coffeearmy

Free coffee deal!

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 01:22:00 -0400

95 Espresso in St Kilda - one of the cafes offering two-for-one coffees.

Brilliantly, following the success of the Coffee Army Handbook 2012, The Age has picked up the ball and run with it, organising with some of the featured cafes to do a fantastic two-for-one deal, starting this weekend. All you have to do is clip the voucher in The Saturday Age this Saturday and The Sunday Age this Sunday. Each voucher entitles you to a buy-one-get-one-free deal at any of the cafes listed.

Full details including addresses and terms and conditions are here

Saturday voucher

Boundary Espresso,  Preston

Cafenatics, Docklands 

Choclatte, Camberwell 

Nineteen Squares, St Kilda 

Penny Farthing Espresso, Northcote 

Petitou, Kingsville 

Social Roasting Co,  Flemington 

Three Bags Full, Abbotsford 

Warrandyte Café, Warrandyte 

Sunday Voucher

7 Grams, Richmond

95 Espresso, St Kilda

Axil, Hawthorn

Campos Coffee, Carlton

Degani Bakery, South Morang 

Foxy Brown, Northcote

Monk Bodhi Dharma, Balaclava

San Paolo Solarino, Melbourne

The Espresso Room, Northcote

The Station House, Blackburn

Social Roasting Co in Flemington

Campos Coffee in Carlton

Axil in Hawthorn

Coffee Army Handbook Full Listings

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:02:45 -0500

Winners are indeed grinners

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:52:06 -0500

Some of the winners of last night’s Coffee Army awards, held at Left Bank bar in South Bank. Featured are Auction Rooms (centre), who took out first place, with staff and owners from runners-up Proud Mary and Three Bags Full.

And the list of finalists...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:51:19 -0500

Procal milk goes into a latte at Balderdash - one of the finalists.

Congrats to all the 25 remaining finalists, who topped our review of around 1000 cafes…

95 Espresso – St Kilda
Axil - Hawthorn
Balderdash – Port Melbourne
Brother Baba Budan - City
Brunswick East Project – Brunswick East
Campos Coffee - Carlton
Chez Dre – Soth Melbourne
Cup of Truth - City
De Clieu - Fitzroy
The Espresso Room - Northcote
Indulgent Cakes - Montmorency
The League of Honest Coffee - City
Market Lane - Prahran
Naked Espresso Bar - City
Nineteen Squares – St Kilda
Oliver Lane Espresso - City
Penny Farthing - Northcote
The Premises - Kensington
St Ali – South Melbourne
Seven Seeds - Carlton
Sicilian Orange - Prahran
The Social Roasting Company - Flemington
Switchboard Cafe - City
Wide Open Road - Brunswick
7 Grams - Richmond

Congrats to the four runners-up...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:11:49 -0500

The Final Step in South Yarra. Pictured are The Final Step’s Tom Biffin and Ben Whitaker.

Little Bean Blue in the city. Pictured are Little Bean Blue’s Aimee Cosentino, Stig Myhre and Sarah Heinjus.

Proud Mary in Collingwood. Pictured are Proud Mary’s Tessa Pavlich, Monica Chhay, Vjeko Jukic, Kris Wood, James Yeoman and Tess McNamara.

Three Bags Full in Abbotsford. Pictured are Emily Cirulis, Ben Clark, Diamond Rozakeas and Mike Sullivan.

Auction Rooms - the winner!

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:47:08 -0500

Auction Rooms in North Melbourne - awarded Melbourne’s best coffee last night - yet owner Andrew Kelly couldn’t attend: he was in Guatemala buying coffee beans. What’s so good about the place, anyway? Well, coffee aside for a moment, it’s as much film set as cafe, with its conversation pit and lab-like filter bar and its various nooks all apparently cobbled together from leftover building materials. There’s drama in the galley kitchen, too, where head chef Danusak Sawansak and his crew turn out cafe food that is sensitive to season and provenance, and in the big central bar where a three-group Synesso Hydra works steadily from shutters up to lockdown. But the Auction Rooms engine room is a couple of blocks away in a semi-refitted warehouse down a bluestone North Melbourne laneway, where owner Andrew Kelly and his roaster, Caleb Heaney, spend three to four days a week roasting their way through the sacks of green beans in countries such as Ecuador, Colombia and Costa Rica, where Kelly travelled last year. The roasted beans, under the Small Batch label, go into French press, pourover, syphon and espresso brews, and to discerning cafes and kitchens all over town. Auction Rooms also offers a cold brew made in a french press and then put through two pourover filters before it is chilled.

Survey results revealed

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:24:00 -0500

Seven Seeds in Carlton, which was reviewed 30 times by Coffee Army volunteers

Very shortly a crack team from the Coffee Army will hunker down in a bunker at The Age and pore over the data from what has been an enormous survey.

The result of that night’s discussion will determine the major awards in the Coffee Army’s search for Melbourne’s best coffee for 2011-2012 and will be top secret until announced at a gala awards night in February.

Until then, though, here is a snapshot of the survey:

* Over 150 individual reviewers…

* Over six months in the making…

* Hundreds of suburbs and towns visited, including Bairnsdale, Blairgowrie, Bulleen, Diamond Creek, Echuca, Ferntree Gully, Fountain Gate, Forest Hill, Glenlyon, Leongatha, Portarlington, Rosanna, Spotswood, Strathmore and Woodend…

* More cafe-heavy suburbs received hundreds of visits: Melbourne CBD (over 450 visits); St Kilda/East St Kilda (over 200); Brunswick/Brunswick East (over 70); South Yarra (over 60); South Melbourne (120); Richmond (85)…

* Over 1000 different cafes visited, from A Cup of Truth in the city to Zous in Burwood…

* Most prolific reviewers got to more than 50 cafes each including Michael C (137); Mathew C (54); Christine E (91); Vanessa F (62); Caroline G (113); Collette G (71); Leila G (67); Peter L (168); Angus S (83); Steven S (107) and many more…

* Cafes received multiple visits: Seven Seeds (30 visits); Proud Mary (32 visits); Market Lane (52 visits); BBB (37 visits) and more…

In February we will announce the top coffee in Melbourne and a range of other awards… stay tuned

the blend is on...

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:42:42 -0400

Coming soon… the first Coffee Army coffee blend. We’re visiting the Social Roasting Company this Thursday to experiment with our own custom roast. Places for the tasting are filled but we’ll be sending all active members of the Army a sample bag of beans… update soon

Wow you're good

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:26:26 -0400

So… The Army has just passed the 1500 mark. That. Is. Incredible. A huge thank you to everybody who has contributed - promotions on the way shortly! More updates in your inbox. Amazingly, our goal to rate every cafe in Melbourne seems achievable. As is a well researched verdict on Melbourne’s best coffee. Who will take the prize, we wonder…

Micro review - liar liar

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 07:05:00 -0400

N. K.’s verdict on Liar Liar in Hawthorn…

This is a consistently good cafe, which I rate as one of the area’s best. The coffee is smooth with high-toned caramel notes and nice persistency. It could be hotter. The service and food is first rate. The vibe and atmosphere is cruisy and relaxed. A clover coffee is available in a brandy balloon for those who like a delicate, aromatic, spicy, new-wave experience. The music features wax on turntable and the mixed customers of uni students, local workers and residents of all ages seem to cohabit the moody space with good grace. There are banquettes, a communal table and Emeco 111 Navy Chairs. Never less than 14/20 coffee. Three of the four dailies, no AFR and no magazines - alas. I like this place.

Note: this is a snapshot opinion of one visit from one Coffee Army member. Micro reviews and scores may or may not represent overall Coffee Army opinion on individual coffee outlets

Breville BCG800 Smart Grinder - the verdict

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:01:00 -0400

The thing about geeks is geeks obsess. There is no greater oxymoron than “indifferent geek”.

There are a lot of pejorative terms that are associated with geeks: obsessive, anal, control freak. But is it wrong to have standards based on knowledge and want to be able to live up to them? Is it wrong to see the appropriate constants for life’s variables and want to achieve them?

Breville doesn’t seem to think so. The company that is better known for $30 sandwich presses has decided to step it up a notch in the domestic coffee market with the BCG800 Smart Grinder, which is well designed, well engineered and beautifully constructed.

As well as allowing you to control how fine your grind is it also provides portion control: the same amount of coffee at the same level of coarseness every time.

Once you’ve got your settings right there are no day-old grounds sitting in the machine - you only grind as many beans as you need. For those of us who don’t have the money to fork out $1500 for a domestic espresso machine and instead rely on a $60 stovetop espresso for our caffeine hit at home, this is innovation.

Consistent grind and portion control with most of the mess contained within the bounds of the machine mean a simple 125g of roasted beans from the local micro roaster can cover all requirements for the week.

The small visual and physical footprint of the BCG800 means that it sits comfortably in a domestic kitchen. Simple application of magnets combined with build quality means that you’re able to easily slip components in and out for cleaning.

There are also some rants to go with the raves: the volume presets are fine for standard group head bowls but not so useful for stovetop bowls. Having a volume setting with linear increments would be useful. It’s also not that easy to accurately put stovetop bowls directly under the grinder’s outlet – maybe it would be possible to create stovetop bowl holders like the group head bowl holders.

These are minor niggles, though. A geek would be satisfied that this machine can provide the right amount of the right kind of grind at the press of a button, but with the BCG800, Breville has gone a step beyond.

- Angus Smallwood

introduction to cupping

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 03:28:00 -0400

The brilliant Andrew Kelly, of Small Batch and Auction Rooms, invited a squad of Coffee Army members to their new roastery to demonstrate the standard cupping technique. This - for the uninitiated - is how they compare different beans and roasts, and how they choose which beans to buy. In this session we tried 8 different coffees in a blind tasting with each selection of beans divided into four bowls to check for consistency. (Arty photographs courtesy of iPhone and Instagram.)

Small Batch and Auction Rooms’ Andrew Kelly with his note board and spitting cup…

Step 1: smell the freshly roasted beans, then put them through the grinder and smell the fragrance again.

Step 2. Add hot water. Either swirl it about or not, depending on what you think is proper. Sniff again.

Step 3. After four minutes “break the crust” - which means open up the froth on top to let out more aroma. Sniff again. Take more notes.

Step 4. If you like, get some of the froth on the back of the spoon and sniff that too.

Step 5: use the spoon to take a sip, rinsing it between tastes. Spit the coffee out.

Step 6: Reveal the origins of each batch of beans and nod as if you knew all along.

10 steps to latte perfection

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 22:00:00 -0400

Not sure if your barista is making your latte properly? These are the 10 points to look out for (courtesy of trainer Paul at the Coffee Army boot camp at the Coffee Academy)

1. Should always start with fresh cold milk - should never reheat leftover milk in the jug (will taste funny or burnt)

2. Jug should be filled to about half full. They should use the correct-sized jug: a small jug for one latte, a larger jug for multiples

3. Steam wand should create a whirlpool in the jug, not lots of bubble bath-style frothing

4. Wand shouldn’t make a screaming sound (indicates lack of air getting through) - should just give off gentle “kissing” sounds

5. The jug should be just too hot to touch comfortably, then steam turned off

6. They should give it a swirl to even out the texture and heat

7. It should be poured immediately

8. They shouldn’t use a spoon - the milk should have a consistent texture and pour out evenly, not requiring a dollop of froth on the top

9. The result should be a cascade of tiny bubbles cascading down the glass

10. When they’ve finished they should immediately wipe down the steam wand with a tea towel

Tastings update

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:24:53 -0400

The tastings tomorrow (August 30) will be at Small Batch’s new roastery:

3-9 Little Howard Street, North Melbourne, just off Howard Street

See you there!

"Coffee overdue How will I survive this, my Afternoon torment"

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:05:37 -0400

“Coffee overdue
How will I survive this, my
Afternoon torment”

- Winning entry #5 from James P.

"I’m in The Army The one strictly for coffee Salute The Brown Bean"

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:05:10 -0400

“

I’m in The Army

The one strictly for coffee

Salute The Brown Bean

”

- Winning entry #4 from Colette G.

"Cup of morning joe The tamest of my vices Now where’s that crack pipe"

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:04:46 -0400

“Cup of morning joe
The tamest of my vices
Now where’s that crack pipe”

- Winning entry #3 from Mathew C.

"Need my caffeine hit, Little Swallow is my fav. Oh No! Not open! Where can I go now? Oh, here is a..."

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:04:18 -0400

“Need my caffeine hit,
Little Swallow is my fav.
Oh No! Not open!

Where can I go now?
Oh, here is a little spot.
Polystyrene! Urghhh!

Home to make my own,
Turn on the coffee machine.
Alas, no grinder!”

- Winning entry #2 from Danielle W.

"Barista wonders: Why use fingers? Count to five? Ah. Haiku contest."

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:03:00 -0400

“Barista wonders:
Why use fingers? Count to five?
Ah. Haiku contest.”

- Winning entry #1 from Angus S.

haiku winners announced

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:01:17 -0400

ANd it’s over..

Thanks to everybody who entered, we had 40+ Coffee Army folk try their hand at haikus, with many sending in several. But we only had five grinders to give away… sadly.

Congratulations then to Angus S., Colette G., Mathew C., James P., and Danielle W. Winning entries posted shortly.

And sorry can’t resist it:

Missed out once again?

Don’t fear, more prizes soon

Please keep hope alive