WEEKENDER | Boutique coffee roasting booming on the Border

You'd be hard-pressed to find a cafe on the Border that can’t be traced back to her one way or another.

Carolyn first arrived in Albury in the mid-1990s, when she opened Cafe Electra on Dean Street.

That was just the beginning – other Dean Street vendors such as Zoi Espresso and Coffee Mama are former businesses of her, while current venture Platform 9 now supplies beans to cafes across the region.

“I started with Cafe Electra, I did that for four or five years,” she says.

“After I while I could see the coffee side of the business was growing, it had less waste and was more profitable.

“The concept of coffee was something that was just starting to resonate through the industry as something really important.

“When I first got here a lot of people said you couldn’t get a decent cup of coffee in Albury.” 

Back then, Carolyn says, instant coffee mixed with frothed, warm milk constituted a cappuccino.

How things have changed – there are now five roasting businesses based on the Border alone in Platform 9, Zoi, Coffee Mama, BBB and The Brother’s Cup.

When Carolyn first started, though, the few boutique roasters operating were desperate to keep what they considered a golden egg business to themselves.

“Nobody wanted to let you into the industry in those days because they knew it was highly competitive and highly profitable,” she says.

“I once sought advice from a roaster in Melbourne and he basically asked me to exit his shop because he considered me competition – even though I was operating 300 kilometres away.

“The industry has really opened up since then. 

“Earlier people like me were seen as annoyances, but the coffee market is just responding to demand – there’s a critical mass of customers who are highly educated in coffee and coffee roasting.

“As a roaster, you are hopefully always one step ahead of them.” 

The explosion in boutique and micro-roasting companies was always going to happen  –  Australians have some of the most refined palettes across the world, according to Carolyn.

“The beans that are being imported to Australia have always been the top of the tree in terms of what was available, particularly compared to Italy and northern Europe,” she says.

“Our palettes have become very sophisticated very quickly, it’s kind of ruined us in a way.

“People will go overseas and come back saying the coffee was terrible, they have to come back to Albury to get a good cup.”

Growth in the industry has opened the door for smaller scale roasters like Geoffrey Schilg.

Geoffrey,along with his brother Dave, founded The Brothers Cup in 2014 after years of dabbling with beans in their backyard.

“We were racing pushbikes, chipping away at uni and just loving coffee,” he says.

“We’d spend a lot of time at cafes and fabricating our own roasters at home.

“We were left some inheritance money in 2013, so we lashed out and bought a 2.4 kilogram lab roaster.” 

With that machine the brothers began selling their own roast coffee – primarily specialty single-origin beans – at farmers' markets around town.

For just over a year it was a valuable secondary source of income as Geoffrey juggled casual work as a teacher and working at a local bike shop.

But when Dave moved to Hobart with his partner, Geoffrey knew it was time to up the ante.

The Brothers Cup now has a shopfront on Union Road, where their beans are roasted and a loyal band of regulars pick up takeaway coffees on weekday mornings.

It’s those regulars that have made Geoffrey’s leap of faith worthwhile.

“People’s taste in coffee has certainly changed over the last few years,” he said.

“Being in an unusual spot in North Albury people will seek us out for what we offer.

“There’s plenty of other places to stop for coffee, but we’ve got a core group of regulars who appreciate what we offer and take an interest in what we’re serving each day.” 

Platform 9 and The Brothers Cup typify the modern coffee industry.

Both could be categorised as micro-roasters, although Carolyn Higgs’ operation is on a much larger scale, and both have vastly different philosophies on roasting.

Geoffrey prefers to roast his beans on a lighter to medium scale, producing a sweeter, more acidic variety of coffee.

Carolyn’s beans are a darker roast, and typically a blend – offering a more traditional and versatile product.

“The change from when I first started to now has been massive,” she says.

“There’s been a bit of an awakening and one thing the industry has become very good at is education.

“Roasters are like wineries, each one has a different philosophy on how things are done, that’s their point of difference.

“It’s up to us to get our product to the consumer and up to the consumer to decide what they want.

“As the saying goes, the difference between my business and someone else is me.”