Tasmanian Coffee Guide: Best Beans and Roasters

Villino 

The Story & The Coffee: Villino started life as a Hobart cafe in 2007, but quickly started taking over more control of their coffee supply. They established a roastery in 2009, and have since become one of the state’s largest and longest-running local coffee roasters. Their espresso blends include a well-rounded, creamy Hybrid (great for milky coffees), an old-school, heavily roasted dark and bitter-sweet Aphotic blend, and their fruit-first, full and floral Synergy house blend.

The Experience: The Villino roastery is located just south of Hobart in Huntingfield, near Kingston. However, the Villino Cafe that started it all is located in the Hobart CBD, and is still serving up some of the most popular, Italian-style espresso and exquisite food in the city. Better yet, its hole-in-the-wall sister cafe, Ecru, opened 20 metres down the street from Villino Cafe in 2012. It only really does takeaway, or a quick espresso, but it’s a busy little place and the easiest way to taste what Villino are working on or roasting, (almost) straight from the source!

Zimmah 

The Story: Originating out of the basement of iconic Hobart institution Island Espresso, Zimmah started as a small-scale roastery for this family-run cafe. It has since forged its own identity, and boomed into a fairly industrial-sized operation (in basement-roasting terms at least) in just a few short years. Started by Dean Knezevic, from the family who have run Island Espresso for nearly two decades, Zimmah Coffee is edgy, artsy, and cutting-edge in many ways. From arthouse puns to Steampunk vibes and comic-book branding, the vibrant roasting space just outside Hobart CBD is a reflection of this funky approach. As is their coffee range.

The Coffee: The centrepiece house roast, “The Devil and the Deep”, is a nutty and spicy do-it-all blend; bold, rich and full-bodied, yet with surprising hits of acidity and burnt-sugar sweetness. For something sharper, the “Son of a Gun” is a light-roast blend with an intense combo of smoky tobacco, bitter grapefruit, lemon peel and milk chocolate that will be sure to wake you up. For a smoother and more comforting blend, the “Tattooed Nun” is full of rich, buttery, caramelly chocolate warmth and juicy, stone-fruit and vanilla roundness. Very comforting on a cold day. 

The Experience: The space is cool and cosy, with bench-height repurposed wooden tables spread out between stacks of old magazines and books stacked puzzlingly high. Knezevic roasts here just about every day, with retail and wholesale bags of the small-batch roasts often disappearing quickly. Zimmah also offer training courses and DIY advice. You can enjoy a fresh brew straight from the source, or ask for expert advice on beans to take home and try for yourself, as the staff here are a fountain of knowledge on home-brewing.

Tasmanian Coffee Roasters 

The Coffee: Expect to find an extensive range of beans and roasts here. Their well-rounded house blend is a balanced combination of beans from Costa Rica, Brazil, Panama and Papua New Guinea, full of both tropical and earthy notes. However, there's also a vast selection of single-origin, organically-certified and small-batch roasts available, which between them showcase a much broader taste and aroma palate.

The Story: These are the longest-standing players in the Tasmanian coffee game. Established in 1979, Tasmanian Coffee Roasters have been trailblazers in raising coffee standards around the state for decades. They have continued to develop and push the boundaries over the years, too – most notably, in recent years they have pushed towards organic processes, and in 2019 became Tasmania’s first ACO-certified organic coffee roaster. They are stalwarts of associations like the Rainforest Alliance, and have good relationships with their long-term growers and suppliers in different countries, particularly Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia and Costa Rica.

The Experience: Tasmanian Coffee Roasters have always been geared towards the wholesale market, and that is still the case today. Although you can buy their beans direct from an online store, there's no cafe tasting experience per se. That said, these locally roasted beans supply many popular cafes around Hobart and Tasmania. And they are also stocked in several shops. So chances are you'll be able to follow your nose and get a taste while you're in Tassie!

De Lacey

The Story & The Coffee: For the past three decades, De Lacey has had close connections to the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, where company director Darren De Lacey spent his early years in the coffee industry, learning the ropes with local growers and processors on coffee plantations and nurseries. Over the years, this singular focus has reaped great rewards for the company, the farmers and customers, as a world of single-origin obsession has grown up around it. There’s still a strong commitment to the PNG Highlands – including a fully organic range – but De Lacey’s profile is now bolstered by beans from Ethiopia, India, Brazil and elsewhere, used to create a range of different blends and single-origin roasts.

The Experience: Although it looks like an unassuming space from the outside, De Lacey’s home in suburban Moonah houses the full roasting operation, as well as a cute little storefront and cafe at the front. Here, you can see the full range of beans and roasts they do, and even drool over some high-tech home espresso machines, plenty of fun travel accessories, and other equipment.

Hobart Coffee Roasters 

The Story: Established under their own tongue-in-cheek set of Five Coffee Commandments, Hobart Coffee Roasters are committed to doing as much as they can in-house and on-site, and are big on transparency in their supply chain.

The Coffee: All of Hobart Coffee Roasters’ beans are brewed in-house, so it’s an awesome place to see direct results of different roasting techniques and to ask about bean supply. They often experiment with different combinations, but there is a core range of roasts that are consistently available: of these, their ‘Day Dreamer’ light roast is very popular, perhaps because it is less full of citrus-first notes (that are common in other light blends), and more about deep-fruit sweetness. Their ‘Happy Days’ roast, on the other hand, is full of both chocolatey richness and decent acidity, balancing out into a warm, well-rounded blend that suits well different extractions and coffee preferences. 

The Experience: With a prime location on Hobart Waterfront, and very funky design and interior decor, Hobart Coffee Roasters has one of the coolest roastery and cafe spaces to visit of any Tasmanian coffee roaster. With their full section of staple house roasts and rotating single origins on offer, this is a Mecca for coffee tasting, too. Still, it’s not all about the beans here, as they also serve an excellent all-day menu. In fact, with favourites like their loaded burgers, fresh pastries, and smashed avo offered alongside an encyclopaedia of optional add-ons, the busy Franklin Wharf outlet is arguably better known for their food than for their coffee!

Ritual Coffee Tasmania

The Story & The Coffee: Ritual Coffee started out as a small, Launceston-centered operation, selling small-batch roasts to a few select cafes and farmers markets like Harvest Launceston. Pretty quickly, though, its commitment to high levels of professionalism and investment in roasting processes have allowed it to grow into one of Tasmania’s most respected specialty coffee roasters. What that means is that they remain big players, while still sticking (and roasting) to the same community-minded principles and techniques that got them started in the first place.

The Experience: Still based in Launceston with their roasting headquarters in Invermay, Ritual Coffee have an awesome space to visit, decked out with sleek Scandi-modern lighting and decor, with characterful touches like chairs made from their own upcycled coffee sacks. It’s both a full-on roasting operation and very friendly coffee bar and bean retail shop. It is also an ideal place to ask anything about the process and the beans they use. With a full spectrum of blends on offer – from a fudgey-chocolatey seasonal blend or smooth and earthy Strongman to a passionfruit- and cola-tinged Colombian Villarazo or vanilla custard Rwandan Kibirizi, there is more than enough to satisfy even the most curious and discerning of coffee lovers.

Ready to start planning a trip to Tasmania?

Whether you want to make a coffee tasting tour of these Tasmanian roasteries, or are simply looking at potential coffee stops as part of a broader Tasmanian travel itinerary, First Light Travel can help you with planning your getaway. They have a range of prescribed self-drive tour itineraries ready to book, a blog dedicated to answering questions about all things Tasmania, as well as expert Tasmanian travel planners, who are available online to help you customise your own trip.