Table of contents for April 2022 in BeanScene

Covershoot location: Brunetti Oro Flinders Lane 250 Flinders Ln, Melbourne VIC 3000 brunettioro.com.au M200 Distributor: Service Sphere 64-90 Sutton St, North Melbourne VIC 3051 servicesphere.com.au When BeanScene was told there was just one LaCimbali M200 in the country, and it was in the hands of leading equipment and service provider Service Sphere, we made arrangements to install the Italian-designed and manufactured model onto the marble benchtop of another iconic Italian venue, Brunetti Oro in Melbourne. Walking into the venue with restrictions eased and the bustle of city goers, eyes locked with the model as we spotted it from the shop entrance, yet customers were oblivious to the significance of the machine sitting amongst them. “Like most LaCimbali espresso machines, the M200 is a piece of art, an installation and a…

Daniel Shadbolt of Veneziano Coffee Roasters has won the 2020 ASCA AMC Australian Coffee Roasting Championship, held on 5 and 6 February at Criteria Coffee in Port Melbourne. “To come out on top is a dream come true for me. Certainly a pinnacle in my career and something that I’ve strived for to be the best that I can be,” Daniel says. Josh Xue of Campos Coffee placed second and Nawar Adra of Stitch Coffee placed third in the competition. Daniel, who previously placed third in the 2019 Australian Coffee Roasting Championship, is still shocked to have claimed the title. “Having competed in the 2019 Roasting Championship really put me in a great mind frame and gave me an idea of how to approach this recent competition,” he says. The…

Melissa Leong is about a third of the way through filming her third season of MasterChef Australia, and she’s pacing herself for the months ahead. “It’s definitely a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a very long filming season, something like 60 episodes,” she tells BeanScene. Thankfully, she’s already caffeine fuelled. “Right now, I’m drinking Padre Coffee a lot at home which I’m quite a fan of, but I’m in Melbourne, you’re spoilt for choice. There’s so many different roasters and brands that are doing great work. St Ali is always right up there as one of my trusted go-tos as a café and coffee roaster.” While grateful for the variety of good coffee in Melbourne, Melissa says Australians are fortunate to have such a sophisticated and broad ranging coffee culture…

Entering Toby Estate’s flagship Chippendale store in Sydney, open again after seven months of renovations and lockdown, customers are presented with a sleek, modern space, an enormous sweep of hardwood countertop – and the back of a barista. “We flipped the bar around,” explains Toby’s Estate Chippendale Flagship Store Manager Jack Stapelfeldt. Customers also get an eyeful of an even more unusual perspective, courtesy of the curved mirrors hanging above the coffee machines that reflect a birds’-eye view to those sitting at the bar. “Customers can see exactly how their cup of coffee is made, and understand what baristas do,” says Jack. This choice typifies the ethos of the entire refurbishment, according to Jack: to share and educate customers on the highest-quality specialty coffee and invite them into every stage…

Whether consumers want to add a splash of flavour to their latte, sweeten home-made hot chocolates, or concoct specialty teas and frappes, Naked Syrups’ Sales Manager Vince Monardo says the company’s beverage range is up for the task. “It was important to us to release a wide variety of high-quality beverage flavourings, powders and sweet sauces that customers can add to their menu,” says Vince. “While there has been an evolution of boutique bakers and coffees, we felt there was a need for further flavouring options, so we wanted to create a product range that would complement the Australian café market.” Working with natural ingredients, Vince says each product in the Australian-made range is meticulously crafted in single batches, ready to be used across a café menu including its flavoured…

9 Young Street, Neutral Bay, New South Wales, 2089 Open Monday 6:30am – 2pm, Tuesday to Saturday 6:30am – 3:30pm and Sunday 7am – 2pm (02) 9953 5896 Homemade food and fast-paced friendly service is the experience one receives when visiting Against The Grind café, located in the central city suburb of Neutral Bay. Managing Director John Lepouris has upheld the family business for the past five years after his father developed an apartment building with the café located on the ground floor. “I co-founded the company with two baristas who worked at my local coffee shop: Davide Crespi and Hoky Michael. While we started the business together and had a great relationship, last year the boys moved onto their own ventures, and I now head-up the café on my…

Customer service is the cornerstone to the hospitality industry and in particular the café environment. As the world comes out of the pandemic and our options for coffee and food expand, the choice of where the customer wants to spend their hard earned dollars starts to come down to a few simple things: quality, speed and most importantly, customer service. If these key attributes are executed well, it can make your café ‘the spot to be’. I’ve been lucky enough in my career to work in a range of café environments from high volume lobby-style cafés with majority of the clientele being regulars, to roastery café environment that has expectations on knowledge and delivering experiences, as well as destination-style cafés in which people wait over an hour to be seated.…

Elouise del Rosario is the NSW Barista Trainer for Suntory Coffee Australia. Elouise has more than 15 years of experience in the coffee industry. She started as a barista, before moving into management, and now training. Elouise has developed a wealth of knowledge that she enjoys sharing with the next generation of baristas, with a key focus on quality and consistency. When Elouise is not training, you will find her café hopping around Sydney, sipping on a single origin espresso. Matthew Lewin is the 2019 ASCA Vitasoy Barista Champion, and Vitasoy ambassador and coffee consultant. Matthew has worked in the coffee industry for the past 10 years, honing his barista skills and coffee knowledge. He won the 2018 Fushan Cup Barista Championship in China. Matthew is currently the Sales and…

PUQPRESS Tamping is an important part of a barista’s craft, but doing it by hand hundreds of times a day allows inconsistency to creep in, let alone potential damage to your shoulders and wrists. The unparalleled engineering and state-of-the-art design of the Puqpress automatic tamper ensures perfectly compressed coffee grounds and a precisely level tamp – every time – while saving your body from those repetitive movements that eventually take a toll. The Puqpress automatic tamper frees you from worrying about a less-than-perfect extraction, allowing you to focus on the next customer and the next coffee. With more than 50 per cent of Australian cafés now trusting Puqpress, for a limited time only, get your hands on a free Q1 Puqpress with every Perfect Moose ordered. Because perfect milk deserves…

Brunetti Oro Owner Yuri Angele has worked with many different espresso machines since he joined the Melbourne hospitality scene in the 1970s. Pre-COVID, the iconic Italian café and pasticceria was pumping out 250 kilograms of coffee per week at its Flinders Lane venue, and the most important consideration for Yuri, was that his espresso machine handled high volume and produced consistent output. “The quality of our coffee has always been the foundation of what we do so well, and that’s why we partnered with LaCimbali – their machines are a workhorse,” he says. “At peak capacity, we need a machine that’s able to work under pressure and maintain consistency because when our customers come and visit, they expect the same standard of quality every time.” For years, that’s been LaCimbali’s…

In a time when roasters are aiming towards B Corp certification, sharing transparency reports, and making sustainable plans to lower their carbon footprint, coffee machine service and equipment supplier Brew Solutions Australia is on a mission of its own to educate customers about waste reduction. With so much emphasis already on the reusable cup culture, Brew Solutions Business Manager Stacey Benjamin says more attention needs to be paid to the way coffee machines are so often “swapped out” for shiny new ones. “We live in a pretty big throw0away society. There are too many café customers and baristas who don’t appreciate or understand the value of their equipment, and in turn, don’t necessarily understand the upkeep required to look after it. It breaks my heart to see the volume of…

In March, torrential rain impacted communities across the east coast of Australia, resulting in severe flooding, mass town evacuations and thousands of damaged homes. After what had already been a wet summer with above-average rainfall, the saturated, close-to-capacity water catchment areas cannot cope. The intensity of the floodwaters caused significant erosion of dirt, sand, and clay. As a result, local water agencies estimate that the turbidity or cloudiness of the raw water in flood-affected regions has risen at least 100 times above acceptable levels. Turbidity is caused by solid particulates within a water source, which can include soil, sand, as well as clay. These particulates can cause significant damage to municipal water that water authorities distribute to communities. This particularly affects municipal water sources that rely on large-scale sand filters,…

From hot chocolates to chai lattes, Maltra Foods’ Arkadia Beverages line manufactures powdered and liquid products to complement a café’s beverage menu beyond coffee, and now it’s adding Australian made tea to its collection. From April, Brand Manager Nathan Alfrey says the company will launch a range of seven varieties of ethically sourced teas and infusions, obtained exclusively for Australian cafés. “The range has something for all types of cafés depending on your menu, from core lines such as English Breakfast, Earl Grey and Green Sencha to herbal infusions including Chamomile, Lemongrass and Ginger, and Peppermint,” he says. “Arkadia is probably best known for our chai, so we have of course included a Chai Spice as well.” Nathan says Arkadia’s new black and green teas from Ceylon, packaged in loose…

With the start of a new year and renewed optimism in the Australian coffee market for a return to business as usual, Rancilio Australasia General Manager Paul O’Brien is fuelled with excitement for what lies ahead. “We know roasters and cafés have really struggled over the past two years, but the message we want to convey to them, is that we’re here to support them. Rancilio is open for business. We want to engage in conversations and already there’s a real buzz about the opportunities we can partner on,” Paul says. Experiencing little to no supply chain delays over the past year, in what Paul describes as “an extremely vigilant production process” at the manufacturer’s Milan base in Italy, means Rancilio Australia is in a fortunate position to assist new…

142 Featherston Street, Wellington, New Zealand, 6011 Open Monday to Friday 7am – 2pm When searching for a morning pick-me-up after waking up on the wrong side of the bed, look no further than small pastry and sandwich shop Little Grump. Created in November 2021 amid COVID-19, Owners Andrew Craig and Lisa Fierro decided to open the new café in the heart of Wellington City after the success of their other business, Goods café, which is just two kilometres away in Thorndon. “We’ve been running Goods café for four years now, and I’ve always wanted to open a coffee shop in the city,” says Andrew. “After downtown Wellington was hit hard by the events of the pandemic, we found this space available, and it just snowballed from there. It’s been…

If we’re going to keep enjoying the wonderful coffee we have here in Australia, we’re going to need to do it in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly way. I’m sure we’re all well aware nowadays about climate change and the impact humans and our decisions are having on the environment. It’s up to each of us to evolve our everyday habits to play our part in having a more positive impact on the planet – especially around coffee. Climate change is an issue affecting every person and industry around the world, but coffee is particularly vulnerable. It also contributes a lot of emissions, from the farm level through processing, transporting, roasting, the café, and the takeaway cup the customer leaves with. Does this mean we should stop drinking coffee? Probably not,…

The parrot was one of the first latte art patterns that I mastered, and this edition, I’ve stepped it up a notch. I presented my original parrot design at the 2019 Australian Latte Art Championship, but it didn’t contain quite as much complexity as this version, which I developed after being inspired by 2018 World Latte Art Champion Irvine Quek and his Sleeping Parrot design. One of the techniques I use in this design is the ‘cunning eye’ made popular by Arnon Thitiprasert at the 2017 World Latte Art Championship. Rather than using a drop of foam as the eye, you build the eye into the design of the face, really helping to add character and realism to the pattern. Beyond that, you see a greater level of detail, with…

Every time we begin to write an article for BeanScene’s bimonthly column, the landscape changes. We’ve weathered two years of being the “Hermit Kingdom”, building resilience, and heroically keeping the pandemic at bay. The best laid plans have been ripped up time and time again. We’ve rescheduled dates for our Latte Art and Cup Tasters Championship’s four times. Many of our community events have been cancelled. Business is down, and currently in New Zealand, daily COVID-19 cases are hitting six figures. It’s an incredibly weird, unpredictable world to be living in. The only consistent is that tasty brew of coffee in my cup. And right now, every cup counts. In a world where staff shortages, high overheads and working from home is encouraged, hospitality is haemorrhaging. We reached out to…

There’s a change in the air. Just as the autumn leaves begin to fall and the temperature takes a dive, the coffee industry is bracing for what feels like another round of operational challenges after a barricading two years of COVID. Staff shortages remain, finding the right quality of people is an ongoing battle, parts of Queensland and New South Wales are recovering from severe flooding, and the increased price of goods is being felt throughout the supply chain. The price of coffee alone continues its upwards spike for the 17th straight month, the cost of freight has quadrupled for some, and many businesses are having to make the call to bare the price burden or pass it down the line. It’s a challenging environment but one that forces conversations…

Federico Bolanos has experienced two epiphanic moments which he credits to the position he holds as coach of three World Barista Championship (WBC) winners, two WBC finalists, five WBC semi-finalists, 15 national barista champions, and Founder of Alquimia Coffee Company, a roastery based in El Salvador. The first of those experiences took place at family meeting when Federico asked for a cup of coffee. When it arrived, he took a sip and thought he had been served hot chocolate instead of coffee. He asked again for a coffee and the waiter confirmed it was. “I enjoyed that cup of coffee so much that I thought it was something else,” Federico says. Like so many El Salvadorians, Federico grew up understanding coffee to be a functional beverage. His grandfather and great-grandfather…

43 Epsom Road, Open Monday to Saturday 7am – 3pm And Sunday 8am – 3pm 0410 639 393 What started as a pizza restaurant is now a cosy family-friendly café in the heart of Kensington. Local Folk, as its name suggests, is a place for the community to relax with a cup of coffee and tasty brunch. Café Owner Ashley Benson says with the help of Toby’s Estate’s Brunswick blend, the café has developed a steady stream of regulars filtering in each morning. “The Brunswick blend is very unique, with caramel, hazelnut, and praline notes. It’s well-liked by our customers and my personal favourite,” Ashley says. Having partnered with Toby’s Estate for six years, Ashley says he’s always enjoyed working with the roaster. “We’re well supported by Toby’s Estate on…

HAMISH MCKINSTRY – DALLA CORTE AUSTRALIA NATIONAL SALES MANAGER Dalla Corte has announced Hamish McKinstry as its new National Sales Manager. Hamish has worked in the beverage industry for nearly eight years, starting off in the tea sector before making the switch to specialty coffee over five years ago. “In an industry dominated by two or three key brands that compete predominantly on price and aesthetic, there is a huge opportunity for new technology and we’re confident that Dalla Corte is the brand that will revolutionise the market here,” Hamish says. Hamish is excited to see specialty coffee continue to flourish in Australia, as new artisanal roasters emerge and the key specialty brands continue to push the boundaries of innovation and scale. Already seeing positive signs emerge on the other…