Coffee. Beverage of kings. King of beverages. Fuel of nerds. Nerd of fuels? We are talking espresso and plunger, none of that nasty robusta or filter coffee nonsense.
Nothing too wrong with filter coffee - beats a bad espresso any day, and it can be drunk by the gallon. Along the same lines, Vacuum pots are good fun — Richard
Christchurch locations / roasters
Christchurch has several local roasters that provide beans to cafes around Canterbury and also have beans for sale to home coffee enthusiasts. Buying from any of these generally ensures quality coffee beans that are fresh. Whichever of these is perceived as best generally comes down to a question of personal preference, what you are used to, and the relative ease of acquiring their beans for yourself
- C1 cafe / C4 coffee
- Hummingbird Coffee
- Vivace Coffee
- Underground Coffee
C4 Coffee
The C4 roaster is located on Poplar Tce, and backs onto their café in High st. They have a range of 5 beans available in their cafe
- Stout
- Cuban
- Fair Crack – organic and fair traded
- Krank – the house espresso variety
- Villian – well suited to plunger
Vivace Coffee
Christchurch local roaster specialising in espresso blends. Also with a flagship Cafe in Hereford Street.
- Ultimate Espresso – House blend in their Cafe and really quite excellent for espresso in a professional machine. Not suited to plunger.
- Fair Trade Organic – Organic and fair traded. Good, but not as exceptional as their Ultimate Espresso blend. Served to staff and clients at Q.
Hummingbird Coffee
Probably Christchurch’s biggest local rostery, they also have a ridiculous range of blends and roasts, often available in supermarkets and such. Also probably the most commercial. Buy beans straight from the roastery on Selwyn Street, they’re usually pretty fresh (sometimes still warm).
Blends and single-origins of interest include:
- Ethiopian Harrar— Fair traded. Forms the basis for Oomph
- Kenyan — Winey, chocolatey roast, one of the two strongest single-origin roasts. Richard‘s favourite French press coffee in Christchurch
- Oomph — Fair traded, uses Ethiopian as a base
- New York — hella dark blend. Some consider it tasting of cigarette butts. Good as a black plunger, a bit ass if its made white.
- New Orleans — Uses Kenyan as a base, makes a good French press
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Crave — Fair traded.
- Italian Espresso — Not sure if I’m picking up the ‘winey aftertaste’ but tastes great nonetheless greg. Agreed, I found Crave to be much more winey, also significantly less pleasant – brehaut
- Fuse
- others…
Underground Coffee
… are just across the road from mattw‘s office, and now don’t even need to ask him what he’s having. Which is usually a soy latte. Gay of coffees/coffee of gays?
Other brands
Scarborough fair
- Very Dark Roast — Organic, fair trade, and as the name suggests, rather dark. Pretty good, a bit of an acquired taste though perhaps.
Popular Science
It is also worthy of note that it is an essential resource for the mathematical sciences. As Erdos observed: âMathematicians are machines for turning coffee into theoremsâ. So it stands to reason that without coffee the mathematician would be forced to find an alternative source of fuel. Quite frequently this would be alcohol resulting in a greatly shortened life expectancy of said mathematician.
Unless their alcoholic beverage of choice was red wine, a bottle of which, per day, purportedly keeps the doctor away. (Or was it a glass?) — Greg
I thought it was an apple a day that kept the doctor away…? — Joshua
Surely… If you get sick, you want a doctor, so you don’t want to be doing anything that keeps them away :P Jim
