Sensory Lab, Melbourne CBD

I've told my travelling buddies, I will not leave Melbourne until I go to the Sensory Lab !

So straight from lunch at MoVida, we went to this cafe with laboratory concepts. It is brought to you by the people of the famous St.Ali in South Melbourne. The Sensory Lab is located inside David Jones on Little Collins Street, you can have a seat in the cafe or grab a cup on the go from the designated take-away window.

Sensory Lab Main Store Area

As we stepped inside, it definitely felt like you are in a lab environment, clean, stainless steel benches, lab glasswares, etc. Except you get a waft of aromatic coffee beans instead of chemicals, thank goodness for that !

Now, why can't the lab at work smells like this ??

How it works in the Sensory Lab ; Coffee Beans for sale

Sensory Lab also sells roasted coffee beans, glasswares to brew your coffee in, and other drinkwares. I didn't had a close look, but at a glance they seems to carry the ranges from Hario, a Japanese brand that makes tea and coffee wares from glass. I had a set of their tea wares at home :D

With the permission of the barista, I went trigger happy with their coffee making stations.

So here we have, coffee made by syphon filter :

Syphon Filters

How pretty...

Caffeine molecular structure for the nerds in you

Take-away window and cafe area

After that, we grabbed a table in the cafe and was handed a clipboard with the various way you can have your coffee brewed : the usual espresso & milk coffees, syphon filtered coffees, and coffees made by cold drip method.

Sensory Lab Menu

Before I had a chance to study the menu, the waitress a.k.a. the lab assistants, complete with white lab coats and pens in the pocket  (felt like I'm at work lol), came to take our order.

Since I have no idea what to order, I thought I'll play safe and ask for a recommendation instead :P

I was then asked whether I like my coffee with milk or straight ( straight this time ), Syphon or Cold Drip  (Syphon of course !),  bold or fruity notes (fruity notes sounds good).

Water & Sugar ; Syphon Filter to use at home

Love the Schott bottle being used as water jug and the brown jar used as sugar container. Maybe I should "borrow" them from work...hmmmmmmm.....

I was so tempted to get one of those syphon filter , but when do I find the time to brew it that way ?

I'll stick with my one button press Nespresso machine lol

Syphon filtered coffee ; Mocha

My heart sank when my fruity, straight, syphoned coffee arrived in a cup :(

I was expecting to do the syphoning myself *sob*...so with broken heart I drank my coffee *sob*

The beans used was from the Kenyan Mbee blend, it has fruity passionfruit notes as the waitress explained. To get the full flavour out of it, it is best to let it cool down a little before drinking it. 

It does has a fruity notes with slight astringency. 

My cousin got  the standard mocha instead and it was very good indeed. Creamy with rounded coffee and chocolate notes.

Sensory Lab is a cafe that focuses on their coffee and I must say it has a fun and quirky concept.

There wasn't much sweet stuffs on offer to go with your coffees which was unfortunate. 

With so many other great coffee places in Melbourne, I wonder how long will this concept coffee store will stand ? 

So that's it, the last post on my Melbourne food filled weekend trip :) I hope you had enjoyed it as I had enjoyed eating them.

Of course I returned to Sydney 1.0kg heavier LOL

Lab assistant taking your order