We should do coffee

WITH CAM O’KEEFE

Finding its way out of the roaster and into our local bean scene this week, Constant Coffee provides a point of difference to what many in our Geelong café/coffee/roastery landscape are hoping to achieve.

Here is a slightly off-the-beaten-track venue positioned in our café-capital suburb, finding its feet with quality and substance, rather than foot traffic and convenience. Besides offering some of the best espressos I’ve tried in months, this niche spot also offers workshops, education courses, and events, all centred around coffee. And although I’m always looking to promote the new, it’s hard to promote just a single coffee joint doing great things in our local community, so here’s a quick shout out to a couple of others flying the bean flag high at the moment:

• Coffee Cartel: One of the Geelong originals (and the best, for me) who continue satisfy the masses with their continual, high quality, range of blends and single origin coffees (many that they import from small farms across Africa and Central America)
• Funk: Besides being able to provide completely brilliant bread, patisseries and (in winter) mulled wine, the coffee at this Geelong West outpost is worth the journey alone. The small, glassed shopfront serves fresh batches from Kazbah Coffee Roasters, based in Birregurra.
• Common Ground: I’m not saying this is a destination coffee place as such, but given the venue has gone from a hatted, and much celebrated, foodie palace, into its current and more laid back form as a regenerative farm, this is worth a note. The intention of this social enterprise is to connect and empower those involved through food, passion and farming. And the coffee? Square One Coffee Roasters supplies some of Melbourne’s top hospitality venues including Hazel, Liminal, Dessous, and Lilac Wine. Enough said.
• Love Tea: Yes, not coffee here but it occurred to me I should probably make note of one of the best tea producers our region has. Close to now two decades old, Love Tea was born from a desire to create organic tea products that benefitted drinker’s health and wellbeing, but of course tasted brilliant. The tea can be found in some of Geelong best quality grocers and cafés.

Enough about coffee, let’s turn our attention back to the news we broke last week about Melbourne restaurant superstar, Chin Chin, and their plans to set up shop temporarily here in Geelong. Owner and local lad Chris Lucas has remained relatively coy when asked the question on all our lips: when will the CC doors be swung open exactly? Well, much sooner than we all anticipated. We’ve been told by a contact at Lucas HQ that I use to work with, as well the tenant’s landlord (GMHBA Stadium) we are actually only two to three weeks away to seeing their famous neon lights and spicy SE Asia dishes on show for the Geelong public. It’s hard not to get caught up in the buzz of a Australian restaurateur royalty choosing Geelong as the next spot to open their landmark food brand, beating out all other national capitals and food destinations, other than Melbourne and Sydney. Whether you like the food here or not, it’s encouraging to see some pretty big players in our national restaurant scene appreciate the maturity our local food culture is reaching.

In other, less thrilling news, we’re sad to announce the closure of micro brewer Brewicolo, who, like many in the craft brewing industry, have felt the extremes of the fierce market in over supply, as well a growing trend among beer drinkers for less-but-better-quality consumption. It’s bloody tough out there for our small, independent breweries: in the last couple of months, even some of the country’s biggest (and perceived most-successful) craft breweries have faced the worst of decisions for any business. Deeds Brewing (Glen Iris) Hawkers (Windsor) and Dainton Beer (Dandenong) have all experienced pain recently, but those in the brewing-community have warned there are many (many) others out there hanging on by only threads, as the cost of the living/cost of product, and an uncertain/dwindling (and oversaturated) market, starts to create a perfect storm in our national craft beer industry. So, batten down the hatches, purchase a few sixers (or slabs) and support some of your favourite craft beer makers through these challenging times.