Coffee in Absentia

So nearly a year between posts...not the greatest blog in the world huh.

I certainly haven't backed off on the coffee, but I admit I was struggling to come up with new material, and then life happened.

Ok let's talk coffee..

I have some new regular haunts that I'd like to give a little shout out to:

Element 6

These guys are tucked away in a location obviously designed for cheap rent rather than foot traffic in West Ryde, just near the train station. They use 5 Senses coffee (more on that later) and their regular barista Sarah knows how to pull a shot, not so big on the latte art side of things but hey, taste first right?

Coffee Trad3rs

A newish cafe opened up in the Piazza section of Top Ryde Shopping Centre. The owner/roaster/barista is Joseph, not a huge conversationalist initially, but if you show an interest in coffee suddenly he lights up and it's a struggle to wind up the conversation so you can go read a book or something.

They have several in-house blends, '3 Angels' is my favourite with a great dark chocolate flavour. This isn't like some wine-poofs (guilty) who have to paint a picture to convince you there's a flavour in there, the dark chocolate is obvious and delicious.

The food here isn't 'amazing' and is more like some tapas options and pizza. Breakfast isn't anything to write about either. Just stick to the coffee.

AIR Coffee

I'm pretty sure I mentioned these guys in a previous post. Would you believe that a year later I only made my way over there last weekend?

The coffee is good, again they have their own in-house blends and single origin roasts. They were training in a new barista who seemed to consistently serve the coffee under temperature (somewhere around 40 degrees is my guess) which I pointed out to the manager.

The potential is definitely there though, they have great beans, I've bought a guatamala-something-or-other S.O. to try so I'll report back on that.

I'm pretty sure you can find all 3 of those cafes on beanhunter.com.au so if you drop by and like what they do please review them, I'm sure they will appreciate it.


So let's move on to preferred bean suppliers. Firstly, let me tell you what I like - in milk-based coffees I like a caramel or dark chocolate flavour. In espressos I prefer the really citrus/fruity flavoured coffee.

Best Milk-Based Coffee Beans

For my money, I really enjoy the house-blend beans from The Baron in Castle Hill, the '3 Angels' blend from Coffee Trad3rs and the house-blend from Espresso Organica in Concord.

Best Espresso Coffee Beans

Again, the '3 Angels' blend at Coffee Trad3rs makes for a cracker espresso, it's outside of the normal flavour profile I shoot for, but has some really complex flavours and strangely a cinnamon-like backtaste that you just don't get in milk.

The '24/7' blend from 5 Senses. Great flavour, has that citrus that I look for. I like a strong coffee and I find that 5 Senses coffee, while having a great flavour, doesn't hold up well in milk for me, it just gets lost.

Generally I find most of the Guatemala S.O's tend to have the citrus/fruity flavours I look for in espressos that linger for a long time on the tongue.

As a final sign-off for this post I'll show a couple of examples of where the latte art is up to. I'm still far from great at it, these aren't the best examples, but they're all I had on my phone at the time.

A lot of them are still turning out a bit wonky :( oh well, keep practising!