March 18th, 2023Coffee? You’ll love Daylesford’s Brew Jays!

A TLPromo. Words: Eve Lamb. Images: Supplied

IF you like a good brew… Espresso, filter, pour over, batch or cold brew. If you like your coffee you’ll love Daylesford’s Brew Jays.

This new kid on the block officially launched in January and specialises in all things coffee – particularly roasting its own ethically sourced beans.
Sited at Shop 5, 22-24 Howe Street, it’s quickly become a magnet for the coffee connoisseur. It’s a place where you can watch the single origin beans being roasted, absorb the delicious aromas, enjoy a perfectly made coffee (accompanied by a croissant s’il vous plait!) and leave with a stash of freshly roasted and ground beans.
“All of our coffee beans are ethically sourced and a lot are directly sourced from the farm to the roaster, “says Brew Jay’s Jay Gaschk, a Hepburn Springs local with a love of top notch coffee.
Unique flavour profiles are created on site by teasing out the beans’ innate natural qualities in the roasting process to emphasise tones including caramel, chocolate and berry fruits.
The results include unique coffee blends paying homage to nostalgic delights like Kit Kat, Cherry Ripe, Caramello Koala and Killer Python.
By evening Brew Jays has something else special to offer. It’s also a fast-paced cocktail bar with 15 different coffee martinis on the list.
“Our main focus is coffee roasting and we use our vintage Probat UG15 coffee roaster which was handmade in Germany in 1967 and imported into Australia about a decade ago, and completely refurbished so it can now do computer programming,” says Jay.
“This means we can use probes to find out exactly what’s going on in the barrel so that we can make sure the roast is perfect every time.”
When it comes to high end coffee, Jay knows his stuff, having started out as a coffee barista at age 15 in the Macedon Ranges. From there he worked in the fast-paced Gloria Jean’s in the Qantas lounge at Tullamarine, before honing his craft with inner city boutique coffee retailers, learning from some of the best in the business.
In creating Brew Jays, he’s joined with co-owners – “local hospitality legend” Daylesford’s Rubi Stone, Bendigo’s Sam Arye and Paddy Cummins, Melbourne’s Ben Ward who owns The Coffee Mob, and famed barista Craig Simon, one of the world’s elite coffee Q Grade instructors.
“I’m super passionate about anything to do with coffee,” Jay says.
“At the moment particularly cold brew and exploring experimental coffees and liqueurs.
“Our cold brew coffee is a really big seller for us. It’s made with a hard tank machine especially imported from Poland. We sell our cold brew in-house and it’s also used in our coffee martinis.”
The vision for this new coffee kid on the block is big.
They’re already selling their cold brew retail bottles into bars across Central Victoria. Their roasts can be found in retail outlets from Bendigo to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, with the launch of a website, enabling them to retail online Australia-wide, not far off.
There are also plans to offer coffee classes. “We’re looking to expand into offering classes like coffee cupping and coffee basics,” Jay says.
Noteworthy, too, is the fit-out at Brew Jays, custom built to create a space that envelops the coffee-needy customer like a warm hug.
“Once you step in you don’t want to leave,” Jay says.