Great Divide Coffee

A buxton local is setting new standards in country coffee.

First published in North by Northeast Magazine October 2015

 

 

1n 1994 when Paul Kelly released his classic hit Love never runs on time, visiting country Australia had a few trade offs and Kelly’s lyrics told it like it was.

“I stopped,I don’t remember the name of the town.

But the colour of the coffee spelled a warning.

It was the colour of the river, but not nearly as brown.”

Coffee culture was alive and well in the country’s capitals but venture beyond the traffic and the bustle and your coffee was likely to be prepared from granules and better suited to deterring snails than for human consumption.

A lot has changed in 20 years and there are few places one can visit in Victoria that don’t offer decent coffee.

It might feel like traveling into the untouched wilderness but despite the remoteness, you’re likely to be met by at least a hand full of passionate baristas (complete with man bun and stretched earlobes.)

Deep in the Murrindindi hinterland, just outside the small village of Buxton, a different breed of coffee officinardo is getting tongues wagging,but forget the wayfarers and a designer Fedora. This coffee roaster is a horse of a different collar and if you spot him at all, he’ll likely be clad in Lycra and sporting a bike helmet.

Andrew Hall (owner of Great Divide Coffee) moved to the shire as a teenager and after finishing high school in Alexandra, he worked as a farmhand for a year or two before heading up the mountain to falls creek where he had landed a job as a ski instructor.

When the season finished he moved to Canada to work and then crisscrossed the hemispheres chasing winter for the next few years.

A Cross-country skiing enthusiast, Andrew then moved back to Victoria to work at nearby Lake Mountain and was instrumental in creating many of the cross-country ski trails on the mountain as well as working as ski patrol over the winter.

It was during his time at Lake Mountain that Andrew met his future wife, a beautiful young Californian ski instructor by the name of Marry.

He then followed Mary back to the US and spent the next 15 years ski racing, instructing and ultimately working his way up to managing Tahoe Donner, a renowned ski resort close to Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.

When Andrew and Mary finally did move back to Murrindindi in 2002, Andrew was at a loss as to what to donext, but necessity being the mother of invention; it was Andrew’s inability to find a decent local coffee that led him to becoming a coffee roaster.

Back in California, every little town had its own roaster and Andrew’s years in hospitality had aught him a lot about coffee quality.

He spent a year sourcing supplies and equipment, experimenting with roasts and gaining fair trade accreditation before launching the business. Things were just starting to get off the ground when family tragedy drew Andrew and Mary back to the US where they stayed for a further 2 years.

Andrew sold the business to a local couple who maintained their small clientele in his absence and after Andrew and Mary’s return they became partners.

Another year passed and Andrew went solo and grew the business to a point he was able to roast fulltime.

“When I started there were no other roasters about which made me look smart, but I wasn’t, it was just luck.”

Andrew had found a fantastic business opportunity that no other locals had struck upon and unlike skiing or tourism, the demand for coffee was all year round.

What differentiates Andrew from other roasters however, is not just his longevity in the industry; it’s his understanding of his audience. “It’s taken me a while to work it out” he says, “but I like my beer ‘beer’ flavoured and most coffee lovers like their coffee ‘coffee’ flavoured. Whilst hipsters in the CBD may queue for miles for a new release single origin, lightly roastedEthiopianEspresso with notes of Raspberry and lime, country people tend to drink their coffee with milk and the traditional robust coffee characteristics of chocolate, nuts and earthiness.

Those of us who were alive before the 1990’s café revolution were raised on medium to dark roasted coffee from the likes of Papua New Guineaand Peru that exhibit these traditional flavours and old habits die hard.

For most people, coffee appreciation is a bit like art appreciation, they may not know a lot about it but they know what they like.

Andrew capitalized on this by giving his consumers the familiar flavour profile they knew but with a whole new level of quality.

Another crucial difference Andrew recognized between coffee and other boutique beverages (such as wine or cider) is the need for consistency and this has become his hallmark.

“Wine drinkers wouldn’t drink the same wine every night but coffee drinkers want the same coffee every morning.”

Creating single origin coffees can make a roaster stand out from the crowd but due to seasonal variation and supply volatility, maintaining it year-round is unachievable.

Andrew doesn’t produce coffee for judges at coffee shows; he produces coffee for coffee drinkers at home and in cafes who want to know what they’re getting.

After years of trial and error, Andrew has created blends that appeal to country and city palettes alike and is able to maintain their consistency using beans of different origins but with a similar flavour profile.

Green coffee beans stay fresh for less than a year so when Andrew is unable to source fresh beans from East Timor, he can to replace them with Nicaraguan beans for example without compromising the flavour or quality of his blends.

Large Italian coffee companies are similarly able to offer consistency of product but there’s 1 gleaming difference.

Buy a bag of Italian coffee and you’re likely to be buying beans roasted 2 years ago, buy a bag of Great Divide coffee and it’s just as likely it was roasted yesterday.

The proof however is in the cup and even the best packaging in the world can’t secure the delicate aromatics of freshly roasted coffee for more than month or two.

When Andrew first started he roasted 20kg of beans a week and now a dozen years later he’s gone to more than 200kg and roasts 3-4 times a week.

It may be just a drop in the ocean considering Australian’s consume 16,000,000cups of coffee per day but it does amount to 20,000 shots of coffee made using Great Divide beans per week and no doubt countless more hours of productive work throughout the region than would otherwise be achieved.

Andrews’s clientele and reputation continues to grow duedespite an influx of other good roasters to the region in recent years. “There are a lot of good roasters around” says Andrew, “but one thing I do know is service. After 16 years in the Ski industry in the US, I give great service. If you run out and want coffee now, I’ll get it to you, there’s no ‘wait till tomorrow’. I never want to give my customers a reason to change suppliers.”

Andrew never planned on growing beyond the scope of owner operator but future plans of any kind were put on hold in 2009 when the Black Saturday Bushfires hit the area. Every house in the area was razed to the ground but it was only a few weeks before Great Divide Coffee was up and running again.

The fires did however give the couple the opportunity to rebuild and they have created a beautiful new, energy efficient, solar passive house and a new roasting room for Great Divide coffee.

The two central walls of the house are made of rammed earth scattered with Andrew‘s coffee beans sandwiched between layers of local clay.

 

When Andrew replaced his equipment, he went about it in the same well-researched, pragmatic way he goes about his roasting. He was not swayed by a parochial loyalty to a particular brand or coffee culture and as a result his workspace is a truly international one. His roaster is made in the US, de-stoner made her in Australia, his coffee grinder is Swiss and his espresso machine is Spanish. Ironically none of his equipment comes from Italy, the original home of espresso.

With Andrew roasting beans up to 5 times a week, one would think the smell would drive his neighbors to become coffee junkies but the smell of the beans roasting is surprisingly mild and unlike the smell of coffee being prepared, the roasting beans smell more like toast being cooked than freshly brewed coffee.

Working for himself gives Andrew the freedom to still get out and enjoy the outdoors and though he doesn’t ski as much as he used to, he has taken to getting his adrenalin on wheels rather than skis and can regularly be seen cycling around the district.

Considering the ubiquitous throngs of devoted lycra-clad cyclists swarming on cafes around the nation each weekend and Andrew himself an avid cyclist, it is hardly surprising he has created several blends specifically for this audience complete with artwork of cyclists on the label.

Watching Andrew prepare a coffee is a very different experience to watching your average barista. There’s no clanking of cups and billowing steam and his immaculate coffee machine looks more like something out of a display home than a working tool and he works at it with precision of a scientist.

Beans are ground as required directly into the portafilter (the detachable bit with a handle) and weighed off on digital scales to exactly 10g shot. Next Andrew tamps the bowl to exert the right pressure on the grinds and then thoroughly checks the portafilter to ensure no grinds have attached to the espresso spout that could find their way into cup.

Andrew brews his coffee at 94°c for 30 seconds and the resulting shot should be between 25-30ml in quantity. A shot too big or too small signifies the grind is too course or too fine and the process begins again.

Andrew’s quiet methodical actions seem strangely monastic, but once the hot stream of coffee begins to gently flow and arch back against the espresso spout and down into the cup, all that methodology is replaced with sheer magic. As the crema settles and the aroma hits the back of your nostrils all thoughts of technicality and engineering are replaced by pure romance and joy.

A self-confessed terrible salesman, there’s no ‘Roaster’-door sales at Great divide coffee so most of you will never see the artisan in action. But all the way from Yarraglen to Beechworth plenty of skilful Baristas are making fantastic coffee using Great Divide beans and if you fancy yourself as being able to hold your own at the coffee machine, there’s several of take-home blends to choose from.

Cyclists get a bad wrap and granted when you’re in a hurry on a local county road the last thing you want to encounter is a pack of Tour de France wanna-be’s but try and be nice to them. They’re doing a good thing and one of them might just be the maker of the best coffee in the region.

 

For Supplies and Cafés serving Great Divide Coffee go to: www.greatdividecoffee.com.au