My Coffee Journey
I grew up around kissaten, the old Japanese coffee houses where the room is quiet, the light is low, and a single cup is brewed by hand while you wait for it. Coffee meant one thing to me. It was dark, it was black, and it arrived slowly.
Then I moved to Australia, and the first cafe menu I read did not make sense to me. Flat white, long black, short black, piccolo, magic, batch brew. I recognised almost none of it, and every person ahead of me in the queue seemed to order without thinking. I asked for a flat white because it was the only phrase I could say with confidence. I have been trying to understand the rest ever since.
What started as confusion turned into a hobby. I bought a machine, and I began teaching myself latte art at home, mostly from videos and mostly badly. My first attempts were shapeless blobs of foam sitting on top of a shot. It took 6 months of pouring, and a great deal of wasted milk, before anything looked like it was supposed to.
My Little Progress
I am still learning. But the difference between the first pour and the ones I make now is the clearest measure I have of how far this has taken me. My first pour on the left and a recent one on the right, 6 month apart.
Why I Built This Website
After that first cafe menu, I went looking for something that would explain Australian coffee to me properly. I found plenty of recipes and plenty of opinions, but very little that explained why the drinks are the way they are, or how any of it relates to the coffee I grew up with. The two traditions were always described separately, as though they had nothing to do with one another.
So I decided to write it down myself. Building this site has been how I learn. Working out what a magic actually is, or why a long black is not an americano, or how a country that drinks its coffee black ended up making the equipment that half of Australia now brews with, means understanding it well enough to explain it to somebody else.
The other half of the reason is simpler. I like both of these coffee cultures, I do not think either one is better, and I have not found many places that treat them as two answers to the same question. This is my attempt at that.
What You’ll Find Here
The site is organised around four things:
- The Coffee Culture pages cover how each tradition began, the drinks you will actually see on a menu in each country, and a side by side comparison of the two. Explore coffee culture
- The Learn pages cover the practical side, with separate Australian and Japanese sections for brewing, beans, and tools, and the grind sizes, ratios, and timings I wish somebody had written down for me when I started. Learn coffee
- The Shop stocks beans, cups, and tools drawn from both traditions. Shop aussie kohi
- The Blog is where I write about whatever I am drinking, brewing, or getting wrong. Read my blogs
Thank You
Thank you for visiting. I built this to answer my own questions, and it has turned into something I enjoy far more than I expected.
If you have a cafe you love, in either country, or you think I have got something wrong, I would like to hear about it. The contact page is the best way to reach me.