Day 1 – Planes, planes & planes
So I’m on my way to Europe! I’m currently sitting 11,581m above the very top corner of Australia, traveling at 848km/h. Man that sounds fast — but I’m glad we’re not going any slower. 
In 1.5km I’ll be exactly half way between Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur. Oh look, we just did! read more…
Muse – United States of Eurasia
This is my first (of what I hope is many) music review. Recently, I’ve been listening to The Resistance — the new album from Muse. If you haven’t yet heard, I recommend that you give it a listen. Today, I’m going to review track 4: United States of Eurasia. read more…
Best Coffee in Melbourne – Part 5
And now, the moment you have all been waiting for… Humphreys official countdown of the top nine Melbourne cafes is complete! This post discuss the top two cafes, and provides a summary of the whole countdown. read more…
Melbourne Coffee Crawl – Part 4
We are now coming to the business end of the coffee crawl — there are only four left! All the rest are really awesome, and there isn’t really big reasons why any of them are ranked higher than each other. It was really hard to order them on any objective scale, so they are ranked completely subjectly based on which I would choose to go to if distance wasn’t an issue. read more…
Farewell Exhaust Pipe
For those of you who have been in Tasmania recently, you will know that it has been raining alot. Well, all that rain has had its toll on the Midlands Highway. You can barely drive more than a couple of km’s down the highway without having to swerve to avoid a large section of potholes. But that’s not the scary thing about driving in the rain. What’s most freaky is coming up behind trucks. Not only are they big and slow, but the trail of spray that comes off the back of them is so thick that you cannot see where you are going until you overtake them.
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Melbourne Coffee Crawl – Part 3
Welcome to part three of my Melbourne Coffee Crawl series. If you have came straight to this post, you might prefer to read parts one & two first. I found it really hard to compare the rest of these cafes to each other — they are all great! In fact, the two cafes that I am reviewing today are not far behind number one. So lets get the ball rolling and look at number…
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Melbourne Coffee Crawl – Part 2
As you have probably discerned from the title, this is Part 2 of my countdown of the best places to get coffee in Melbourne. If you came straight to this page, then you might prefer to start reading at Part 1. Otherwise, let’s jump straight back into the reviews at number…
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Melbourne Coffee Crawl – Part 1
A number of weeks ago Dan & I went on a pilgrimage to Melbourne to drink the best coffee we could get our hands on. There was no difficulty in finding a good brew. Infact, the worse coffee that I had was still better than most of the coffee I have ever paid for back home in Launceston! The best, however, was so good that if I had caught swine-flu while I was over there, I would have died satisfied. Ok, that’s not quite true, but still, I’m glad that I came back swine-flu free!
The trip was really awesome, fun, & satisfying. What could be more satisfying than walking into a cafe where you are greeted by friendly staff, taken in by the funky decor and groovy & uplifting music, and only moment later be drinking a shot of amazing coffee that is only fit to be drunk by God himself? I defintely had no excuse to sing, “I can’t get no… sat-is-fac-tion”.
Dan had been given a list of cafes to visit that had been separated into two groups: Must visit and Worth visiting if in the area. That list was invaluable as it kept leading us from awesome coffee to awesome coffee. Since I’ve been back, a number of people have asked where they should go for coffee in Melbourne. So, here is the official list of Humphreys Top Nine Melbourne Cafes. I know that nine is a weird number to countdown from, but we only went to nine cafes, and they are all worth mentioning.
This is the first of four or five posts that I plan on posting over the coming week. The first few posts will discuss/review a few cafes each, with the final post revealing my favourite Melbourne cafe. So, if you enjoy coffee and plan on being in Melbourne at some point in your life, make sure that you subscribe! Even if you aren’t a coffee obsessed nut like me, you will definitely be thankful you went to one of these places.
My Disclaimer: I’ve only been to these places once or twice, so I’m not able to comment on many things — especially consistency. For example, I could have gone to a really crap cafe, but fluked a good brew. Likewise, I could have been really unlucky and have been served the only “not awesome” coffee they made all year. Also, my comments are completely biased towards what I like/disliked and how I felt on the day. Your opinion of the place may completely different, and that’s ok Other than that, I wish you all happy drinking!
So let the countdown start at number…
#9 — 7 Grams
505 Church St
Richmond
This is the home of the national latte art champion Con. I went here a about a year ago and my flat white not only tasted amazing, but it was topped off with a perfect double rosetta! This cafe has also been highly recommended by many people and appears in many of the “Best cafe” lists that I have read.
Unfortunately, my excitment about 7 Grams was short lived. Maybe I was completely over caffinated (I had already had 4 shots by then that day)? Maybe a new staff member was being trained or on trial and they didn’t have the same standard of coffee as this place is know for? Maybe some terrorists had staged an attack on 7 grams, swapping all the Veneziano beans with some second rate stale rubbish? Oooh, i should call that in to the terrorism hotline! Which of these possibilities was the reason? I’m not sure.
I’m am disappointed to say that this was the worst coffee that I had for the entire trip. Home of the national latte art champion? I’m sure it is, but I’m guessing he wasn’t there that day because I didn’t know that a “speckled milky-way” was considered latte art 
. I know many people will be annoyed at me for placing 7 Grams at #9, but this ranking is completely based on my most recent visit. Anyway, here’s what the shop-front looks like from the top of a Google car and below that is a good looking bearded guy sitting inside 7 Grams:
It’s here that I should mention that while in Melbourne our taste buds were treated to a very high quality of coffee. So in reality, the coffee I had there was still pretty amazing. I’m just saying that out of the specially selected cafes that we went to, this one served up the worst cup. You would, however, be doing an amazing job to get a better brew than this anywhere in Launceston!
7 Grams is less than a block from the East Richmond train station. So if you find yourself on a train that is coming to a stop at East Richmond jump out and grab a coffee. Hopefully you’ll have better luck than we did I’ll defintely giving it a second chance next time I’m in town. Check out the mini-map below or view in full at Google Maps.
If you’ve been to 7 Grams it would be awesome if you could leave a comment below as tell us about your experience!
That concludes part one. Stay tuned, because I’ll be posting the next three cafes in a day or two :-)
300 Roasts!
About 15 months ago Stuart and I started roasting our own coffee beans! Not long after, Andy, Dan & Mal joined in on the fun. Today, our coffee roaster has reached its 300th roast! That means we have roasted 173.188kg of green beans! In fact, while writing this, I’m roasting #302!
Our first ever roast was done using a mixing bowl, whisk, and heat gun. It has since evolved into a “highly tuned” machine consisting of an old bread maker, a heat gun, temperature probe, a computer, and a floor fan to cool the beans. It’s hard to believe that we only started roasting coffee a bit over a year ago!
Here’s a photo of our current roasting set-up:
Roasting coffee at home is surprisingly easy. So if you are interested in checking out our roaster or even doing some roasting of your own, leave some comments below How rad would it be if we replaced Launceston’s wood smoke problem with a home coffee roasting smoke problem? Well maybe not :-P
Stay tuned, because I plan on writing some more in-depth posts about our roaster and roasting in general.
My first post
Well I’ve finally created a blog — although it’s not my first. Years ago I used to have a blogger blog but it’s been a long time since I’ve updated that. So I thought it was time for a new one!
I am planning on posting about three different topics. You can read or subscribe to all of them or just the topic (or tag) that you are interested in.
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