Went to Hobart for work for a week, which was the perfect opportunity to explore the city and see how the specialty coffee scene has evolved since my last visit in 2017!
A lot of cafes don’t open until 7 or 7:30AM so my choices on weekdays were quite limited, but I still I found some nice ones! Staple Coffee was one I kept returning to; their bagels and croissants are really tasty (and cheap?! A coffee and bagel/croissant was only around the $12 mark!).
(more…)Dear diary,
Today I attended a coffee cupping for the first time in many years. I didn’t even know it was on until the barista told me while I was having breakfast there. I used to try really hard to learn what coffees from different regions tasted like, but it all got too much and everything started tasting the same, so I took a step back and just enjoyed coffee for what it is instead of trying so hard.
Today, I realised that my tastesbuds, while being unable to describe exact tasting notes (same as always), are at least quite accurate at tasting out “good” coffees and matched some of the other baristas/roasters that attended the cupping.
The natural processed one was obviously naturally processed, full of winey fermenty goodness, while my favourite was considered an expensive coffee. I didn’t pick out the geisha varietal though it did smell very, very good in its dry form and it kept lingering in the back of my mind. I also managed to match the host’s assessment of the two least impressive coffees.
I should probably just be more confident in what I do because it seems that I still have the right kind of palate after all these years!
To more coffee,
Reine
It’s been a few years since I last stumbled across the barista championships. Since one of my baristas was competing this year, I figured I should try and visit!
Oh man too many holidays at once. This Japan trip was actually a family holiday, where my mum wanted to visit a heap of different places. The trip was mainly based in Hokkaido, and I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy the trip or not since it wasn’t a food based trip, and I’ve never done a not-food-based-trip before. It turns out I loved it! It’s rare for my to have a life changing holiday, but this one was pretty incredible. Because I’m still sick of typing many words, this will just be mainly picture spam because I took a LOT of photos!
We started off in Tokyo, and here’s a coffee my brother fetched for me. It’s notable because it’s a warm can, and apparently it’s a single origin – Ethiopia Mokka. It didn’t taste terrible, just bland XD
(more…)Dear diary,
Today, for the first time, I managed to spill a coffee in a cafe and it was a mortifying experience.
It was a relatively new cafe, and I was visiting for the first time. It was setting up to be an interesting adventure right at the beginning, as they weren’t kidding when they said it was tiny! So tiny that a table wasn’t immediately available. Well, at least not indoors anyway. The waiter who greeted me asked if I wanted an outside table, but alas, I wasn’t wearing any sunscreen, and the sun was out, so I said I was happy to wait for a table inside. I realised that it’s probably an “only in Australia” thing to decline an outdoors seat because of the risk of sunburn LOL.
A table became available quite quickly, and I started ordering my coffees. There was a wide range of coffees to choose from so I just said whatever the waiter liked, and they ended up recommending a Brazilian coffee. I went with that as an espresso, a milk, and a filter. I also decided that a prawn brioche was a better choice than the mi goreng… for now.
The filter coffee came in a beautiful glass (Chef & Sommelier branded), and it had lovely looking swirls of steam coming from it, and I managed to take some pictures of it with my new lens! The flat white came shortly after that, and the barista also brought the other half of the shot. It’s always awkward when the people presenting food try and move things out of the way or wait for me to take a picture, because I always feel it’s my responsibility to behave and let the servers do what they’re doing. Of course, being in hospitality, the servers feel that they should be the ones to make allowances so it becomes a scene of both parties apologising to one another! Anyway, he managed to hide the espresso behind a bag of coffee beans at my table, to allow me to take a photo of the flat white. He said that he really liked how the espresso tasted by itself, it was nicer than being in milk, which was pretty cool.
He walked away, and I continued taking photos. I realised that there was still stuff in my frame, so I needed to move the coffee bag. Except… I forgot there was an espresso tucked behind the bag, even though it’d literally just been placed there……….. so BAM the espresso tipped and fell onto the empty seat opposite me, and splashed the chair, blanket/cloth thing that was hanging on the chair, and the floor.
Whoops. I’d caffeinated half the furniture in this tiny cafe. And it was loud, so all the tables heard the incident and I felt so terrible because I’d let taking a picture take all of my attention and I’d neglected my environmental awareness. Which is something I consider essential because I don’t want to be *that* person who looks like an Instagrammer and does silly things at a cafe. I try so hard, and I’ve failed at a new cafe who don’t have a prior impression of me. Oh no!
I pretty much apologised to the waiter for what felt like forever since I felt so bad. It also meant I had to ask for an espresso again, and I was really hoping the barista wasn’t hating me!
And when they made my espresso, I got both side of the shot again… so there’s my 4 coffees for the day! Both were delicious, but I actually liked the “side’ one which was served in a glass over the “proper” one that was served in an espresso cup. Even though a double shot is the same prices as a single, I still felt like they’d given me something for free and I STILL felt bad for spilling the coffee so I gave them more money for their troubles.
The end!
So far in 2018…
Circumstances lead me to take a relatively unplanned holiday, and one for visiting relatives instead of exploring by myself. However, my brother managed to suggest that we stop by Hong Kong first, and that way, I could tick off another country that I’ve been too!
I was quite looking forward to it since I heard about the efficiency of Hong Kong, and I figured it’d be easy to navigate and communicate since the people there could speak English.
But first, plane wings!
Oops, I forgot that I intended to split Singapore into two sections, one about street life, and the other specifically for coffee. Guess I should post that now before I get distracted by my Japan adventures!
I started compiling my Singapore list quite a while ago, and one of the recommendations actually came from some coffee people while I was in Dubai. That was Common Man Coffee, and in a stroke of luck, my accommodation was nearby so I knew that if all else failed, I’d have an easily accessible cafe if I ran out of places to visit. Being part of the 5 Senses group, I also know that it’d have a certain level of reliability to it.
What I didn’t anticipate was the late opening times of cafes here. By late, I mean 7:30am. Some other cafes opened even later than that! It was probably the biggest shock to my system here, since I’m used to cafes being open before I’m awake back in Aus.
The prices here are pretty insane too. Breakfast and two coffees cost me about 40SGD, and my conclusion is that Australia does the best Aussie brunch!
LOOK A MELBOURNE POST. FINALLY.
In an effort to publish this, I will simply include Aunty Pegs (the coolest black coffee shop ever) and Patricia’s (cause it’s so pretty). I would also include the ceiling shot of Brother Baba Budan… but then I might not ever get around to posting this. Here goes nothing!
I am determined to post these!!! So here we go.
Neighbourhood by Sean McManus, a new cafe! Mr McManus is pretty awesome, so is this hole in the wall!
Here is a photo dump. Will probably never put words, but hey each picture is worth a thousand of them, right???
