The scene in Perth

Sorry bout the lateness in writing this, just been so cought up training, working and getting things set for the australian barista comp.
First off, it's amazing to see so many cafe's doing things right. And by that, i don't mean perfect, but i do mean that it's really not that hard to find a cafe serving a decent cup, made by a decent barista, on decent machinery. Compared to Adelaide's swill (with a couple of exceptions) it's absolutely amazing.
The quality coffee scene over here is really being driven by two quality roasters, Five Senses (standout store, Epic Espresso in west perth) and Fiori Coffee (Tiger Tiger). It's really quite common to see Synesso's, LMZ fb80's and lineas. While generally i didn't find the customer service to be friendly at all, it was usually attentive, speedy and delivering a good quality product.
Some really creative uses of space have been created here and i found that on the whole,the average cup (a flatwhite, latte cap or whatever ordered from random cafe's) was quite pallatable. Some real standouts though were definately Epic, Velvet Espresso, and Liar Liar. Also had a fantastic coffee from cimbalino in cottesloe and ristretto back in the city. For me, if i had to pick, i'd say i enjoyed my espresso from velvet the most.
Epic and Velvet both have the feel of a very polished, bustling corportate coffee haunt. Tiger Tiger on the other hand is very 'melbourne esque' with a huge charming gritty character.
A few things worth staying well clear of are the coffee chain "domo" (think, gloria jeans) and pretty well anyone using brasiliano coffee (note: i obviousely didn't go to every cafe using coffee from this roaster, but there's only so much punnishment a fella can take).
All in all, it's pretty easy to got excited about coffee over here, and going out on a limb can easily grant you huge, coffee-related rewards. Perth has it's own unique coffee culture over here, and i dare not compare it to melbourne, but is definately very developed (by australian standards of specialty coffee) and well worth a visit.

Sorry this post doesn't have any pics, i'll post some as individual posts soon after.