Canberra: In Pursuit of the Perfect Cuppa

Canberra sports a wide variety of coffee roasters and cafes, which range from the Melbourne-esque Lonsdale Street Roasters to ONA Coffee's South American themed Cupping Room. There is Gus's, laying claim to Canberra's first outdoor cafe seating, and Sly Fox, erected on trestle tables and milk crates each morning. Amid all the choices on offer, these are a few of my favourite Civic and Inner North* cafes.


#1 The Cupping Room, corner University Ave and London Cct, Civic

A relatively new arrival in Canberra, The Cupping Room is the latest venue to be opened by the award-winning Canberra coffee roasters, ONA Coffee. As well as their exceptional house blends, they serve a wide variety of single origin coffees that are each matched to different brewing methods.

Service staff, baristas and roasters are all friendly, knowledgeable and happy to discuss every detail of the coffee process, from different bean varieties and farm locations right through roasting and preparation to the beverage in your cup. Coffees are delivered to the table with tasting notes and the background story for each batch of beans.

The Cupping Room’s kitchen produces a wide variety of experimental dishes and classic favourites with a South American twist. There are several vegan and gluten free options on the menu, and they are happy to modify other dishes to meet dietary needs. The Cupping Room does not offer muffins or other quick takeaway snacks, but makes for a superb venue for a sit-down breakfast or lunch in Civic.

#2 Wilbur's, 14 Hackett Pl, Hackett

A true hidden gem, Wilbur's is an unassuming cafe-bar located in Hackett. At first glance, it's just a bar with a lunch menu and a coffee machine. Second glance doesn't reveal much more, but give them the chance and they'll give your tastebuds a treat to remember. The menu offerings are mostly on the bar snack end of the culinary scale, but their cake fridge is another matter. Don’t be fooled by the setting; these cakes make for superb treats and would comfortably compete with a fine French gateau.

Wilbur’s brews coffee from a Sydney roaster, Di Stefano. Although Di Stefano is far from a renowned coffee roaster, Wilbur’s prepares the beans well in both their milk-based and black coffees. While its location makes it less than ideal for a quick lunch-break visit, Wilbur’s is a great place to stop in on the way back from the Saturday Farmers Market or on a lazy Sunday.

#3 Lonsdale Street Roasters, 7 Lonsdale St, Braddon

An outpost of the Melbourne hipster cafe scene, Lonsdale Street Roasters runs two cafes on the street that gives them their name. The roastery, at number 23, is focused on the coffee, with a blackboard outside giving only a limited range of food options. Wander a few shops down to number 7 and you'll find a markedly different venue. The walls are decorated with bicycles and a line of blackboards listing a more extensive menu. Retro light fittings illuminate a case filled to bursting with pastries from the Flute Bakery.

The menu at number 7 is largely dominated by a variety of paninis. The flavours on offer vary significantly, with a more exciting array than the usual choice of chicken & avocado, sundried tomato & olive, or ham, cheese & tomato. Goats’ cheese, lamb, braised pork, prosciutto and chorizo were some of the ingredients to make an appearance. However, the large menu offers only vegan cupcakes or gluten free fruit with yogurt for those with dietary restrictions. If your diet is unrestricted, you will find that the pastries on offer are excellent and the paninis are both varied and delicious.

Lonsdale Street Roasters serves excellent long blacks with complex flavours, using their various single origin beans. However, a few of the blends used for their milk-based coffees leave something to be desired. While palatable, the bland flavour profile is what might be expected from mass-produced coffee rather than a small roaster. Extensive hard surfaces and loud background music are certainly in keeping with the hipster vibe, but make it a poor choice venue for a sit-down lunch. Instead, take advantage of its pastries and paninis, coupled with its proximity to Civic, and grab yourself a quick takeaway breakfast or lunch.

#4 Sly Fox, Inner North cycle path between Macarthur Ave and David St, O’Connor
Sly Fox is quite unlike the other cafes on this list, being neither a roastery nor a hidden gem out in the suburbs. They accept bitcoins as payment—the first Canberra cafe to do as such—but the most significant difference from their rivals is their complete lack of either roof or walls. Patrick sets up his trestle table counter beside the Inner-North bike path to catch the weekday rush of commuters cycling to work. Sporting an awning when the weather turns foul and running off a small generator, Sly Fox is a “venue” worth visiting.

They serve Lonsdale Street Roasters coffee, and prepare it well, but don’t think of this as just another place you can stop in and grab a takeaway coffee on the way to work. While they’re presented in paper cups you could sip along the ride to work, it’s worth stopping for a few minutes and pulling up a milk crate. The resident bike mechanic can tune your bike while you breakfast on coffee and Sly Fox’s food of the day. There is no set menu, nor much chance of finding the same food there twice. Instead, Patrick brings in whatever has inspired him for that day. Perhaps you’ll find fresh fruit salad and yogurt, an upside-down cake, or even his mum’s secret recipe spiced date scones. Every time I catch myself dismissing Sly Fox as a gimmicky venue, more about the setting and convenience than the produce, I remind myself of the delicious food I’ve tried there.

#5 The Fresh Roast Coffee House, 30 Kemble Ct, Mitchell
While Jindebah Hills is easily Canberra’s most award-decorated coffee roaster, the small cafe attached to their roastery is not widely known. Visitors could be forgiven for underestimating it, given the semi-industrial surrounds and almost non-existent food offerings.

Little emphasis is placed on presentation, and latte art—seemingly a must in every cafe—is conspicuously and intentionally absent from their coffees. But even lacking a delicious menu or outstanding presentation, The Fresh Roast is made exceptional on the grounds of their coffee alone. Complex, rich and varying flavours abound in their single origin and blended coffees. The couple of staff members who keep the place going are happy to discuss their produce and the history of the business.

While the lack of food on offer makes The Fresh Roast a poor choice for a meal, they make an excellent stop if all you want is good coffee.

* I know there are many excellent cafes south of the lake—and have enjoyed visiting several of them—but reviewing those will have to wait until I've made a more extensive sampling of their ranks.

Sorbets: A dash of liqueur and a sprinkle of SCIENCE!

A few recent experiments trying to make sorbets and icecreams without an icecream maker were reasonably successful, but suffered from a need for supervision. The frozen goodies had to be removed from the freezer and stirred/blended thoroughly several times to get a good texture, and still tended to become too hard for my tastes. I would probably have continued making them in this laborious fashion for some time to come, had I not been given a burst of inspiration by my partner. She suggested I make some sorbet using leftover ALDI apple schnapps as flavouring. Not only did this promise to be an exciting sorbet, but I realised it could solve all the problems of preparing sorbet without an icecream maker.

The purpose of all the stirring and blending of sorbets while freezing is to avoid large ice crystals, which turn smooth icecream into solid ice. Ideally, the finished product freezes only just enough to stop being liquid, without ever hardening fully. Most sorbets are at this ideal point straight out of the icecream maker or after a day or so of freezing. But even the best sorbet will often start hardening over the following days. By dropping the freezing point closer to a residential freezer's set temperature of -20°C, there is the potential to stop this from happening.

Ah ha! It's time for SCIENCE!

Alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water. In fact, with a melting point of -114°C, it freezes at a lower temperature than carbon dioxide. DDBST has data for the freezing points of ethanol (non-poisonous alcohol) combined with water in different molar ratios. Some algebra (it's been a while, but I still remember the basics) produced a liquid-solid phase diagram for methanol and water with a more useful scale. Adding sugar affects the vapour pressure according to Raoult's Law, which further decreases the melting point and... sod it.

In the end, I made my usual sugar syrup, added schnapps until it tasted good and then tried freezing the results...

Twelve hours later, I gave it a quick stir to break up a few large ice crystals that had formed around the top, and put it back in the freezer. By this stage, my other sorbet would have already frozen through, but the liqueur sorbet was being more resistant and was still resolutely slushy.

Another twelve hours and it had hardened as much as it was likely to, forming a soft sorbet without a trace of sharp ice crystals. The method (splashing stuff in and seeing what happens) certainly needs some refinements in quantities, but the sacrifice (of making and eating sorbet) is one I am willing to make...

Next into the freezer: ALDI* triple sec orange sorbet.

* I'm not sponsored by ALDI, but I do like buying cheap liqueurs from them for my experiments.

2013 - A year in video review

So, it's been quite some time since my last post. First there was Christmas (whose adventures now need to be belatedly recorded here) and then I spent a few weeks trying to remember how to use the video editing software that had been gathering dust on my computer. My partner and I had gathered all our raw video footage from the year and set each other the challenge of compiling something from it.

Compiling, it turned out, was easier said than done, but nothing against the challenge of getting my old CS4 version of Adobe Premiere to output a usable file. I had forgotten the suffering that entailed. But it is done at last, and I've uploaded it to the interwebs for the judgement of the world.

2013 - A Year's Adventures from Nick Ward on Vimeo.