Support these six Victorian coffee roasters who deliver

You usually go to Bright for the scenery. This beautiful town in the foothills of the Australian Alps is your entry point into Victoria’s High Country and routinely gathers weary Melburnians in search of an alpine getaway. How do those weary travellers get enough energy to explore the region? Sixpence Coffee is the answer. This family-run small-batch coffee roastery is located in an old mechanics garage next to Reed & Co Distillery, and they’re selling some of the best coffee in the region. Now, you can pick up bags of the stuff online. 

If you’re headed up to spa country in the Macedon Ranges region, you might just pass by the picturesque town of Blackwood. It’s here you’ll find Martin Street Coffee Roasters, a coffee roastery that sets itself apart by using handmade, “fluid bed” air roasting machines. This might not mean much to your average coffee drinker, but it will fill you with a sense of sustainable pride to know that this roasting equipment uses 20 per cent less energy and emits 90 per cent less smoke than traditional wood and gas-fired methods. Keen to support them? Hit up the online store. 

Out in the Goldfields, near Castlemaine, is Das Kaffeehaus. Alongside micro-roastery Coffee Basics, this venue also doubles as a Viennese coffee house that serves traditional Austrian food, thanks to the influence of owners Edmund Schaerf and Elna Schaerf-Trauner. The Schaerf family is a pretty well-known name in the European coffee industry, so you can be assured the coffee here is superior. While we can’t visit them IRL, we can support the brand via its online store which sells the brand’s signature house blend as beans or ground especially for your coffee brewing vessel.

St Ali is a pivot master. This much-loved South Melbourne café quickly switched up its usual fare during lockdowns to provide grocery items, hand sanitisers and even face masks for the people of Melbourne. Naturally, we’re still completely obsessed with the coffee though (as is most of Melbourne, considering it’s one of the most ubiquitous coffee roasters in the city). Thankfully, we can have a totally authentic Melbourne café experience at home with St Ali beans available for purchase through its online store.

Market Lane is one of the city’s best coffee roasters and the team truly understands how important coffee is to Melburnians right now. So much so that they installed a coffee vending machine outside their newest Brunswick East shopfront. However, for those of us who don’t live so close, Market Lane’s brilliantly brewed coffee can be purchased online (with free domestic delivery if you spend over $30).

It started out as one of the first cool, third-wave cafes in Melbourne. Now it’s a coffee empire. Proud Mary, she wears many fancy hats, including one as an unbelievably popular warehouse-style café in Collingwood and another as a wholesale coffee roaster stocking some of Melbourne’s best venues. Ready to try its brews from home? Check them out via Proud Mary’s online store.