Australia is a proud nation of coffee snobs. I take ownership of this. We know really good coffee, and in fact, we accept nothing less and are very put out if we get a coffee that is not up to scratch. Unfortunately when we travel, we are forced into a position of accepting much inferior coffee, or we turn to a substitute rather than suffer the indignity of an inferior coffee. Unfortunately, on our road trip in the USA, we wrote about 35 Weird And Wonderful Observations About America and Americans, we noted that, in the main, American brewed coffee was not good, as in not good at all.

We can prove that we are coffee snobs

This is how obsessive we are about our coffee. If our favourite barista at our favourite coffee shop is not working that day, we keep on walking. Truth be told, we know her shifts, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. On the other days, we hunt down either new prey or again look for another barista that we know do exceptional coffee.

A coffee shop is dependent upon a good barista. People will say “Maria is on today” and we run there, or “Matt is having a day off”, and we go the other way. Luckily we have a lot of really good baristas around but the competition is fierce, and we as customers are fiercer.

If we are not sitting at a coffee shop, then we can be seen carrying a takeaway coffee. Australians are adept at carrying a coffee in one hand while talking on the mobile with the other.

It takes skill and hard work to be a coffee snob.

How we came to be coffee snobs

Australia started off making a very good brew, which is a cup of tea thanks to our British convicts. It was only when we needed skilled immigrants to help us on projects like the building of dams etc. that we got an influx of Italians and Greeks, and we started to enter the phase of good coffee making and drinking.

Then we got coffee people from Italy, Turkey, and Lebanon, and that is when we entered the world stage of coffee. While we acknowledge that Italians still do really excellent coffee, the question being asked is “Is Australia now the world leader in coffee?” I will put my two cents worth forward and say, yes – we have now taken the crown and with total respect to the Italians, if it were not for them sharing their skills along with other cultures chipping in, then we could not own this crown.

The coffee snobs order:

We are such coffee snobs that this is how an order went the other morning when we were out with friends. You might think that we are pretentious and demanding and you would be totally correct. As I have stated, we are unashamedly coffee snobs.

“a double shot espresso”

“ latte, with almond milk, extra hot, not much froth and in a mug not a glass”

“ a skinny cappuccino in a mug, ¼ inch of foam, hold the chocolate sprinkles” –

“ a long black, double shot, extra hot”

“a skinny chai latte in a cup”

“ a flat white, in a bucket if you have it, extra hot” (that was me)”

“Soy flat white extra hot, in a mug”

“Decaf, flat white, in a mug, extra hot” (like seriously ! – decaf!)

At the table next to ours someone asked for rice milk latte, and another mocha, and they got it.

We like our coffee extra hot, and there are 2 schools of thought on why we have to specify this. One is that there was a court case where a lady was scalded with coffee from a chain restaurant and all places since then, had to serve their coffee at a certain temperature unless it was specifically asked to be extra hot, thereby mitigating the owner from responsibility. The other is that good coffee beans need the milk at a certain temperature and that scalding the milk will ruin the taste. It seems, however, that Australian coffee snobs like their coffee “extra hot”.

After carefully drinking our coffees, we analyse the coffee and the barista’s skills.

They scalded the milk

The beans are not freshly ground

The coffee is not hot enough

Too much froth

Not as good as Maria’s – our barometer for an excellent coffee

 Further evidence of our coffee snobbery

Australians are unashamedly coffee snobs. We contend that we have the best coffee in the world. We Australians are demons when it comes to good coffee. So demanding and so skilled at recognizing good coffee, a popular chain who tried to make an impression on the Australian market were not accepted because it was not as good as we could get at our local coffee shops.

Such is our penchant for coffee that most of us own a coffee machine at home. I am talking a real coffee machine AND an Italian Moka machine. Many of we coffee snobs, have not touched an instant coffee in years.

We consider that drip brew or filtered coffee to be an insult upon our intelligence, and as coffee snobs we laugh derisively at people who serve or enjoy this.

Verdict

The coffee in Australia is ludicrously good. We are a proud nation of coffee snobs, and we do have the right to own the crown.