Suspension founder and roaster recalls wild first days of the coffee cafe

Golski opened Suspension cafe at 3 Beaumont Street, Islington, in 2003. It was a grittier streetscape then than it is now, but he was determined to make a go of it with his first business partner.

What he had coming into that business was a passion for coffee, which has only grown.

Golski sold the business several years ago, but continued to supply the coffee for the business known as Suspension Espresso. The business at that location was renamed Slingtown earlier this year, but Golski no longer supplies the coffee.

He continues to trade as Suspension Coffee, roasting and wholesaling coffee beans and retailing bags of roasted beans online.

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When Golski was interviewed for this story, it motivated him to write about his life and coffee. He was front and centre in the original storefront in the early days, but eventually became dedicated to the roasting part of the business. His story (his own words in italics) and our interview are intertwined here. We met over a coffee in a cafe - he had one sip of an espresso over 90 minutes, it wasn't to his liking.

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My first experience with coffee roasting was when I was little, my mother must have realised that the coffee roasting process fascinated me, as she would leave me in front of the roaster in Woden Plaza, Canberra, while she went shopping.

I was enthralled by the way that machine had something going in through the chute in the top, and came out as something different. The little sight glass showing the change as it was occurring. It affected my art and drawings, I would draw a chute in the head of my classmate in art and have something going in, and something different coming out her mouth. I guess I was a surrealist.

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Golski's proud of his roasting and blending abilities. His Suspension brand is still available in Newcastle - sold at Pino's in Islington, Vego's in Islington and Charlestown, Ground Up in Carrington and Bar Sole in Tighes Hill.

He's clear about his roasting style: "It's espresso focused. You can make it other ways, but it's designed as an espresso coffee. It is neither excessively bitter not excessively sour.

"But I think coffee needs to have a little sour lift, and it needs to have a little, a tiny little bit of bitterness, to tell you it's coffee. But you don't want it to sit on the back of your tongue. You want it to be like a nice bit of cocoa or something.

"I balance all my coffees, and I roast coffee the way I like to drink it. I'm a barista so coffee has to have a really good body, it has to be big and thick, you know.

"I think balanced and rich without being too bitter or sour is what we do."

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In my 'tweens we lived in Rodlna, Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea, for two years. We lived in a coffee-growing area among the coffee trees. I had a little coffee garden, too. My stepfather was an anthropologist. We saw the whole process around us, hulling the cherries, drying the beans on tarps by the side of the road, and the mad coffee cars racing down the hill every week to buy the beans. They would crash and roll off the side of the mountain from time to time and everybody would join in the rescue.

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Golski is currently operating his roastery from a warehouse in Marrickville in Sydney. He's moved his small batch roastery nine times (but then, he's never lived in one place for more than five years in his life).

The entire family is connected to the coffee industry. As he says: "Kaze is only 9, He does tech support for anything electronic, as well as stickering and bagging the coffee. Raiden roasts most of the coffee and does deliveries, and is adept at building as well. Indigo has left a big sales job to take over our admin, sales and marketing. Abraham has his own little café pouring our beans in Leichardt, Sydney. Abe's Coffee Supply. Rachel [Mishka's life partner] roasts coffee, does coffee packing and looks at big picture stuff, she creates homely and elegant spaces for us to confer, rest and work in the old warehouse, and she has a corner and a table where she can write her poetry, otherwise she uses our retro caravan as her office.

"I develop roast profiles, quality control, building, deliveries... I design the exhaust filtration...Roaster exhaust design has an effect on flavour, often overlooked. I try to avoid admin and design."

He is considering opening a retail outlet in Newcastle, focusing on espresso coffees.

"Having a footprint in Newcastle, it's important to me," he says. "When I started that cafe, yes I wanted to make a living from it, that was true, but it was never about turning it into a moneymaking machine. If anything, it was a social experiment...

"The philosophy of starting that business: we wanted it to be totally coffee centric. But we wanted anyone to be allowed to come to the shop."

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As a young adult I started to love coffee as a drink. I had several stovetop espresso pots, depending on how many people I had visiting, and finally moved up to an espresso machine after the birth of our second child. Coffee became an obsession.

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Golski is proud of his Polish-Jewish heritage. It's central to his own attitude of inclusiveness, which was always part of the spirit of cafe he created.

"I have a very, very rich and deep history with that shop, with that place, and with the Islington community," he says.

"I remember once I was working behind the counter and one of the local sex workers was standing in front of me, asking for her coffee, and a Bentley pulled up in the no stopping zone across the road and these Darby Street fashionistas got out of their Bentley and stood waiting patiently behind this local sex worker, who was getting her coffee. And I declared it a success at that point. I bought those people together around the coffee. That was what I wanted to do."

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I never really felt like I owned Suspension Espresso when I did. We started a thing, Rachel and I, and it had its own life. We opened its doors and together with our coffee loving community we explored coffee together.

When I first saw the place, it wasn't exactly what I had dreamt, but its position was. It was the place, the dream was just a little wrong. It was a little souvenir shop, oddly placed in downtown Islington, selling little teddy bears. To whom exactly? People believed it to be a drug dealing front, although this was never confirmed to me.

But Islington was a rough area. The negotiated rent for 3 Beaumont St was $100/week with CPI rent increases annually capped at 10 per cent with market rent increases on options. The lease was a 3x3x3 so I had the place secured for nine years!

The lease negotiation itself was like a game of poker. The landlord Gerry Cominos and I stared at each other across the table. By the time we had come to an agreement, he was shaking and sweating. But we both came away with what we wanted; a coffee shop in Islington.

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Golski's family moved around a lot, not only his youth but his entire life. He was born in London, raised in Melbourne, then Canberra, and other points. "I've had a helluva journey to get to where I am right now," he says. "I've been late diagnosed as having ADHD and that probably contributes to the fact I haven't sat still very much and I've always moved around."

The roastery has moved a lot, too. "Not having the money to set up a permanent roastery, we set up under friends' houses, verandas, garages where we lived, we had a small warehouse in Redfern for a time, never approved by council," Golski says. "We roasted from the Morrow Park Bowlo in a shipping container before it burnt down. Then we moved the container to a friend's property in Karuah."

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When we were building (Suspension) it was always a party, Rachel and I would fight over who got to go building with our ratbag friends, and who would stay at home with the sleeping kids.

Finally, we finished. Our council inspection passed with a little bit of discussion. And we opened the doors! Then nothing. Absolutely nothing. For the first three hours we didn't get a single customer. I grabbed a can of paint and started to write the word OPEN on the window, I got as far as P when our first customers walked in the door, excited about the new coffee shop in the neighbourhood.

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Golski's dedication to learning the art of making a great coffee blend has never wavered. He knows exactly where his coffee sits in the big picture of taste. We revisit the subject of how Golski makes his roast.

"It's lighter than the old guard traditional coffee roasters, like a lot lighter than say a Vittoria coffee. Definitely a darker roast than the current crop of specialty roasters, Melbourne roasters in particular are very light.

"I don't like sour coffee. The current specialty crop at the moment are all about sour coffee - that's why they're making cold brew and these others. That's why they are specialising in other brewing methods, because espresso brings all these flavours out. So if you've got too much of particular flavour in your coffee it's not suited to espresso.

I'm in this really nice, big warm middle. I think my coffees are sweeter than pretty much anything else I've tried. So sweetness is big. Big. Rich. Warm. Middle flavours. And natural sweetness. A little acidic lift. And just a little bit of bitter. That's what I go for."

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The café was a wild place, we had the most delicious blend of customers in the shop. Some were older, apparently conservative people who would brave the strange environment for a really good cup of coffee.

We had hippies, activists, sex workers, fashionistas, punks, graffiti writers, bankers, lawyers, football players, as well as being an LGBTIQ safe place.

We had Roy and HG, Andrew Johns, Paul Bassett (world champion barista). Everyone was treated the same there. (it may have been that I never recognised any celebrities and was only ever informed after the fact).

Rachel would sometimes serve coffees with her roller blades on, each barista would pour the coffees they loved and play the music they loved as well.

We had parties, DJ's, performers, it was beautiful, natural and organic. Babychinos were free because babies didn't have money.

Our kids used to catch the train home from school at Newcastle East Public School and lob straight into the café with whatever friends had joined them and would walk straight behind the counter and grab as much gelato as they wanted, then demand hot chocolate. I would give them cups and make a huge jug that would keep them going for a while. They were shop kids and the shop was a second home to all of us.