Industry Beans

It's no big deal, by now, the coffee menu in a Melbourne cafe, with its list of single origins and Cup of Excellence, Aeropress and V60 … but cold-drip caviar, latte pearls, coffee toffee and cold-drip jelly? What's with that?

Coffee chemistry is the short answer, and the chief chemists are Trevor Simmons, who along with brother Steve owns the new Fitzroy cafe-roastery Industry Beans, and chef Shaun Landman, who previously worked with the brothers at their Northcote cafe, Penny Farthing Espresso.

Also experimental is the building - while we love a warehouse conversion with all its distressed brickwork and sand-blasted timber, the Industry lab is in a new tilt-slab affair known as Unit 3. (Unit 2, next door, is a concrete void used as some kind of extreme fitness club; when the roller door is up, you can see people performing boot-camp jerks with minimal equipment. When it's down, you hear the sound of punching bags being punched and weight bars clattering to the concrete floor.)

With black-painted pallets creating a long mezzanine along one side, pale timber cladding the concrete walls, a black-tiled galley kitchen and espresso and brew bars, the brothers have transformed the bland concrete box into a smart and stylish space.

They've installed a mix of long, low communal tables and small, high two-seaters inside, but the seating pick is under a covered pergola out front (it will be heated in winter).

Landman has brought his inventive approach to cafe food to the new venue, matching it with the Simmons' enthusiasm for coffee-and-food experiments.

A breakfast of brioche french toast is drizzled with maple syrup, blueberry molasses and double-whipped cream, and garnished with the aformentioned coffee caviar: little spheres of coffee conjured el Bulli-style out of an Ethiopia Yirgacheffe brew treated with calcium lactate and sodium alginate; they give a little cool coffee pop in your mouth.

Toasted granola is served with chai milk and studded with dark chocolate smoked in-house in an improvised chocolate smoker (the trick is to get smoke but not heat so the chocolate doesn't melt).

The coffee experiments appear elsewhere on the menu: there's cold-drip cured salmon, and a hand-minced fillet of kangaroo is laced with espresso and chilli, grilled just-pink and served on a brioche bun with a leek and tomato braise. The meat is gamey and just-dry, a nice contrast to the sweet vegetables and the brioche.

The coffee-and-food chemistry is fun, but the main game here is roasting and brewing: out back are racks of green beans and a 12-kilo Probat roaster, with Steve Simmons at the controls. Beyond the pearls and the caviar, the coffee menu lists a range of single origins and blends, roasted to suit espresso, Aeropress, pourover and syphon brews.

The Fitzroy blend is the go-to for milk coffee, while the singles feature for black. A Nicaragua Cup of Excellence short black is creamy and rounded, a little lemony but without the aggressive acidity that can make you single-origin shy on short blacks.

A Brazil Sitio Canaa is viscous, toasty and raisin chocolatey, while a Burundi Kayanza Kinyovu, a high-altitude washed bourbon brewed as a pourover, is a dark cola colour, with a silky mouth and hints of tobacco and a bit of mild lemon tartness as it cools.

Long blacks are served as a double ristretto with a graduated beaker of hot water on the side so you can top them up yourself - a nice touch, and a prompt to indulge in a little lab work of your own.

Breakfast Brioche french toast with coffee caviar.
Lunch Chilli and espresso-infused kangaroo burger on brioche bun.
Drinks Espresso coffee $4; Aeropress, pourover $6; syphon $8