Went to the Collingwood Farmers Market for the first time on Saturday.  There were a few meat producers I wanted to check out, like Warialda Belted Galloway Beef and Hook & Spoon.  Had read about Hook & Spoon and liked their ethos.  Would like to see these guys twittering more as we're interested in learning more about their produce and how their day is made up. 
Had my hands full with Bowie, so could only grab a few items.  Brought back some Mutton Backstraps which we tried as a lunch special today.  Man, the Mutton was so tender.  Also grabbed some Royal Blue Potatoes from Jones Potatoes(had a pretty good selection there), so Nitish whipped up a Mutton Forrest Garniture w Pepperberry Spice. The plan is to get to a farmers market each weekend and learn more about the regions & it's produce. Bring back some new goods and give it to our MacGyver in the kitchen, Nitish and see what we can make. 

Here's a little vid of the Collingwood Farmers Market. 

Before we opened, almost a year ago, I spent a lot of time looking at design blogs as well as coffee and food blogs... and still do!  They're so addictive and there are so many out there and they're free.  Just like anyone I'd prefer a magazine or book but that's just not practical nor affordable.  It's tricky finding time to keep this blog alive which is a bit annoying as I wanted more for it. Twitter has been the saviour.  I don't do Facebook but Kylie does and I hate emailing but I swear by Twitter.  It's such a good learning tool. Instead of blogging I've found myself spending more time following peoples tweets.  If they've found something worth reading, say on coffee, they will tweet it and I'll read it.  So in a way I just let it come to me.  We seem to get  a few people asking questions about suppliers, furniture, coffee etc.  Some as customers, others as new business owners like us.  This is our first business and if we can pass on any information we are only to happy to do so.  We'll try to keep this blog up to date but if we get a bit slack come and get me from Twitter Land and drag me back here. 

Dead Man Espresso's Premier League Fantasy Football is about to kick off. Still time to join though, go to www.premierleague.com and register, then email me for code to join our private league. It doesn't matter if you sign up after the first game, you may just be behind a few points. But you'll probably still be ahead of Alex Lobov. All Dead Man customers are welcome and twitter followers. 5 Free coffee's to the highest score for the month(I know, I know, broke the bank on that one) and $100 cash prize for the overall winner.
Game on!

Dear Blog, apologies for our absence as of late.... but we have something we think is great - Rainbow Chard w fig & walnut open sandwich...oh and a little blue cheese...yummmm!  Now wasn't that worth the wait!

Todays lunch special was a bit of a treat. Fresh Blue Fin Tuna prepared four different ways, seared, sashimi, tartare & pan fried with spinach. It literally melted in your mouth. Big thanks to the affable Matt. More please!

Nice write up about Dead Man in the latest Weekly Review, featuring our one and only Trent Nash. Kudos mate. While I'm still asking a customer what coffee they want and what their name is, Nashy has already made it. He's pretty bloody good like that. Also check out one of our old crew, young Willy Glover(Dapper!!!) who featured prior to Nashy & who is now working over with the good crew at Auction Rooms...  (Photos by Darrian Traynor). 
The Weekly Review

Seven Seeds 1st Anniversary Party last night. Beer supplied by The Good Brew Co. and food by the Beat Box Kitchen. Always a great night.

The best 'faux-mid-sentence-poser' Juzzie and Jason

New winter operating hours: Monday to Friday 7am - 4pm. Saturday & Sunday 8am - 4pm. We wouldn't mind having an extra hour in bed on Saturday... we know you do! Kitchen closes 3pm everyday. 

Italian wine tasting at Seven Seeds last night. Thanks Mark & Bridget for inviting us along. Loved it. And of course, thanks Matt from Trembath and Taylor . 

From Market Lane Coffee this week, we have their Tanzania Blackburn Estate Shades of September as pour over. We are coming to the end of this tasty bean, but more juicy singles to come.  So get in quick to pick yourself up a bag. We sell Market Lane coffee to take home in 250gm bags. 
Been to Market Lane yet? No. Well here's some snaps to show you how awesome it is. Located at Prahran Market, it's just up from Chapel St, near Aldi.  
It's beautifully designed. The attention to detail is impressive. Love the space and layout. The crew are passionate and just kinda awesome and their green bean selection is why we want to serve their coffee in-house. 

Sorry. Busy. Can't blog. Working on new menu and other things. Also camera is overseas. Still love you though. 

We are open all weekend. Anzac Day hours are: Sunday 8am - 3pm & Monday 8am - 3pm. Kitchen closes at 2pm. 

Colombian Carlos Imbachi wins the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) 'Coffee of the Year'


Our DEAD MAN BLEND is roasted of course by Seven Seeds. This blend will always change... depending on what's crackin over there in Seedland and at the moment, it's crackin!! They have given us a few variations to play with. Currently in the hopper is 65% Colombian Carlos Imbachi and 35% Ethiopian Guji. Two outstanding beans together. As mentioned the Imbachi won SCAA's Coffee of the year, check it out on their website: Carlos Imbachi coffee (Finca Buenavista, San Augustin, Huila) and it's blended with the Guji, which is one of my fav's. I love this blend at the moment, it's full bodied and rich n' caramelly, n' chocolatey but the Guji just pokes, it's sweet, fruity, bright nose out and voila!  Though it will probably be gone by lunchtime on Saturday, the next blend will have Carlos, Guji and Mussasa together. Can't wait to try this. Then I believe we've got another variation after that. Which one will we go with???

 Part of today's lunch special, Edible flowers, baby beets, red radish, baby gold beets & baby turnips

We're going to try and get out to some farmers markets more often, find some good produce, whip it up as a special or use it in our menu. Today was the Melbourne Showgrounds Farmers' Market. Bought some tasty heirloom tomatoes, fresh/raw pistachios(when you crunch all the shells/skins up the taste like juicy ripe mangoes), pine mushrooms and a few other bits and pieces. Came across another brand of milk, which I took back to the cafe and tried it out. All agree that it was really nice, the sweetness was there but wasn't overpowering and really loved how the coffee came through. It also didn't give you that full feeling or kinda fatty-ness and was pretty smooth. Looking forward to getting back in there tomorrow and trying some more. Also the farmer gets a better deal, can't remember why, the very friendly owners daughter gave us a rundown, will look into this a bit more but it sounded good. 

You can now take home our house made jams, Dead Man Jam. Currently we have Mixed Berry, Grapefruit Marmalade, Peach & Wild Rosella jam. Also you can take home our Dead Man Granola, which consists of Pumpkin, sunflower & sesame seeds, almonds & rolled oats. And for some other cool news... you can now take home coffee from Market Lane. Try their Tanzania Blackburn Estate Shades of September Microlot, very sweet coffee. And of course you can pick up a bag of Seven Seeds Espresso blend or the Dead Man blend. Note: While stocks last. It's not feasible to stock copious amounts of retail beans. We're not a coffee roaster. We serve the Dead Man and Seven Seeds blend through our coffee machine and hence can sell them retail as we usually have good stock, however the Dead Man will be first to go. Even though we offer different types of singles, from roasters like the above two and Coffee Supreme and Small Batch we only ever buy in small quantities, 250 gm bags. This way we get to offer a wide variety of great coffees that are floating around Melbourne and it's always fresh..  2- 7days old. At times we can have up to 2 singles each from the above roasters, we would put them through the Synesso, as well as serving them as pour over, if we had another 1 or 2 grinders. Anyone care to donate a grinder? From Seven Seeds this week we have Guji & Carlos.. as mentioned in my tweets, these guys are on first name basis! Coming soon is our very own bread made for us by Noisette. You'll be able to take home fresh bread, as well as jams, muesli and coffee... shit... I've just made us redundant! 

Seven Seeds Espresso Blend & Dead Man Blend available for retail sale.

Dead Man will rise over easter. We're open everyday. Public Holiday hours all weekend. I know, I know.. you don't have to thank us. 

Friday 8am - 3pm

Saturday 8am - 3pm

Sunday 8am - 3pm

Monday 8am - 3pm

**Kitchen closes 2:30pm 

Dead Man Espresso is made up of many talented individuals. From the 2 passionate chefs ( more on them later) , to our crackin good baristi! (is it barista's or baristi?). Below is a blog entry from one of them.. Angus Gibbs aka @blaklaquer in Tweetland. Who maybe starting up his own blog soon in preparation for his overseas trip. Angus started making coffee at Mixed Business, Clifton Hill, before learning to roast with Justin Miles of Seven Seeds before landing at Dead Man. With so much going on in Melbourne with coffee at present, it's nice to read about it from a hands on perspective. Luke

WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! And with that loud, obnoxious noise I enter ‘Blog World’.  Hello. My name is Angus. I make coffee. I do other things too. Alright enough of that, it’s business time.

            After a manic escape from work yesterday I took to the streets car in hand, well car’s steering wheel actually, determined to accomplish two things with my afternoon. 1. Make it out to Grosvenor St in time for Coffee Supreme’s 2pm cupping. 2. Listen to the latest Mos Def record, ‘The Ecstatic’. I managed to arrive only a few minutes late cutting my engine at the end of the third track. As I walk through the door the cupping is already underway but Heath is gracious enough to set up two extra cups for the coffees I had brought with me to sample.

            Already on the table is a selection of coffees Heath has acquired from a relatively new roastery in Portland Oregon by the name of  ‘Heart Roasters’ and one of there own Sumatran offerings as well. Add to that the two late arrivals from ‘49^th Parallel’ out of Burnaby, British Columbia and ‘Ecco Caffe’ from Sonoma County, California.  Now we’re staring at a neat little international table. Should be interesting.

            Here’s a List of the coffees:

COFFEE SUPREME:     Sumatra – sorry boys I can’t remember which (also I cheated and used the so called "intraweb" for the others)

HEART ROASTERS:    Brazil – Chapadao de Ferro

                                     Kenya – Muthewathi

                                     Ethiopia – Yiragcheffe

                                     Sumatra – Gayo

                                     Tanzania – Peaberry

49^th PARALLEL:            Tanzania – Songea (peaberry)

ECCO CAFFEE:              Rwanda – Kunda Kawa co-operative

To be honest everything tasted pretty amazing. All very clean, very well roasted coffees. In fear of this reading like a review, I’ll only talk about the standouts not the whole lot. I thoroughly enjoyed Hearts stuff. All very unique coffees differing greatly yet I must say I really loved the both the Kenyan and the Sumatran, Gasp, Shock, Horror. It had this crazy sweet apple note that overshone the funk.

Ok, so some coffee speak and jovial banter was had by all, and I’m grinning like a four year old. Ben and I clean up, the whole while old Fat Wreck Chords punk is playing, mainly NOFX – White trash, two heebs and a bean? (sorry if I’m wrong on that one Ben). Now it’s SLAYER time! I put through the rest of the Songea pulling some of the longest shots I have ever seen. None of it really tastes that impressive and I get the feeling that you need to spend a serious amount of time with this machine to truly learn it. By my last shot Justin shows up and dials in the Heart Sumatran so quick it is clear that he has spent vast amounts of time with the beast. It’s tasting like those awesome toffee apple candy bars it’s so sweet.

            Over all I had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. Many thanks, Mad props and uber loud shout outs to the supreme boys for hosting and letting me play around in the showroom. If you haven’t been down to Grosvenor Street yet, it’s definitely worth the trip. Also Many loving thanks to Jason Sheltus of market lane fame for hooking us up with the ECCO CAFFE.

Ok I’m out.

Blaklaquer

Here's our new range of Dead Man Jam that you'll be able to take home as of next week. Just waiting on the labels. We make all our own jams here and we will be rotating often due to available produce and seasons. Currently we've got and from left to right; Raspberry; Pineapple, Ginger and Rockmelon; Grapefruit Marmalade and Mixed Berry. 

Trying out the Swiss Gold filters. So far so good. 

I'm on the hunt for teak (or similar type) wood sugar bowls. Got these ones at Chapel St Bazaar. They were the only ones there. Any folks out there have any to sell? Preferably smaller but any size would be cool. Trade you some coffee for some sugar bowls? Or do you know where I could buy any??

Saturday Morning cupping with Angus Gibbs. Went through the Seven Seeds Espresso blend and Dead Man blend as a whole and in parts. Also cupped off the singles on offer from some of the Melbourne's finest roasters. Tasting notes are for pour over(filter) coffee and compiled by Angus. Expect weekly tasting notes from our man at street level, actually more gutter level(hahaha). You can follow Angus on twitter @blaklaquer. It's good to see our dedicated chefs, Nitish and Matt embracing the cupping side of coffee. Both have excellent taste buds and it seemed they've been doing it for years. 

Loz, Michael, Angus, Nitish & Matt

Seven Seeds

Panama ‘Kayser’: 100% geisha: Fragrant, Huge fruit (berries, tropical fruits), a little milk chocolate. A very sweet, clean, complex cup with a silky mouth feel.

Ethiopia ‘Guiji’: Natural Process, Direct Trade Sidamo. Typica and bourbon : This things is nuts! And by that we mean fruity. Very bright acidity with a beautiful fragrance of peach and chocolate. In the cup expect to find a lot. Berries, stone fruit, even a little melon. Very sweet with a lot of length on the palate and a lingering cocoa finish.

Small Batch

Ethiopia Sidamo:Full bodied and sweet, with berries, milk chocolate and almonds. Think strawberry centred box chocolate.

Kenya Tinganga Estate:  A rich bitter-sweet coffee with deep red fruits, dark chocolate, earthy finish and a lot of depth.

Coffee Supreme:

 Columbian Cup Of Excellence lot #18 El Provenir: 100% Caturra, washed: A very well balanced cup showing chocolate, caramel, black cherry and sweet spice with a very clean and smooth mouth feel.

Market Lane

Guatemalan Cup Of Excellence lot #15 ‘Santa Ana’: Catuai , Bourbon, sun dried.Very clean and crisp with a creamed honey mouth feel. Walnut, cocoa and caramel dominate with subtle vanilla and honey notes. Delicate.

What a beautiful morning to taste coffee. Melbourne CBD as the backdrop.... ahhh

Monday -  Yes we are open. Public Holiday hours are 8am - 3pm. Kitchen closes at 2.30 pm.  

Friday morning cupping.  Each week we will now cup our singles & blends from Seven Seeds as well as other coffees from our local roasters, Market Lane, Coffee Supreme & Small Batch.  This morning we had all 3 components of the Dead Man blend, Ethiopian Guji, Costa Rica Cafetin and Colombian San Sebastian; the Seven Seeds Espresso blend; Dead Man blend and Market Lanes Rwanda Musasa. No guessing who the standout bean was... Guji! So sweet, absolutely delicious, fruity, good body... yumm! Weekly tasting notes by Angus coming soon.

A lazy thursday afternoon with the driving force behind the coffee, behind the Synesso, behind Dead Man Espresso. Clock wise and not necessarily more wise, Angus, Will & Nashy. (Oh... and the driving force behind Nashy and yes, necessarily more wise, Eva.) Thanks lads for caring about every little shot poured, about every degree in temperature and your overall passion and enthusiasm for coffee, food and Dead Man. It's going to be hard to fill Will's shoes when he goes abroad... quite literally, especially when he's got moves like this...

A snapshot of the new menu; 1) Toasted Muesli with Wild Lavender, seasonal poached fruit & natural yoghurt 2) Smoked salmon & zucchini on brioche w perserved lemon & goats curd 3) The crumpets from  - Crumpets w smoked salmon, mango & avocado salsa & orange sauce. Had to try them just with butter and our Pineapple, Cantelope & Ginger jam and our Citrus Curd. So bloody tasty. Think we'll put them on the menu on their own. Made by one of our passionate chef's, Matt, who did ask for a bit of time to make more, sorry Matt, cat's out of the bag... better get crackin, as tomorrow I'll definitely be having crumpets for brekky!!!

Now on to more important matters. We now have outdoor seating. Called the Butter Stool and made from recycled milk crates. Perfect we thought. Designed by these wonderful people Design by Them.Tables hopefully will be completed this week.