I am a foodie through and through so the Stanley Tucci travel show “Searching for Italy”, had me salivating at ciao. In the episode showcasing the Piedmont region, Stanley interviews the founder of a culinary school that heralds the slow food movement. It launched in 2004 with ambitions to counter the fast food movement and become “an international research and education centre for those working on renewing farming methods, protecting biodiversity and building an organic relationship between gastronomy and agricultural science.” A very worthy objective that aligns with environmental causes and ..read more

With so many different tools on the market that all claim to make a better brew. It’s quite overwhelming to know which one provides biggest bang for buck. We accepted the challenge and tried and tested numerous things over the last 6 months to try and create an exceptional espresso shot. We invested in a single shot grinder, we bought new scales, we purchased a WDT, a tiny little spray bottle to use on our beans before grinding, and a tamper.  We can say that today we pull a much better espresso shot than we did 6 months ago but we think the thing that has helped the most has been the tam ..read more

Tis the season for resolutions and what would the month of January be if no consideration were given to our personal growth goals for the year ahead. I’m always struck by how many of my friends and family are always looking to make more time for their family and kids. How they can be more focussed on the things that matter. How they can be more present and less worried about the minutia of everyday life. I think the pandemic and the way we all embraced doing things online gave us more time back to share with our loved ones – online shopping, online food ordering, online exercise videos, and on ..read more

The future of the beloved arabica bean is in jeopardy due to climate warming and susceptibility to pests and disease but there is hope on the horizon with a recent rediscovery of the Coffea stenophylla species of coffee plant. Originating from Sierra Leone in Africa, a local forestry expert discovered the plant after a 5-year long search in the dense West African bush. This coffee plant had been lost to the world for over 50 years and its recent re-discovery has revived the hopes of coffee experts around the world, given the plant's climate-resilient properties as ..read more

My love affair with coffee began late in life and came at the same time as my first mobile phone and Hotmail account – I was 17 and just starting out at Melbourne University. I have Salvatore Malatesta to thank for the introduction to coffee and the Faculty Deans for all the spare time they bestowed upon me to partake in the quiet ritual of enjoying a cup of coffee out the back of the union building. Over the last few decades, the ritual of enjoying a cup of coffee has not just been about sharing gossip with friends or family, or about finding some out of the way hole in the wall café but it h ..read more

With the weather heating up our bodies are starting to crave cold drinks to help us regulate. So, have you ever pondered should I have a cold brew or an iced coffee and how are they different? Well I have and this is what I found out. Cold brew coffee is made using cold water and so it takes an extra long time for the coffee flavour to be extracted, usually overnight. The result of the long brew time is a naturally sweet-tasting, smooth drinking coffee that stays fresh for many days refrigerated. On the other hand, an iced coffee is coffee served over ice usually made using chilled, hot brewe ..read more

Tropical fruit punch, fresh passionfruit and lemon Calippo – if this were on a dessert menu it had me at tropical fruit punch! These flavour notes however were not something I spied on a menu but instead were used to describe my latest filter coffee beans. So what do these flavour notes mean? Coffee tasting notes are the result of three things – acidity, sweetness and bitterness and these tasting notes are used as a rough guide to communicate what the roaster tastes in the coffee, in a relatable way to you, the consumer. The roaster generally refers to the Specialty Coffee Association flavour ..read more

A little like the owner of this Smart car whose solution, whilst temporary, combatted the clear and present danger of someone falling from the vehicle given the lack of a side door panel, so too are coffee farmers all around the world looking for solutions to the dangers presented by climate change. The threat is real and whilst the current solutions may not be what saves this crop from extinction, the farmers and broader community are actively developing, experimenting and iterating fixes. The climate change crisis is changing the ways of coffee farmers. The frequency and intensity of drought ..read more

Depending on your preferred coffee type in the morning the beans used may vary. In this brief article we highlight some of the differences between the two most dominant coffee species in the world – Robusta and Arabica. Robusta coffee is made from the beans of the Coffea canephora plant.  This coffee is typically used in blends and instant coffee. They have a dominantly bitter flavour with notes of smoked wood and peanuts and they contain twice as much caffeine as arabica beans. These beans are typically grown at lower altitudes and in places with little rainfall like South East Asia and ..read more

Travelling abroad always gives you a great perspective and appreciation for how spoilt we are at home. I recently visited Paris for the first time in 3 years and was impressed by the progress that the specialty coffee scene had made in this city. Parisians love to sip coffee and people watch however, for as long as I can remember the coffee has been atrocious. Not anymore! Whilst the local brasseries still serve a hot, black beverage that they pass as coffee, the specialty coffee shops are thriving and appearing in all neighbourhoods across Paris. Whilst specialty coffee is not the mainstay of ..read more