2013… a great year for coffee in Sydney

As this year draws to a close and the expected lists of “TOP 100 CAFES IN SYDNEY” start raining down from various random sources, I have found motivation, drawn largely from the dumbfounded look on my face as I read these lists, to write my own crappy list of cafes. Mine is not based however on the random award of 9/10 for “best coffee ever” or “best latte in the suburb”, but neither is it without bias.

So before the list, please understand the limitations that impact it.

1. Forcing myself to drink coffee from certain roasters is hard, so often… I don’t (Vittoria, CoffeeX, Illy, Lavazza, Campos, Toby’s Estate, Di Bella, etc)
2. I tend to avoid chains (Starbucks, Gloria Jeans, etc)
3. I avoid milk coffee (thus I don’t care about latte art, and I enjoy actually tasting the coffee itself)
4. I am drawn to the experience of coffee (thus I love finding passionate cafes who have the skills to back it up)
5. As a self-funded coffee addict, there is only so much I can justify the cost of visiting multiple cafes all over Sydney

Though… all of that aside, and considering how busy I’ve been this year with my day job as a web developer and all round social media douchebag, I don’t think I’ve done too bad. In fact, This has likely been the best year of coffee in Sydney so far, and it just keeps on improving.

One final word of warning before I produce this ridiculous this thing, the placement of cafes towards the top of this list have more accuracy than those at the bottom of it. If a cafe is at the top of this list, then the experience that I had there was phenomenal. AS you get towards the bottom of the list it becomes more of a gut reaction as to how I distinguish the difference in the cafes. That said, this entire list is only the 5/5 and 4/5 cafes I’ve been to this year in Sydney, so going to any of them is a pretty safe bet.