Canberra's Cosmorex wins coffee roaster award in Melbourne
If you are always on the hunt for the best brew, you might find it in the humble suburb of Fyshwick.
A Canberra coffee house recently won the Champion Australian Roaster award at the Australian International Coffee Awards in Melbourne. It's the first time that an ACT business has taken out the award.
Bean!Roasters by Cosmorex Coffee won the title out of 658 entries from around the world, with coffee industry experts doing blind tastings on sweetness, acidity, body and aftertaste.
The top-scoring blend is called Panama, and has a unique "fruity" flavour, according to Cosmorex Coffee's development manager, Michael Sloggett. Specific notes include red apple or strawberry with a brown sugar sweetness.
Sloggett says these flavours come from the way the beans are processed, in a method called "honey process" that begins when the bean is still a cherry.
"Most of the cherry is removed but some of the flesh is left on and allowed to dry with the coffee bean. So what ends up happening is that flesh goes through a nice soft fermentation process and it creates sweetness and lots of interesting winey or fruity flavours as a result," he says.
If you're wondering where you can get your hands on this coffee bean concoction, bags of beans are available over the counter in Cosmorex's Fyshwick cafe, Bean!Roasters, or via phone or email.
While Bean!Roasters' baristas only serve coffees using the Panama blend on occasion, the Esperance blend is served six days a week.
Esperance was the winner of a silver medal in the hotly contested cappuccino category at the same competition.
"Everyone is extremely happy about it. We've stepped up work on product over the last two years and we've had some good successes in the past, but this has been our biggest," Sloggett says.
"The products that we are creating at Bean!Roasters are judged by our peers and by our competitors to be at the leading edge of coffee products in Australia."