Skittle Lane is a specialty coffee roastery and brew bars in Australia’s other great coffee city. It was founded in 2015, with a first store in a heritage-listed building in the heart of the CBD; that store made it want to keep going, and eleven years later it has five sites. All of its green coffee comes from B Corporation certified importers, scores over 80 points on the Specialty Coffee Association scale and can be traced back to origin. It has worked with the same farmers and suppliers for those eleven years.

Before the roastery opened, Dean roasted from a small espresso bar in Bondi, where the community grew to love and involve itself in the roasting process. That is the culture it hopes to bring to Brookvale, where a P25 roaster sits in the middle of the warehouse and roasting and production run alongside the brew bar and retail area. The Brookvale site is its heartbeat: a dispatch, a coffee bar and a shop. The Bondi shop has moved a short way up the same street to a larger room with a private brew bar for slow coffee.

The CBD flagship has floor-to-ceiling windows and is built for takeaway with room to sit; Circular Quay is tucked away from the busier streets, meant for a quick takeaway after the ferry; Manly doubles as a showroom for the Hasami porcelain and brew gear the company sells. The online shop lists coffees by lot number, split into filter and espresso roasts, alongside a house espresso from La Falda in Huila, to which Skittle Lane has exclusive access in Australia, a sugarcane-process decaf, drip bags, instant coffee and subscriptions. An archive collection keeps past lots on sale. The current retail range is listed below with the roaster’s own tasting notes.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Skittle Lane