Recently, the lovely Anna Brones hit our Australian shores for a visit, and was smacked in the face with the plethora of commercial iced coffee available in this fair country. While Australia’s specialty coffee scene is booming, the industry has yet to branch out into the grocery store packaged coffee drink market like say, Blue Bottle or Stumptown, but I’m here to tell you that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. While they’re not available in gas stations (yet?), quality specialty bottled iced coffees do exist, they’re delicious and made with quality beans, and coffee is the first (and sometimes the only) ingredient on the list!
Endless Iced Coffee
For those who like the choice of either black or milky iced coffee, Endless Iced Coffee ticks every box. A side project from Jared Lawler, Frankie Tan & Josh Crasti of Slater St. Bench, Endless is full-immersion cold-brewed before being bottled black or combined with a bit of sweetness and some creamy milk from Saint David Dairy in Fitzroy. Beans are sourced and roasted by Small Batch, with a Kenyan for the black coffee, and their Candyman Blend adding depth to the milk version—making up a delicious drink for whatever mood you’re in!
Salvage
Found in a sneaky side alley just down from Artarmon train station in Sydney, Salvage Specialty Coffee is a coffee haven in the middle of the suburbs. Here they make their straight-shooting bottled filter coffee: batch-brewed and unadulterated. Beans are sourced from Sydney roaster Mecca Espresso and the design is simple, with instructions on how to enjoy it (best with a large ice cube most often seen in whisky rather than coffee).
Bunker
Located in Brisbane, Bunker Specialty Coffee & Chocolate has been in the bottled iced coffee game for a long time now. Their offering is substantial, with milky options going the full range of full cream milk, skim milk, and soy milk, slightly sweetened with agave syrup – while the black coffee drinkers can either have an espresso brewed version or a 200ml bottled pour over. Coffee is sourced from a collection of reputable roasters around Australia, including Proud Mary Coffee, Market Lane Coffee, Mecca Espresso, and Five Senses Coffee.
Coolers
A project by Aaron Maxwell of Everyday Coffee, Coolers is a refreshing iced filter coffee—brewed hot then rapidly chilled, the coffee has the complexity and depth of a hot brew, but with that sweet ‘ahhhhh’ moment of a cool cool drink on a hot hot day. Designed by Melbourne studio Open Season, with beans sourced through Silo Coffee and roasted and brewed by Maxwell in Collingwood, this is a local brew with a lot of care behind it. Bottled black either straight up or slightly sweetened, Coolers are set to be a nice accessory for the hot Melbourne summer—stay tuned for some special releases in the new year.
Eileen P. Kenny is a Sprudge.com staff writer based in Melbourne, and the publisher of Birds of Unusual Vitality, the world’s leading coffee interview magazine. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.
