There are two reasons my husband goes out for a coffee. Firstly, because he has ridiculously high standards. He really enjoys the aroma, crema and silky texture of a properly made flat-white. The second is because if not for those coffee dates with friends he’d never leave the apartment at all. It’s been over three months of pandemic lockdown now and it turns out he wasn’t joking about never leaving the apartment.

My husband is a bit serious about his coffee and will go weeks without having anything rather than settle for something that’s not up to standard. When you live in the Melbourne CBD you can afford to be choosy. A month ago I tempted him with a coffee at home, while shooting some new pods for St Remio. I may have created a monster, and now we’re having to order in extra supplies of his favourite new pods.

The winning recipe was the “Supreme” blend in the new range of compostable capsules. He goes for smooth instead of loud, and his taste in coffee is the same. He likes to say, “I don’t need a cup of coffee yelling at me in the morning, it just needs to nudge me awake and make it worth my while getting out of bed. Flavour is everything.”

This pod gave him the right amount of flavour plus that delicious crema that only a real coffee delivers. He will enjoy the more intense flavoured pods sometimes, for a very tall ice-coffee or an affogato perhaps. What he enjoys most about coffee is the silkiness of the roasted beans coming through the full-fat milk. Now he can have one or two a day as a reward for getting work done at home (or just to break up the routine between couch-time with laptop and editing on the desktop). 

It seems he has one less reason to leave the apartment now, which is kind of a good thing in the middle of a global pandemic.