Coffee in Ross – Dinki
Dinki at Ross is a recent discovery of ours, and an important one! Excellent coffee has been rare on the trip from Hobart to Launceston, but we can now access pour-over coffee in Ross made with skill and attention to detail.
Now, before anyone starts decrying the fact that Dinki doesn’t do espresso or latte, we need to say that the coffee here is really, really good and based on beans that are from the top of the range and roasted by the team at local roaster Ritual Coffee Roasters.
Their own Web site explains what you can expect:
Located in the heart of Tasmania’s beautiful Northern Midlands, Dinki offers a special selection of locally roasted, brewed coffee as well as the finest, certified organic, ethically sourced tea, from Poet Tea of Hobart.
Dinki Web site
Coffee in Ross – The detail
There is usually a range of coffees available. Some are the result of the washed process and some are from a natural process.
On our visit, after a discussion with the owner, we asked for a naturally processed Sulawesi coffee which turned out to be absolutely delicious. There is a lot of coffee grown in Indonesia since it was imported here a couple of centuries ago.
There are two main ways in which coffee cherries can be processed with lots and lots of variations within them. One is called the “washed” process and involves the pulp of the fruit being washed away from the bean inside by spraying water under pressure on the fruit. This can be quite wasteful of water especially in coffee producing countries such as Ethiopia which gets very little rainfall.
The other main process is called the “natural process” where the fruit is laid out on beds in the sun for the fruit to dry out before it is removed from the bean. This requires a lot of care because if the fruit starts to ferment it can impart strange flavours to the bean which can be picked up in the final brew.
We are quite happy to order naturally processed coffee because coffee growers have become much more adept at this process over the past decade. They have even taken up some of the tricks used in winemaking such as carbonic maceration which is a wonderful approach in the right hands.
Having chosen our Sulawesi beans, we were delighted to see the attention to detail as our coffees were made.
The owner first poured water over the filter to ensure that there was no taint from that quarter and to open the pores in the filter. He then ground the beans in a manual grinder which does not heat the beans as much as an electric one. The water was then heated to the correct temperature (between 90C and 95C) before being poured over the grounds in the filter.
The resultant coffee was amazing. It had an appealing freshness. It lingered for a long time and the flavour profile was just what we were looking for.
We were so impressed that we returned two days later on our return to Hobart and enjoyed another round of coffee which was just as good as our first visit.
It is also possible to snack on pastries and other treats here.
Coffee in Ross: Conclusion
It is definitely a place to support. All it takes is an extra couple of minutes to divert off the Midland Highway and you will find the signs for Dinki in the main street where you can finally enjoy coffee in Ross.
Additional information
Street: 32 Church St
Town/Suburb: Ross, 7209
Phone number: +61 468 533 224
Opening hours: Fri – Tue 10am – 3pm
You can read more about places to drink coffee in Tasmania in an article we have posted on this site.