Brisbane's coffee culture has accelerated from practically zero to hero over the past few decades as new cafes seem to open almost weekly and the hit rate for finding a great coffee has increased proportionally.
Where those great coffees are to be found is a subject for much heated debate.
Everyone has their own particular favourites that they will defend with passionate intensity.
But there is a generally agreed criteria for good coffee. It should be well-balanced if taken with milk, which should not overwhelm the flavour of the coffee beans.
Good-quality milk must always be used.
Bitterness is undesirable, as is a burnt flavour.
effort to track down who in the city was getting it right, we took two days, 20 cafes and by the end of it , four very jittery judges and visited each cafe unannounced.
It was all about the coffee, with contenders chosen for a strong emphasis on coffee, rather than cafes with an equal balance of food and coffee.
There were no judgments on a cafe's decor we focused entirely on what was in the cup. We ordered one of the most popular ways to take coffee a flat white and rated them on their appearance, smell and flavour.
It would have once been difficult to find even 10 top cafes a decade ago.
Paring down our list to 20 top cafes was the first step of what was to prove a very difficult mission. Of course, there will be cafes we have missed out, and not every one will agree on our findings.
However, it was gratifying to discover a uniformly high standard something you would not have found 10 or even five years ago.
One notable change seems to be in the cup size and shape, with a move towards smaller, thicker, more European-style coffee cups that keep the coffee hotter longer, as well as producing a richer, less diluted brew.
Another change was that as well as ``house brews'', many cafes were also offering single-origin blends and different brewing methods.
Melbourne has always been a serious café city, the legacy of its European migrants, but Sydney has –as Sydney does - completely embraced the idea of coffee culture and made it work in its own way, with great coffee a daily necessity of life.
We’re beginning to treat it as we do food and wine; demanding freshness, flavour, and a fair go for the farmer. We’re learning to appreciate the unique flavours of single origin beans, and to enjoy the new, softer brewing methods almost as much as our beloved espresso. (If you’re not yet fluent in new brew technology, there’s a feature on it in the Guide, and a handy glossary of terms to help you get the techy side of the business.)
So a big thank you to the café owners, managers and baristas who have built such a strong coffee and café scene in Sydney; something unrecognizable twenty or even ten years ago. Its brilliant to see a new generation of cafes starting by sourcing the beans themselves, roasting them themselves, investing in ever better technology, investing in training ever better staff, ever better food.
We hope the new Sydney Morning Herald Good Café Guide will build the café culture in this town, helping encourage good coffee practices and discourage bad, and primarily to steer people in the direction of great coffee.
started with the belief that cafes are more important to the life and soul of a city than its restaurants, which I’ve blogged about before now. You eat in restaurants, but you live in cafes. They’re cheaper. They’re more fun. They’re closer to home. They have better coffee. More interesting people go there. They don’t do 24 course degustations.
A good café humanises its neighbourhood, it’s the village square. A good café has no rules (unless its Bar Italia in Leichhardt with its no soy, no skim, no decaf). If you want eggs benny at three in the afternoon having just woken up, you can. If you want to read the newspaper or do business or swap recipes, you can. Good cafes have their own identity. Good cafes have a conscience, making an effort to be more sustainable, sourcing their beans ethically, supplying free tap water and glasses.
Good cafes don’t serve tea in cups that smell of coffee. They don’t treat coffee like a commodity. They’re interested, obsessed, fascinated with coffee in all its forms, new and old. And they don’t send your toast out with the butter already on it and melted into it; an appalling habit that must be stamped out immediately.
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