Coffee is Melbourne's last dignity.
Culture? What doesn't exist is just foreign culture. Livable? The Economist has ranked the world's most livable city for seven consecutive years, and Vienna has just taken its place ... Besides, red wine is not as good as South Australia, and the scenery is not as good as Tasmania-I think the only thing that makes Melbourne people proud is coffee.
In fact, I have visited dozens of coffees in Melbourne, and few of them can give bad reviews.
So you can imagine my surprise when I heard the comment "Melbourne coffee let me down".
The man who said this just came to Australia for a year. He used to work as an engineer in Beijing (I didn't specifically ask which engineer). Before going abroad, he took classes to train fine coffee. After arriving in Melbourne, I went to work in a coffee shop, and then went to RMIT to take a photography class. Now I'm trying to do wedding photography, and I just started training, so I met you.
"I heard that it was very good before coming. In fact, there are many fine coffees in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu. " He went on to say.
I hate people who are not modest and self-righteous, so I have to admire him.
I said that a cup of fine coffee in China is five or six hundred yuan, which is the same as the popularity of fine coffee here. You can buy a cup for three or four yuan. In addition, according to another friend of mine who is a barista, coffee beans with a score of 100 in other places can make coffee with a score of 80, while coffee beans with a score of 80 in most cafes in Melbourne can make coffee with a score of 78 or even 80. That's the point.
Students, be modest! -this sentence is a narration.
However, it is necessary to tell the truth: How good is the coffee in Melbourne?
1.
The "good" of Melbourne coffee first lies in what I said: popularization, mass and civilians.
Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and even Guangzhou and Shenzhen certainly have fine coffee, but compared with the city's volume, it is really too little. In addition to Starbucks, Costa and other coffee chain stores, you don't know when you walk into many drink shops with "cafe" signs.
In contrast, Melbourne may be the city with the highest density of boutique cafes in the world. Poor coffee shops can't be opened at all. Just walk into a coffee shop and the coffee level is above 99%.
Some even exaggerate: every coffee shop in Melbourne is worth a try.
The direct reason why there are so many cafes in Melbourne is that Melbourne people really love coffee.
If you arrive at Melbourne CBD during working hours on weekdays, you will find that almost everyone has a cup of coffee, and everyone in the coffee shop breakfast shop is waiting in line for coffee.
Last week, I passed by Yelp and chose Patricia Coffee Brewer, which ranks first among all Australian cafes. At noon, the queue looks like this:
Just to buy a cup of coffee (Patricia only sells coffee, not food), white-collar workers in suits and ties sit on the ground and wait patiently. ...
Patricia's shop is only 24 square meters. From 8 am to 4 pm, you can sell 1200 cups of coffee every day, with an average of 2.5 cups per minute.
Interestingly, boutique coffee is very popular in Melbourne, but the situation of Starbucks, the global coffee giant, is very bad-it is almost impossible to open it in Australia while Chinese mainland is raiding the city!
In 2000, Starbucks opened its first store in Australia, and then it expanded rapidly as usual. By 2008, Starbucks had opened 90 branches.
However, in just eight years, Starbucks' operating loss in Australia exceeded 1 billion dollars, so it had to close 6 1 poor branches.
Today, there are only 23 Starbucks in Australia, including only 8 in Melbourne.
Indeed, in the atmosphere of independent cafes blooming everywhere in Melbourne, Starbucks' chain quality control and star card points are not attractive, and most of the patrons are tourists.
2.
Of course, the "good" of Melbourne coffee must also mention the quality, taste and experience environment of coffee.
The biggest difference with domestic fine coffee is that Melbourne's fine coffee runs through the whole process.
To understand this, we must first know what is "fine coffee"/specialty coffee.
The so-called "fine coffee", according to the definition of the World Fine Coffee Association SCA (formed by the merger of the former American Fine Coffee Association SCAA and the former European Fine Coffee Association SCAE), is a rigorous and exquisite coffee making process, including the whole process of farmers planting, bean producers selecting beans, roasters baking raw beans, baristas brewing coffee and finally consumers tasting coffee.
This technology pays attention to the quality and flavor of coffee, and it needs high-standard bean selection, exquisite baking technology and brewing technology to perfectly show the flavor of beans so that a cup of coffee can be finished at the most appropriate time.
Boutique coffee has clear evaluation criteria and will be judged by cupping in barista competition:
To sum up, the so-called fine coffee, in people's words, is:
Delicious.
Tongue needs to be experienced, just as tea is for China people. As long as you drink more cups of good coffee in Melbourne, you may not know which of the two good coffees tastes better, but you will definitely know that a cup of poor coffee tastes bad and unbearable.
According to the definition of fine coffee, Melbourne Cafe is far ahead in selecting coffee beans, baking beans and making coffee.
They choose coffee beans from all over the world, and many cafes directly cooperate with plantations in coffee producing areas such as Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Rwanda to purchase coffee beans, and tirelessly look for new seasonal coffee beans.
Colombian farm that supplies coffee beans to 7Seeds cafe.
These famous cafes not only provide coffee for consumers, but also bake a large number of purchased coffee beans and provide coffee beans for other cafes.
How to perfectly display the characteristics and flavor of coffee beans, baking is the most important key, because baking at different depths determines the taste basis of coffee beans. Baking coffee beans is both a technology and an art, and Melbourne's coffee roasters are world-class.
Among them, several famous coffee bean brands in Melbourne are Seven Seeds, Market Lane, Proud Mary, Dukes Coffee Roasters, Industry Beans and so on.
These brands of coffee beans have their own flavors and endless aftertaste.
Take "Mbilima" and "seasonal" beans in Market Lane as examples.
According to reports, Mbilima is produced in the Mbilima water washing plant in Rwanda, and the coffee produced has the flavor of caramel and citrus. You can feel the aftertaste of cloves after drinking. Seasonality is a comprehensive seasonal coffee bean, 75% of which comes from Corre Gosceco in Brazil and 25% from Muduha in Rwanda. The aroma of dark chocolate and peaches can add a different flavor to Australian coffee for no reason.
In terms of coffee brewing technology, there are always Australians in the top barista competitions in the world. Of course, the coffee in Melbourne tastes good, and the excellent quality of Australian milk also has extra points.
In addition, the decoration of Melbourne Cafe is very distinctive. You can throw one back to China and make it an online celebrity shop. Some are frigid, some are rural or industrial, and it's interesting to go shopping every time.
Take some pictures on Instagram for everyone to see:
7 seeds:
Industry beans:
Bench:
Coffee:
3.
Finally, the "good" of Melbourne coffee is that the price is close to the people.
In Melbourne, the price of a cup of coffee is around 4 Australian dollars. According to the Australian minimum wage 19 Australian dollars/hour, you can buy a cup of fine coffee in a coffee shop after working 12 minutes.
This price, not to mention the white-collar workers in the company, is affordable for homeless people.
For no reason, the national average price in Australia is 4.06 Australian dollars, and that in Victoria where Melbourne is located is 3.99 Australian dollars.
The price of latte is similar.
The latte that consumes the most coffee in Australia accounts for 39%, and it accounts for 24% for no reason. The new state where Sydney is located is the "White State", and Victoria where Melbourne is located is the "Latte State".
Meanwhile, in Shanghai, if the minimum wage is calculated in 20 yuan per hour, you need to work for an hour and a half to buy a Starbucks.
This is still more expensive than Starbucks. Basically, as long as the beans can tell the origin, it starts at 50 RMB.
The price list of a boutique coffee I visited in Beijing before.
The market environment determines the pricing, which is helpless. It can only be said that the development of domestic fine coffee is still a long way.
To sum up, for people who like coffee, Melbourne can really be said to be a paradise-high quality and taste combined with the price of grounding gas make Melbourne's fine caffeine approachable and indispensable.
Well, for the sake of Melbourne coffee, I can only say platitudes in the end.