Launceston Coffee Guide

Launceston espresso bars and specialty coffee shops

Amelia Coffee Co. 

56 George Street

Close enough to the city centre action to be popular, but far enough from the main drags to be popular mostly only with locals, Amelia is an excellent Launceston espresso bar. They use locally roasted beans from Ritual and Provenance coffee roasters, ensuring a steady supply of both beautiful blends and rotating single origins. Sparkling water on tap is a nice touch, perfect for cleansing the palate between shots or after tasting several roasts together! If you want something to go with your coffee, they also do tasty pastries, sweet treats, and a killer roast chicken sandwich.

Alberto’s Espresso 

94 George Street

Alberto’s is a cosy coffee hub inside Launceston’s CBD, and can be something of an oasis for coffee lovers looking for a quiet spot to enjoy a good brew. They use beans from Allpress, a New Zealand company who also roast locally, as well as provide full technical and mechanical training for the cafe. As a result, there may not be as much deviation between roasts or experimentation with single origins here as with other Launceston espresso bars, but it does mean that Alberto’s pour a consistently high quality, reliably smooth and robust shot. The Allpress blend goes very well with milky coffees, too, including dairy alternatives (which are done very well here), particularly almond and oat milk. In terms of food, healthy, hearty salads and wraps are a specialty. 

Mobrew Coffee 

258 Invermay Road

If you’re looking for a good coffee stop on the road from Launceston north to the East Tamar Valley, you could do a lot worse than Mobrew Coffee in Mowbray. Down-to-earth, wholesome, pet-friendly and human-friendly, Mobrew combines a nice welcoming experience with consistently very good coffee. Although they function as an espresso bar, it’s not strictly coffee purist shots only here – there’s plenty of syrup shots, alternative milks, and other different ways to mix up your coffee choice. It also broadens the demographic to whom Mobrew Coffee appeals, in case everybody in the car isn’t quite as obsessed with single-origin beans and purely extracted coffee as you might be. 

Larger Launceston coffee roasters 

Croplines Coffee Roasters 

76 Brisbane Street (Brisbane Arcade)

A small-scale roaster and coffee supply shop squeezed into Brisbane Arcade, Croplines Coffee is one of the best places in Launceston CBD to load up on freshly roasted beans, plus any home coffee-making equipment you might like to try out, without having to venture too far from the city centre. They have a small cafe space, too, if you want to sit down and enjoy sipping on their latest roast. If you want to linger around and let the aromas do their thing, there’s a quiet courtyard space outside, as well as some tasty homemade biscuits and small bites to snack on.

Ritual Coffee Roasters 

Churchill Park Drive, Invermay 

If you are looking for a place to spend long periods of time talking serious coffee in Launceston, then this could be your best bet. A wholesale and retail supplier operating out of Invermay, Ritual are well known all around Tasmania for supplying superb coffee beans for at-home brewing. Regardless of the method you use, or would like to try, they can talk you through which of their blends, roasts and single-origins work best for V60, stovetop, espresso machine, pour over, or whatever else. Visiting Ritual is a bit like combining a serious business meeting with a casual, at-home chat with friends, since the super knowledgeable and passionate staff also seem very laid-back. From a citrusy Colombian Villarazo or a sweet Papua New Guinea Kindeng Estate to a warm, vanilla-hued Rwandan Kiribizi or their renowned Strongman brew, Ritual’s range of single origins and house blends displays a staggering amount of diversity. Take time out to visit and have a try.

Zando Coffee 

13 Fawknee Avenue, Kings Meadows 

Primarily a wholesale supplier for cafes and hospitality outlets, you’re more likely to find Zando Coffee by visiting different cafes around Launceston and Tasmania than you are at their industrial space in Kings Meadows. Still, if you’re curious to know about their process, as well as to get a broad overview of Tasmanian coffee supplies (including equipment), you can essentially treat Zando as an information point, or a museum, to get an introduction to the Tasmanian coffee industry.

Provenance Coffee 

Churchill Park, Invermay 

Staying true to their name, Provenance is one Launceston coffee roaster where you can feel free to ask exactly where their coffee comes from. Dedicated to sourcing single estates from micro-lot farms and tiny producers globally, Provenance take in a range of different beans from all over the world, including many from smaller producers who might not make the minimum import quantity for other roasters. The downfall of this approach is that supply can be inconsistent, and you shouldn’t expect a supermarket-like season-less reliability of whatever you want. The great benefit of this approach, though, is that Provenance Coffee has an ever-rotating range of beans, roasts and blends that show truly individual signatures, and each has its own unique, often unreplicable character. Enough of the sales pitch? Pop into their sleek digs in Invermay, have a taste and have a chat about where the coffee comes from – usually they can tell you the farmer by name. 

Launceston small-batch roasters and cafe-roastery combos

Urban Espresso Roastery

99 St John St, CBD 

Although this is first and foremost a great inner-city Launceston coffee shop, Urban Espresso occupies a unique place within the city’s (and more broadly Tasmanian) coffee scene. Of course, they serve up delicious brews of their recently roasted (in-house) blends and single origins from a cute, cosy space wedged between the busy shopping strips of George and York streets. But the reach of Urban Espresso’s roasts goes much further, with their free nationwide delivery service meaning they have regular coffee-snob customers as far afield as Perth, Sydney and Merlbourne. Part of the reason is that Urban Espresso offer small quantities of different single origins, including some rare releases, in addition to their standard (and reliably well-rounded) house blend of beans. All in all, a great place to source your beans – whether you want to pop by St John St or not.

Valley Coffee 

39 Peterson Street

Housed inside the old stables behind the Launceston Library and St. Andrew’s Church, Valley Coffee would be worth including on a list of the best coffee spots in Launceston for its location and the architecture of its venue alone. Despite the pretty exposed-brick facade and beautiful interior, though, it’s actually the quality coffee that merits its inclusion on this Launceston coffee guide. They roast their own beans, daily, for the famous Paperboy Espresso, the house blend balancing full richness with enough tart-citrus sweetness and dark-chocolate depth to please both black and milk coffee drinkers. Another reason Valley Coffee is such a vibrant hub of activity and community, though, is their stellar food: stacked sandwiches, wholesome salads, beautiful health bowls and a lot of other delicious goodies available to-go or to sit and soak up the atmosphere. 

The Green Bean on Cimitiere

113 Cimitiere Street

Despite the name, and what it might evoke for coffee lovers visiting Launceston, the Green Bean is much better known for their homemade food than their coffee. That is particularly the case for fresh baking – especially the muffins – and their larger platters and catering-style dessert boxes. Still, only a few blocks down from City Park, the coffee is worth stopping in to try, too.

Prince’s Square Bar

164 Charles Street

A cool little space perched on the edge of Prince’s Square Park, on the edge of the CBD, Prince’s Square Bar is one of central Launceston’s most popular espresso bars. They use locally roasted beans from Provenance (detailed above), including regularly showcasing a number of their different single-origin releases and experiments with different blends. The standard of their milk-based coffees is also very high, with the silky smooth house blend managing to maintain strong characteristics and true-coffee aromas without taking over or spoiling the milk. There’s also plenty of tasty food on offer, both sweet and savoury, including Prince’s Square Bar’s famous toasted sandwiches, and arguably the flakiest Portuguese custard tarts in town!

Coffee Republic

137 Brisbane Street

Punchy, colourful, and potentially abrasive, you could describe a lot about Coffee Republic’s vibe and attitude with the same words used to describe their single-origin roasts. Located inside the Brisbane Street Mall, Coffee Republic are always pushing things and their approach can rub people up the wrong way. Still, in terms of coffee, the following they have built up over the years among Launceston coffee drinkers is testament to a dedicated approach. They do a wicked Vietnamese iced coffee and other coffee-affiliated drinks, too.

How to line up a Launceston coffee date

If you’re ready to start planning or booking your trip to Tasmania, head on over to First Light Travel for any further information you might need on what to expect when visiting Tasmania. You can even book several self-drive Tasmanian tours directly there. Or, contact FLT’s Tasmanian travel experts online, for free, for help with putting together your own customised Tasmanian travel itinerary.