Australian Coffee

Today and tomorrow we'll be serving some single origin coffee all the way from exotic Australia.

Traditionally, coffee has generally been grown in areas with reasonably high altitude. Recently however, some plantations have popped up in locations further away from the equator but at lower altitude which can give comparable conditions as far as agriculture is concerned.

One such farm is the Mountain Top Estate near Byron Bay, in far north NSW. If you add these reasonably good conditions with the technological advantage that a more developed nation has, you have the potential for some high quality beans.

Now I'm not saying that these guys are producing the best, as they often claim. That would be a flawed statement, since the upper band of quality coffee is not about a simple ranking of quality but about what the drinker gets out of the cup, which will vary for each individual. They do however prove that a solid bean can be produced in non-traditional circumstances. Regardless of the claims they may make to sell their beans, the operators of this small NSW plantation do genuinely have a passion for producing the best coffee possible, and will use all innovations and experimentations to improve the process. Often old plantations in traditional countries of origin are operated with heavy tradition built up over generations which can hinder progress to new methods of growing and processing.

One point of difference though is that due to the high cost of labour in Australia compared to many coffee growing nations, most of the processing and sorting must be done by machines rather than human hands which are capable of a much more thorough job.

I'm interested to see how projects like this in nations like Australia will ultimately aid growers in developing nations to produce better coffee and to live well and sustainably.