For years, coffee brands have worked hard to try to dupe us into believing the powered stuff can stand in for espresso. Usually, though, that’s not the case.
But boutique coffee distributor Made in Melbourne’s new Homebrew, an instant coffee made using the same beans and equipment you’d find in any decent Aussie cafe, is an outlier. It’s the closest to the real deal – espresso – that we’ve tasted.
“If you use the right product, you get the right results,” says Made in Melbourne’s Wesley Lim. To replicate that cafe-coffee taste, Lim looked not only at what kind of coffee was being used around Melbourne, but how it was being brewed.
Homebrew is handmade by baristas who use commercial coffee machines to extract espresso shots to a precise recipe. “The pressure of a commercial machine creates the flavour,” Lim explains. Once they’ve extracted 40 litres, the coffee is sent to a freeze-drying facility to be processed and packaged.
What results is a granular coffee powder (clumpier than the supermarket-bought stuff) that’s ready to be rehydrated with hot water. And unlike St Ali’s foray into instant coffee last year, which sought to replicate filter-style coffee, Homebrew emulates espresso.
And, notably, it costs just $1.70 a hit, and you can prepare it in seconds (no fancy set-up required).
You start by mixing two to three grams of coffee to 18 grams of water, creating a slurry that can be diluted to taste with water or milk. The flavour is smooth and intense with a welcome sweetness, since a high percentage of the coffee’s natural sugar content is retained by the brewing process.
This debut blend uses coffee roasted by Melbourne cafe Cote Terra, one of a host of Victorian roasteries Lim works with as part of Made in Melbourne’s wholesale operation. His long-term plan is to have a range of instant coffees using blends from other roasters, with something for all tastes.
The company is also committed to sustainability. The coffee “pucks” leftover from the brewing process are turned into plant food, and refills are dispatched in biodegradable cellophane bags.
Homebrew prices start at $19.50. Shop online here.
