Pale grey-green walls, tables decorated with water-filled conical flasks and standard-issue clipboards, and staff dressed in lab coats. Clinical appearance aside, it’s difficult to brand the place sterile. A gentle essence of espresso rests above the communal tables, and with the murmur of Little Collins Street sauntering past the coffee shop’s open entrance, Sensory Lab is the perfect place to stimulate your soul in those moments of everydayitis.
An international first, Sensory Lab is the newest branch of coffee enthusiast, Salvatore Malatesta’s, Melbourne-based coffee shop collection. The premise of tasting at Sensory Lab is that coffee is in fact a fruit, and like a well-aged grape, it’s going to produce a variety of flavours based upon where it’s grown, the environment within which it’s tasted, and the methods with which it’s prepared. The art of the taster is to enjoy the complex flavour of a good coffee. While the Lab features the traditional intense espresso, shot from their infamous Slayer espresso machine, its menu extends far beyond the realms of the conventional. Coffee brewing methods include the syphon; which creates a soft tea-like coffee by steeping and stirring the grind before filtering it, the pour over; a heavier, stronger black coffee, and the cold drip: where the shot is produced by slowly dripping chilled water through ground coffee a for six hours. Needless to say, the cold drip contraption is quite a handsome otherworldly invention.
Tasting notes accompany each cup offered on the simple and cleanly formatted menu. To compliment the impressive array of coffees available, staff perform a series of scientifically delightful sensory-based tests to discern which brew will meld best with your palette. Best of all, the menu alters depending upon what’s in season, so any given week could provide an exciting new taste for the budding coffee connoisseur. ‘My favourite blend is S3,’ explained Soo Ford, Lab Manager, offering up a cup of the Brazilian and Guatemalan beans during Onya Magazine’s maiden Sensory voyage. ‘It’s perfect for coffee drinkers who usually enjoy sugar with their cup, because the beauty of this blend is it holds an intense, natural sweetness.’ I couldn’t go past a cold drip S1, no milk. Served in a miniature conical flask with coffee cup to boot, the blend of Brazilian, Colombian and Indonesian blend broke cold against my tongue with a soft sweetness, and sat in my mouth with a full, nutty taste.
The Sensory Lab’s coffees are available on-the-go from the store’s coffee window, and in 250g to 2kg bags both in store and online. Of course, there’s nothing quite so enjoyable as settling into the pale grey-green walls, pulling a standard-issue clipboard close, and letting the lab coats guide you through the delicious sensory experience.
Sensory Lab
297 Little Collins Street
Melbourne
