wisdom on Sprudge. Photos courtesy of the Immigration Museum Coffee Festival.

Bartenders Can Earn $100,000 By Winning This Contest—Why Not Coffee?

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Coffee has a tendency towards intersecting with other hospitality arenas—there is, of course, the symbiotic relationship between a bartender needing coffee to perk up for a day, and a barista ordering a drink to wind down. What if I told you, however, that at least one hundred of the best cocktail makers around Australia each have in their possession, an AeroPress?

Yes, that humble brewing device which once set out to replicate espresso brewing and has since gone on to enliven filter coffee enthusiasts round the world (as well as inspire a cult competition called the World AeroPress Championship) has found its way into the hands of many Australian cocktail makers, thanks to the Diageo World Class competition.

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I had the chance to sit down with Katherine Whitcroft, a working bartender at Africola in Adelaide, who previously headed up the bar at Brisbane’s Strauss, and one of the hundred finalists who made it through to the second round of World Class. Over coffee, she talked me through the workings of the competition.

Created and run by Diageo, the biggest spirits producer and distributor in the world, Diageo World Class incorporates three stages at a national level: the first round (open to all working bartenders), the second round (top 100), and the third round (top 25), before a winner is announced to compete in the international finals. The prizes vary year to year—in a previous round of the contest, the grand prize winner was awarded $100,000 to set up a bar of his or her own.

The first round is an open call to any working bartender wanting to create and enter a cocktail that ties in to the prescribed theme (this year it was “time” or “place”). The second round is more complex than the first, with the top 100 competitors having to create a cocktail and story around the theme, not unlike a signature beverage in a barista competition. This year, with a theme of coffee and tea, competitors were sent an AeroPress. Selected industry professionals are then flown around the world to judge these cocktails in person, with marks also counting on the marketing, presentation, and even the social media presence of the cocktail itself.

In the third round, the top 25 competitors have to present a cocktail as well as go through what is essentially a bartending boot camp: this year they had to blend a whiskey to work perfectly with a particular cocktail, as well as tackling a table of fresh produce to create a drink that celebrates vegetables. Once through to the world finals, international competitors go up against one another until just one is declared the winner. That winner subsequently becomes a World Class Ambassador, and gets flown around the world to idyllic places to make and talk cocktails—it’s like the World Barista Championship, but marginally boozier and with much more time spent on yachts.

world class bartending competition diageo sprudge

Now, where do coffee and the AeroPress come into all of this? Largely, they speak to the progress of coffee as an ingredient that increasingly demands respect outside of the specialty industry. Long gone are the days of an espresso martini made with old over-roasted coffee being the only coffee cocktail on the menu. Nowadays, it’s more likely you’ll see a coffee-bitters based old-fashioned, or a negroni incorporating cold-drip single-origin coffee. Or even something like Whitcroft’s competition spin on the classic Bobby Burns cocktail, using coffee-infused vermouth, a chai tea syrup, and Johnnie Walker whiskey.

Competitions like World Class also create a fascinating comparison to the coffee industry and its own competitions. What if coffee competitors were judged on their ability to act under pressure and implement coffee service behind a busy bar—or judged on how media-savvy they are in marketing their own creations? Also, what would a barista competition look like if the grand prize for winning were a hefty sum towards setting up a new business? It’s an interesting realm of competition that doesn’t exist in the coffee industry (yet)—but I for one would love to see how a coffee brewing competition would go down on a yacht.

Eileen P. Kenny (@eileenpk) is a Sprudge.com staff writer and the publisher of Birds of Unusual Vitality, the coffee interview magazine. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

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