Coffee in the land of mythology and monsoon, the gold of India

"translated from FreshCup Magazine, April, pp. 64-70," India Gold "by Kenneth Davids, the copyright of the original text and other related rights are owned by the magazine, and the copyright of the translated text is reserved by the translator. Please do not reprint or reset it at will."

Coffee in the land of golden ── mythology and monsoon in India

Our mysterious impression of India is not only its coffee, but also tea, temples, yoga, sitar, or even the more negative abnormal big cities, and so on.

However, when I attended the 2002 Indian International Coffee Festival in Bangalore, I did not feel the above phenomenon at all. I have visited a local temple, and it is very impressive. The interior of that temple has a white background, and the ceiling is covered with a huge black bull, overlooking the tourists visiting the ceremony from top to bottom, but this is not alone among the local temples in Bangalore. Bangalore is the distribution center of Indian coffee and the location of the Indian coffee shop. It is the city that hosts the Indian Coffee Festival and co-hosts the Indian Fine Cup Award Competition. There is no rumored abnormal situation in the big city here, perhaps because there are more automatic rickshaws and smaller ambassadorial taxis here, but it does not show that the local people are very poor or there are traffic jams.

Here, of course, there are more coffee-related products than tea products, and small and cheap coffee cups can be seen everywhere in the streets, and sometimes some people can be seen squeezing out coffee from Italian coffee machines in a very dramatic way. or coffee brewed in other ways, mixed with condensed milk In addition, there are many small Western-style cafes, whose Menu style is similar to Starbucks, most of which sell cappuccino and latte.

As a result, three common stereotypes about India do not exist in India's coffee capital: full of temples, poverty, and tea.

Back to the subject of coffee.

So how many types of coffee are there in India? In the American boutique market, it is rare to see many kinds of Indian beans, and it seems that Indian beans are neglected in this boutique world. I have done in-depth research and comments on Indian beans provided by two retailers on my website http://www.coffeereview.com/, both of which were almost difficult to give birth because I couldn't get enough kinds of Indian beans to compare. The reason why there are so many kinds of Indian beans on the American market today must be attributed to the indomitable Indian coffee expert and importer Dr. Joseph Johns, the head of Josuma Coffee Company. Over the past decade, with eye-catching press releases, online reports, and all the espresso recipes he has developed to add Indian beans, he has found a way for Indian coffee in the boutique market in the United States.

When I first tasted Indian beans about 30 years ago, I had only one impression of them. I mentioned in my first publication, Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing, & Enjoying: it tastes like Indonesian beans with no deep changes, with exotic flavor, but it tastes less dusty than Sumatra and sometimes tastes like spice or chocolate. Compared with Sulawesi, there is also less fresh forest soil flavor and no complex fermented flavor. For those who are used to fine coffee, this bean has nothing to talk about. It is only "a sweet, smooth and delicious coffee". This is what I wrote about Indian coffee beans at that time, but now I really regret making that comment.

But it's not my fault. At that time, I drank a few Indian beans that can be found in the United States. Although there are still not many Indian beans you can find today, many American bakers have added wind-soaked Malaba to their espresso formula one after another. The name of this bean is really good. This is an Arabica dried bean. After a year and months of wet rainy season in India, until the beans swell up and turn yellow, they are like coffee popcorn!

However, the pity of this wind-stained Malaba is that it has such obvious flavor defects that it is difficult for most North American boutique coffee tasters to accept the taste of this bean. Wind-stained Malabas have very low acidity, very thick viscosity, and a syrup-like taste, but because of their unique strong dusty smell, they happen to be disliked by most North American coffee drinkers. But to be honest, it has gradually come to the fore in the world of espresso beans, acting as a magic ingredient in the recipe, adding to the taste and texture of pure drinking espresso, which is a very attractive advantage in espresso and unique in drinks with milk.

Despite its importance in premium espresso recipes, Wind-stained Malaba is not very popular in the American coffee market.

There are also delicious manor-grade Indian beans.

When we all participated in the Flavor of India Fine Cup Competition review together, we were sometimes shocked by the performance of some beans, which to me was like a dramatic change in the type of Indian beans.

The cup test held in India is conducted according to the Indian coffee bean grading system, and the samples of coffee beans are evaluated according to each grade: Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold of Specialty Arabica grade, Plantation An and B of commercial grade Arabica beans with fine treatment, Robusta Parchment and Kaapi Royale of Robusta grade of water washing, and beans of wind stain treatment. All the beans sent to the competition seem to have been selected, and the preparation levels are very beautiful, but they are all delivered by large Plantation. I noticed that the general constant of a batch of beans they sent in is very large, which is not quite the same as that of Cup of Excellence in America, which is almost all sent by boutique-grade small farms to participate in the competition, and the quantity of a batch of beans is usually not large.

The first thing that scares us is this year's award-winning Bean Badnekhan Manor (the best Arabica) and Jumboor Manor (the best Specialty coffee). Like other cup tests, all the judges use their own unique ways to describe the ways in which they are impressed by the winning beans, but they usually end up with a more consistent general review. For me, I think the beans of Badnekhan Manor are very floral and citrus-flavored, which is somewhat similar to the characteristics of good East African plateau beans, while the beans of Jumboor Manor are bright and crisp with fruit flavor. These two beans are outliers that have not appeared in several other world competitions, and each of them has its own unique features, so they can be honored as selected manors in India.

"who brought this bean?" This surprising problem often arises one after another in the major cup tests, and the "flavor characteristics of the producing areas" do not come entirely from the local climate and soil conditions, or from the special local treatment methods. The flavor characteristics of the producing area also cover the local people's preference for various flavors, and find out how to steadily produce such flavors. In other words, a large part of the flavor characteristics of the producing area comes from the preferences of importers, exporters and buyers.

Once the grading system is established, the next step is to find the beans that perform best under the grading system, which must best represent the flavor characteristics of the whole producing area. It's just that these two Indian beans run counter to this principle and are different from the producing areas, so I suspect there are more good things waiting to be discovered on the hills where coffee is grown in India.

Put Indian beans on the single coffee supply list.

If there are too many kinds of exotic coffee in a large producing area, then perhaps large roasters and general importers and exporters do not know whether they should give this big producing area a special noun, so that customers can know whether they like the taste of the beans when they buy them. India is a big producing area that makes it impossible for people to set exclusive nouns. Unless the beans here have stable flavor performance and more and more interesting flavor changes year after year, only in this way can we form the conditions for a complete flavor characteristics of the producing area, and can sellers and customers also have a higher interest in the beans produced in this producing area.

I saw a glimmer of light. In this Flavor of India Competition, although there are no very special characteristics in commercial grade Plantation An and B, they are all very satisfactory and interesting beans with a slight flower and fruit aroma, and the preparation level is obviously quite good.

Indian Plantation beans lack a very dramatic flavor, which means that when you get a Yirgacheffe, you have to drink floral and citrus flavor; when you get a Sumatra, you have to taste a little dusty. But on the other hand, Plantation series beans have good balance and cleanliness. They are suitably sweet and not too sharp in acidity. In other words, beans of this grade are acceptable to many customers who do not like strong acidity, and they do not have to be baked so deep that they burn off the characteristics and acidity.

Marketing document

Usually to make marketers highly interested in pushing a bean, you have to give them some fictional coffee stories or real coffee stories to assist them. Today's most famous story is Baba Budan's story of bringing the seven native coffee breeds out of Mecca, which is more true and historical than the story of another shepherd, Kaldi, but both stories are a bit overblown. If the Old Chick coffee brought to India at that time in Baba Budan can survive diseases and insect pests, this story may also have some effect on the marketing of Indian beans, but this kind of coffee is very rare today.

The true story of Indian coffee is actually quite complicated. Coming back to the question of tree species, Old Chick and Kent are now very rare. Kent beans have long been highly respected for their pleasant flavor, but now they are also rare. However, in this Indian cup test event, I occasionally drink very similar to the flavor characteristics of Kent species. On the other hand, SLN9 has been planted in India recently, which is derived from the tree species of Ethiopia, so it tastes like flowers and fruits, which I often drink at this event.

When it comes to social and economic issues, most of the Indian coffee I drink this time is delivered by larger estates, some are family-run businesses, and some are run by larger Corporation, such as one of the Tata Farm is a good bean delivered by Corporation. Seeing this, I deeply feel that small farm beans in India will be buried by these well-behaved big farm beans, but there is still a turnaround, if small farms can grow beans with a more interesting flavor, then it is possible to repeat the drama of the recent Brazil and Nicaragua Cup Test Competition (Note 1.)

For marketers, the best marketing focus of Indian coffee may be on India's own scenery and natural landscape, and the Indian estates participating in the competition may look quite large. But in fact, they all maintain their own natural landscape: most of them are shaded under native trees and planted with other spices and crops at the same time. Although these farms are large, they do not have the smell of "mass production" at all.

Note 1. In the 2002-03 Brazil-Nicaragua Cup Test Competition, many previously unknown small farms sprang up. Take Brazil as an example, in this year's Cup Test Competition, there are many small farm beans with flavor characteristics similar to those of Guatemala and Costa Rica. I should be referring to this possibility.

Robusta's performance is not very amazing.

The next surprise was not very intense. I once secretly mixed Robusta with water into one of my old recipes. I didn't want to stir up a controversial topic, but what I drank in this cup test was a very good water wash Robusta ──. The best Robusta has no smell, except for its "sense of existence". Slightly mild sweetness, wheat-like smell, thick texture. Most cup testers focus on the touch and functional features of the mouth (that is, the taste and the functional value of playing a role in the espresso) rather than on the aroma.

Most Robusta are peeled by hand and stacked next to a pile of rotten flesh, so the Robusta usually tastes bad, and if it's Arabica, it's just as bad. From the appearance of the dried Robusta, we can see that the flavor will be bad, and the defect rate is high enough to change the taste, but fortunately, the defect rate of India Parchment An and B Robusta measured in this cup is about 4 d/300gr, which is higher than that of some high-grade Arabica beans.

I deeply feel that these carefully prepared Robusta is another treasure of Indian coffee. If you know how to use it in espresso recipes and skillfully play the role of depth and moderate sweetness, it is sometimes better than using bright Arabica to bring out too bright sweetness.

The stunning of wind-soaked beans

What other beans are amazing in this cup test? For me, I think the taste of a few good wind-stained Malabas is almost entirely syrup-like and super-thick texture, while the more annoying dusty rough edges are much lower, making the overall texture thicker and fuller. The layers are also very rich, with a very good sweetness in the thick taste, this time the wind-stained Malaba can be said to be completely above the level of performance, after drinking is left in the mouth is warm and moist flavor, rather than the previous dust flavor.

Coffee drunken

Every time I participate in a cup test contest around the world as a judge, what I enjoy most is that during the run-off, I can absorb the caffeine in the air and coffee soup, and this time I can enjoy drinking the Arabica beans from Badnekhan Manor and Jumboor Manor.

Long after the end of Flavor of India Competition in India, I still couldn't forget the delicious taste of coffee and got on the electric rickshaw with this sense of satisfaction, although the driver always couldn't quite understand why I didn't want to bring some Indian-style souvenirs to my wife and myself. Instead, I was drinking delicious coffee on the electric rickshaw, thinking about the charming couple in Bangalore and their family members. The man wears a white coat and the woman wears pleated clothes, which is completely exotic.

When I stopped waving goodbye to the Indian children behind the car, I began to think in my head that what India's coffee industry needs most is to have more direct contact with buyers in the North American boutique market. This should make more explosive progress for their coffee industry. About 10 years ago, the Indian government was determined to carry forward India's coffee industry and transform the country's coffee industry ecology with innovation, idealism and enterprise management. India's coffee industry is already in a highly complex and fast-changing state. If North American buyers or Central American growers intervene in India's coffee industry, its complexity and change will be even more drastic.

After having such a wonderful and wonderful experience in this cup test, I'm sure these are just the tip of the iceberg and there are a lot of fish out of the net. The Coffee Bureau of India has recently been busy promoting the tribal coffee planting program in Northeast India. I met the group chairman of the plan during this event. I don't know how good these beans will probably taste. However, the background content is quite interesting, and I look forward to their finding the right partner, which will greatly improve the quality of this kind of coffee.

In addition, there are infinite possibilities in the nature of the existing Indian coffee species. Today, I drank such excellent and special Indian beans, indicating that there must be other excellent and special Indian beans that are not yet alive. For example, other drying treatments or "tree top fermentation" beans. At present, most of the Indian beans on the market are lightly fermented or overfermented products. Will it be a more beautiful picture if these improperly processed beans are handed over to a good processing plant? Or might we get another version of Harrar or Yimen beans? Or replace the wind-soaked beans with other treatments? If coffee growers and buyers can find a balance, then these possibilities will one day be realized.

But the biggest problem is transportation. It takes a whole day to fly from North America to India, unlike seven to eight hours by plane to Guatemala City or San Jose City. But from another point of view, the Indian coffee shop and coffee farmers are friendly and enthusiastic, the coffee-related landscape is also very diverse and interesting, and the families who drive rickshaws are dressed in a variety of elegance and style. If one day you have a chance to travel outside Bangalore (which is the only thing I haven't done this time), I'm sure you'll still see a lot of temples and tea!

Kenneth Davids is the author of three coffee-related books, one of which is Coffee: A Guide to Coffee Buying, Brewing, & Enjoying, which has been republished for the fifth time.