There’d been a bit of toot­ing over on Twit­ter about Cus­toms Brew Bar, a new cafe from Cof­fee Supreme, so when it opened the Welling­ton­ista paid a vis­it.

It’s not your run-of-the-mill cafe — as well as a lush wood­ern inte­ri­or, Cus­toms also sells a range of sin­gle-orig­i­nal cof­fee beans and uses less than ordi­nary meth­ods of brew­ing the beans.

So I had a chat to Cof­fee Supre­me’s Justin, who kind­ly explained the con­cept behind Cus­toms Brew Bar.

Their nine beans are all sin­gle ori­gin. Most cof­fee used in cafes is a blend of beans from dif­fer­ent places (noth­ing wrong with that — it means you get a con­sis­tent cup, every time).

Sin­gle ori­gin beans, how­ev­er, come from the same geo­graph­ic region. Cus­toms has beans from such exot­ic locales as Suma­tra, Ethiopia, Nicuragua and Guatemala. And you’ll get vari­a­tion with sin­gle-ori­gin beans — the flavour will dif­fer from roast to roast, from sea­son to sea­son. But that’s part of the fun.

Also fun are the brew­ing meth­ods that Cus­toms uses. As well as a famil­iar espres­so machine, they also use two non-espres­so meth­ods — the old-school Chemex Cof­feemak­er and the new­fan­gled Clover machine.

The Chemex was invent­ed by chemist Peter Schlum­bohm in the 1930s, and is con­sid­ered a design clas­sic. It uses a spe­cial glass beaker with a paper fil­ter designed to let the flavour drip through. Aw yeah.

The Clover machine is a more recent inven­tion. The cof­fee grounds are added into the top of the machine where they’re mixed with hot water and stirred, then that mix­ture is sucked down through a fil­ter.

It’s prob­a­bly bet­ter to actu­al­ly watch the Clover in action — it’s ridicu­lous­ly enter­tain­ing watch­ing the (actu­al­ly quite sim­ple) process.

The machine’s set­tings let the barista pre­cise­ly con­trol the amount of water, its tem­per­a­ture, and the time the cof­fee is brewed. It’s geeky and sci­en­tif­ic but makes a real­ly good cup.

The Clover has a cult fol­low­ing in North Amer­i­ca, but curi­ous­ly the com­pa­ny was bought out by Star­bucks, so now Clover machines can’t be pur­chased whole­sale any more. Cof­fee Supreme got in there ear­ly.

Justin said that by using the Chemex and the Clover, they would hope­ful­ly show peo­ple that brewed cof­fee is not an infe­ri­or method to espres­so. Lots of peo­ple feel a lit­tle ashamed of mak­ing cof­fee in a plunger at home, but a good cof­fee plunger can make a real­ly good cup because it’s so sim­ple to get right.

But if you like a good old espres­so, Cus­toms have an awe­some Slay­er espres­so machine. Yeah, that’s right — it’s called a Slay­er. Com­ing straight out­ta Seat­tle, the Slay­er lets the barista adjust the pres­sure of the steam, per­haps start­ing out with a low pres­sure, then crank­ing it up high­er.

These three cof­fee-mak­ing meth­ods com­bined with the beans on offer mean that you can get to know a bit more about what you’re drink­ing rather than just requir­ing that it wake your brain up. It’s not unlike what we already do with wine — car­ing about the flavour and the region, not just its effect on the body.

Also worth a look is the love­ly inte­ri­or of the cafe. It’s been dec­o­rat­ed in a Mod­ernist style (ooh), with lots of gor­geous recy­cled wood (from the Cof­fee Supreme own­er’s old farm­house), and a style harken­ing back to the post-war era when sci­ence was our friend, cof­fee was a fan­cy new thing, and the future seemed so bright and full of promise.

Cus­toms Brew Bar is an absolute cof­fee nerd’s par­adise, but it can also be enjoyed by those of us who just want a good flat white, and maybe to learn a lit­tle bit more about what’s in that love­ly cup. 

  • Cus­toms Brew Bar — 39 Ghuznee Street, Te Aro