Coffee dabbler or devotee, Black Vice is for you

This can't be the optimum ratio of beverage to drinker, but I am ridiculously delighted to be at Black Vice with three cups of coffee. Let me explain.

This inviting cafe, an hour east of the city, is also a coffee roastery with a dozen or more carefully sourced beans from the Americas and Africa.

The coffee menu is three pages long and includes notes on taste, varietal and processing method. Los Pinitos from Costa Rica is a premium Gesha bean and the flavour recalls wild raspberry and vermouth.

El Eden from Colombia leans more to yellow peach and marshmallow and the beans have undergone anaerobic fermentation. I read through this bounteous document, excited but also overwhelmed. I can't imagine life without coffee, but I'm an enthusiast not a geek.

That's when I find the item designed for dilettantish dabblers: the "Caffeinate Me!" For $12, you get the barista's triple-play of the day: a milk coffee, an espresso and a filter. It's like a beer flight but coffee.

Whether you consider it entry-level education, a showcase for deep-divers or simply a gourmet way to drink too much coffee, there is no way to lose. And I don't. I love the perceptible variations and the way brunch becomes a beverage degustation.

Lachlan Dougherty and Lea Schroeter opened Black Vice in June 2019. She's a designer and he's a coffee specialist who schooled up at leading venues including St Ali and Seven Seeds.

This building was originally a bakery, then a video rental store when Dougherty was growing up in the area, but it was derelict when the pair refashioned it into a coffee palace.

Set back from the street with sheltered outdoor tables, Black Vice is another Hurstbridge winner from the green wedge suburb that includes intimate, creative restaurants Greasy Zoe's and St Lawrence.

Head barista Leon Holdsworth was coffee boss at St Ali for nine years; he and Dougherty spent the COVID times strengthening relationships with coffee farmers and working on a coffee approach that balances interest, integrity and accessibility.

One innovation is to combine remarkable single-origin coffees into blends. It's a radical notion – imagine a sommelier witnessing the sloshing together of Grange and Coke – but the Black Vice crew are onto something. Their signature Luxx blend is ineffably satisfying.

The food menu is relatively concise, with a focus on composed dishes of high quality. The bacon benedict stars thick cut, properly sizzled bacon and poached eggs over golden potato rosti. The bearnaise sauce is exemplary.

To make the beef burger, the patty is rubbed with coffee grounds before cooking, giving it bright smokiness. A soba noodle bowl is fresh and punchy with pickled cabbage and sesame dressing.

Coffee makes its way into a cocktail too, the Holy Martini with espresso and rum. The passion is palpable, I'm as caffeinated as I'll ever be, and I'm sure this Black Vice is actually a beautiful blessing.