In the current weeks leading up to the biggest café show in the nation, Café Biz, my team and I have had the exciting opportunity to visit many of Sydney’s favourite café and coffee haunts. What was impressive to me, was that Sydney is starting to blossom in its café culture and the different approach [...]

Copenhagen played host to the Nordic Barista Cup this year – a team event that is as much about coffee education as it is about competitive spirit … The Nordic region encompasses the five main countries: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland. (For the nitpickers, let me acknowledge that the Nordic region actually includes an [...]

Promoting and supporting ice cream in your café does not have to mean mainstream branding, it doesn’t have to mean loss of precious floor space to big display freezers, and it doesn’t have to come from soft-serve machines which can take considerable time and money to clean and maintain. On the contrary, ice cream can [...]

Sasha McGinley’s energy and passion for the coffee industry is contagious. Her excitement as she talks at a million miles an hour is a clear indicator that she loves what she does. Add to this an unusual case of a condition termed auto sensory efficiency (basically a condition which gives you heightened senses), and you [...]

The Steeping Room at ONA Coffee is a sensory concept designed to inform and educate their customers on the finer appreciation of specialty coffee. Using equipment that allows the coffee to be brewed in its purest form (meaning no milk, sugar or any other additive), the baristas take customers on a flavour journey around the [...]

Located in the inner-city Shades Arcade in Christchurch, my store, The Caffeine Laboratory, is closed whilst repairs continue on the arcade. Having spent four months dealing with the closure of my café, I decided to rent an 8 ft shipping container from Royal Wolf to continue serving my loyal customers. Our ‘Minicube’ has been operating [...]

I have just arrived home to Melbourne from Ho Chi Minh City, after an exciting week at the 2011 Vietnam National Barista Championships. I was invited up to Vietnam as Head Judge, after visiting Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh earlier in the month to calibrate the baristas and judges. The Championships were managed by Singapore Exhibition [...]

A common reaction to the excessive use of disposable coffee cups is: “Why don’t we just recycle them all?” To meet the demands of liquid portability, the simple paper cup is not just made out of paper; the paper is coated with plastic to make it waterproof. Disposable paper cups are made of about 95% [...]

DaVinci Gourmet is renowned for its support of the coffee industry and the talented barista … As part of this support, I have been travelling around doing quite a bit of judging for a variety of different sectors within this same industry. For a number of years now, I have been judging regional, state and [...]

Since January 2010, the Heron Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) detachment have provided support to Australian and International Stabilisation Force troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Recently they suffered significant morale problems, when their automatic coffee machine suffered a catastrophic failure. Flying Officer Brendan Smith decided to investigate the possibilities of acquiring new equipment as quickly as possible [...]

I recently jumped at a generous invitation to visit the top end city of Darwin, to report on its growing café scene. Darwin to me has always been known as a beer town, rather than a coffee destination. A lot has changed in the last few years. Sure, Darwin is still a great place to [...]

Have you considered the merits of producing you own baked goods from scratch, as opposed to outsourcing? The process can have an impact on your customers’ health, perception of you business – and also your bottom line … Ihad to really think about it when considering baking my own instead of outsourcing. Ultimately, I did [...]

It is very rare that you can walk into a cafe, only to be served coffee by an Australian Barista Champion. It is also even rarer to walk up behind the door of a mobile coffee van and be served a brew by a former Australian Barista Champion and 2 x Queensland Barista Champion! Well, [...]

When asking about the espresso coffee scene in Amsterdam, authorities in Australia and the UK led me to believe that there is no good espresso in Amsterdam. Well, I am here to say, this is simply not so. My local research with a hotel receptionist and hairdresser was more positive. (You can always count on [...]

High street café competition in Sydney’s suburb of Surry Hills is arguably the most intense in Australia, with every major coffee brand being represented within a 400 metre radius. To compete in this market takes more than just a unique café offering – finally it comes down to producing a great coffee. Twenty year industry [...]

STORY BY JACK SCHEEREN A few years ago when the Roast and Ground coffee industry told us that coffee should be drunk at 65, not 75 degrees, I don’t think anyone would have ever thought that we would one day be drinking it at 4 degrees. At ONA Coffee we are always looking for something [...]

STORY BY ANDY FREEMAN www.coffeesnobs.com.au In the last couple of years, the buzz words in the pointy-end espresso market have been ‘pressure profiling’, but what is it and how does it make espresso better? Slayer, La Marzocco, Cimbali and others are producing machines heading towards a $30,000 price tag, and all of the companies are [...]

Café Culture lost their graphic designer Louise Turner to the travelling bug earlier this year. We know she misses us and the coffee … so much so, that she has reported in on her super Swedish coffee experience in Stockholm. After travelling for 8 weeks straight around Europe and seeing a touch of London, I [...]

STORY BY INSTAURATOR Managing Director – Coffee Logic International. Around the world, Australia and New Zealand are recognised as world leaders in the espresso realm – quite an achievement for two continents located roughly 12,630 kilometres from coffee’s original birth place in Ethiopia. However, this shouldn’t be all too surprising, as there are two things [...]

Welcome back. In Part I of this series, we discussed some of coffee’s chemical makeup and its role in developing coffee’s flavour. This time, we’ll briefly discuss a few key components and take a brief journey to explore their role in flavour. COFFEE ROASTING AND AROMA DEVELOPMENT. Although roasted coffee contains over 1,000 compounds, the [...]

STORY BY SIMON DIMATTINA I was lucky enough to be born into a coffee family. My dad was one of the early coffee pioneers in Australia. He purchased Mocopan in the 1950s. At that stage, coffee was not a big focus, but as he ran the company for close to 40 years, he developed its progression [...]

STORY BY ANDRES LATORRE CANON Managing Director – Latorre & Dutch Coffee Traders. Brightness from the wet process, sweetness from the dry or natural process, or fruit flavours from the pulped natural process … what do you prefer? These are all traits that stand out on each of the different coffee processing methods. The processing [...]

STORY BY MARK BEATTIE COFFEE ROASTERS AUSTRALIA One of the biggest frustrations I hear from roasters, distributors, retailers and end consumers is: “Why does my coffee taste different? I’ve roasted the same beans with the same profile, or I’ve ordered the same blend, yet it tastes different”. I am sure everyone reading this will empathise [...]

After ten years of involvement in the media business, running an industry trade magazine, a café and coffee trade events, it has been very exciting to see the industry and its players grow around us. As the industry grows and new competition enters the arena, we continue to evaluate our business philosophy and market position, [...]

Italy! Its very name conjures endless images, many of which reflect a culture obsessed with cuisine and coffee.  So when a close friend announced she was getting married by Northern Italy’s Lake Como, we just knew we had to do everything in our power to get there. Fast forward to September 5th and less than 5 hours [...]

Will Priestley is no newcomer to the coffee scene and the art of the barista. At 26 years of age, Will is widely known and respected throughout the industry. He has competed in just about every barista and latte art competition throughout Australia, becoming the Australian Latte Art Champion in 2010 and placing second in [...]

Fifteen loyalty cards in my wallet and loyal to none.  Loyalty, like celebrity and organic, is a term that has lost a large part of its ammunition through overuse. These days it is not uncommon to find most people carrying around between 5 – 10 loyalty cards. When a lot of those cards are for [...]

Matt Wilkinson, co-owner of Pope Joan in Melbourne, is the undisputed winner of the title of world’s best sandwich maker at the World Sandwichship, which was held at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Crave Sydney International Food Festival 2011. The World Sandwichship Competition consisted of a one hour round, where the participants [...]

What better way to top off a successful, stressful and busy 12 months for Disavè Espresso Equipment Suppliers than moving locations! After many weeks working 16+ hour days, Dean, Paul and the team at Disavè have finally moved into their spacious new factory and showroom, conveniently located in Dandenong South. “We are very excited to [...]

It’s been a busy year for the 5 times world record breaking Olympian. In 2011, Cleo magazine announced Eamon as their Bachelor of the Year, he took out first place in Celebrity MasterChef, opened a café in Perth and released his own cookbook. In amongst this, he has been in the pool a bit too. [...]

With building economic pressures, these days people are much more discerning about where they spend their money. Great news for bank balances … bad news for retailers.  With a lot of people scaling back their lifestyles and spending less on dining out, we need to start thinking: when a customer does walk into your café, [...]

Winning the gold medal in the Single Origin category at the 2010/11 CSR Sugar Golden Bean Coffee Roaster Competition has shone a spotlight on the Ducale Coffee brand. This is exactly what General Manager Henri Kalisse was planning as part of the Ducale transformation from its traditional Italian coffee roots to a driving force in [...]

Many children as young as ten were selling wares like postcards and chewing gum to support their large family units. Many of these children he talked to had come from poor rural areas by themselves to seek work in the busy city of Hanoi. Jimmy straight away had a vision of how he could turn [...]

Despite being the major component of every coffee shot, the role of water in achieving the perfect shot is not often considered. Not only will the quality of water affect the taste, body and aroma of your coffee, it can have a detrimental effect on your equipment. In the last issue (25), Chris Short discussed [...]

For many, good coffee is a luxury we like to treat ourselves to on a daily basis. Founder and owner of Numero Uno Coffee Roasters, Gina Di Brita is a proud and passionate female figurehead. Numero Uno has a strong vision. Since 2003, Gina has been ticking all the right boxes when it comes to [...]

There is no denying that when it comes to coffee in Australia, espresso as an extraction method still reigns supreme. However, there is a growing trend for cafés with passion and vision to include alternative brewing methods as part of their coffee offerings, adding some ‘theatre’, increasing customer interaction with the baristas, and giving them [...]

Travelling back to Australia from San Diego, we had planned four days in Hawaii. Our goal? Coffee and volcanoes, staying at Keauhou in Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island in the heart of the Kona coffee growing region. At first glance you might think that coffee and volcanoes have little to do with each other, but [...]

“Is this Plaza San Miguel?” “sí señora.” “Oh my god, Mark … are you sure this is it? There’s nothing here … get out and ask someone.” Mark and I had bartered our way from the main square in Guatemala Antigua, to this quaint little town at 5,600 feet above sea level. There were no [...]

Everybody is talking about the Geisha Coffee. It recently auctioned in the Best of Panama Competition for USD $111.5/Lb, which is probably the highest price ever paid for a coffee. Geisha or Gesha is a varietal of the Arabica tree. It is recognised by its elongated coffee berries, compared to the normal and well known [...]

Every day, millions of people around the world begin their day religiously with a morning cup of coffee. Although today we easily identify coffee in its beverage form, it wasn’t always this way in the beginning. Throughout history, coffee has taken on several physical transformations, initially serving as an energy source when nomadic tribes combined [...]

Craig Dickson, CEO at Veneziano Coffee, has always had a passionate desire to learn about coffee, and he also encourages employees to educate themselves as much and as often as possible. His philosophy has led to Veneziano Coffee providing competition training and support to many of Australia’s best known and awarded baristas. As a specialty [...]

he drink, as we know it, became popular in the Sydney coffee scene about ten years ago among the coffee roasting fraternity and soon spread its wings around the country. Only the cool crowd drank piccolos, and the coffee bores annoyed many a café barista about the true definition of this drink. I remember responding [...]