Indian coffee beans are surprised to find the basic knowledge of coffee beans.

Translated from FreshCup Magazine, April, pp. 64-70,"India Gold"by Kenneth Davids. Copyright and other related rights belong to the magazine. Copyright of translated text belongs to the translator. Please do not reproduce or reset it arbitrarily.

India's Gold ── Mythical Country, Monsoon Land's Coffee

Our mystical impression of India is not only of its coffee, but also of tea, temples, yoga, sitar, and even of the more negative abnormal large cities.

However, when I attended the 2002 Indian International Coffee Festival in Bangalore, I did not feel the above phenomenon at all. I visited one of the local temples and it was very impressive. The temple has a white interior and a huge black bull painted all over the ceiling, overlooking the visiting tourists from above, but this is not the only temple in Bangalore. Bangalore is the distribution center for Indian coffee and the seat of the Coffee Board of India, the city that hosts the Indian Coffee Festival and co-hosts the Indian Fine Cup Award Competition. There are no rumors of abnormal conditions in the city here, perhaps because there are more automatic rickshaws and smaller ambassadorial taxis here, but there is no sign that the local people are poor or have traffic jams.

Here, of course, coffee-related products are more than tea-based products, small and cheap coffee cups can be seen everywhere in the streets, and sometimes some people can be seen mixing coffee squeezed from espresso machines or brewed in other ways with condensed milk in a very dramatic way; there are also many small Western-style cafes standing in the store, the Menu style is close to Starbucks, most of which sell cappuccino and latte coffee.

Thus, in India's coffee capital, none of the three common stereotypes about India exist: the sight of temples, poverty, and tea.

Back to coffee.

How many types of coffee are there in India? It is rare to see too many varieties of Indian beans in the American boutique market, and it seems that Indian beans are neglected in this boutique world. I have done in-depth research and reviews of Indian beans offered by two retailers on my website http://www.coffeereview.com/, and both reviews were nearly aborted because there was no way to get enough variety of Indian beans to compare. The wide variety of Indian beans available in the U.S. market today must be attributed to the indomitable Indian coffee expert and importer Dr. Joseph Johns, head of the Josuma Coffee Company. Over the past decade, he has found a way for Indian coffee to enter the U.S. boutique market with eye-catching press releases, Internet coverage, and all the espresso recipes he has developed with Indian beans.

When I first tasted Indian beans about 30 years ago, I had only one impression of them, as I mentioned in my first publication Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing, & Enjoying: It tastes like Indonesian beans without deep changes. It has the same exotic flavor, but it is less dusty than Sumatra. Sometimes it tastes like spice or chocolate. Compared with Sulawesi, it also has a fresh forest soil flavor. There is no complex and varied fermentation flavor. For those who are used to fine coffee, this bean is actually nothing to talk about. It is just a sweet, Smooth, smooth coffee."That's exactly what I wrote about Indian coffee beans at the time, but I regret saying that now.

But you can't blame me for that. I drank one of the few Indian beans you can find in the United States. Although you still don't find many Indian beans today, many American roasters have added air-soaked maraba to their espresso recipes one after another. This bean has a wonderful name. This is a dry processed bean from Arabica. After months of wet and rainy seasons in India, Until the beans expanded and turned yellow, it was simply a coffee version of popcorn!

The downside of this air-soaked maraba, however, is that it has such obvious flavor flaws that most North American specialty coffee drinkers will find it difficult to accept the taste of this bean pure. Air-soaked marabas have a very low acidity, a very thick viscosity, and a syrupy taste, but because of their particularly strong dusty flavor, they are just what most North American coffee drinkers dislike; But to be honest, it has gradually emerged in the world of espresso with beans, acting as a magic ingredient in the formula, it adds flavor and texture to the pure drink of espresso, which is very attractive in espresso, and it is also very unique in milk drinks.

Despite its importance in premium espresso formulations, air-soaked maraba has not enjoyed much popularity in the american coffee market.

There's also good manor beans.

Several of us who participated in the Flavor of India Fine Cup Competition were sometimes surprised by the performance of some beans, which to me were like dramatically changing Indian bean types.

The cup test format held in India is conducted according to the Indian coffee bean grading system. The samples of the competition beans are rated according to various grades: Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold with Specialty Arabica grade, commercial grade washed Arabica beans Plantation A and B, Robusta Parchment and Kaapi Royale with washed Robusta grade, and beans with wind treatment grade. All the beans sent into the competition seemed to have been selected by thousands of people. The preparation level was very beautiful, but they were all sent by large Plantation. I noticed that the batch of beans they sent in was usually very large. This was not the same as the Cup of Excellence held in America. The latter was almost always sent by small estates of fine grade. The batch of beans was usually not large.

The first thing that scared us was Badnekhan Estate (Best Arabica) and Jumboor Estate (Best Specialty Coffee). As with other cup tests, all judges use their own unique descriptions of what impressed them about the winning beans, but usually end up with a more consistent overall assessment. For me, Badnekhan beans are a very floral and citrus bean, similar to the characteristics of good East African highland beans, while Jumboor beans are bright, crisp, and fruity acids. These two beans are unusual in that they haven't appeared in other World Series, and each has its own unique characteristics, which is why they can get the honor of India's Selected Manor.

"Who brought this bean? "This surprising question often comes up again and again in the major cup tests. The" regional flavor characteristics "are not entirely due to local climate and soil conditions, or local special processing methods. The regional flavor characteristics also cover the local people's preferences for various flavors and find out how to produce such flavors stably. In other words, a large part of the origin of flavor characteristics 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 entire region. However, these two Indian beans are contrary to this principle. They are both exotic in the production area, so I suspect that there should be more good things waiting to be discovered on the hills where Indian coffee is grown.

Put Indian beans on the single-serve coffee list

If there are too many kinds of exotic coffee in a large producing area, then perhaps large roasters and ordinary importers and exporters do not know whether to give a specific term to this large producing area, so that customers can know whether the taste of this bean is their favorite when they buy it. India is a large producing area where people cannot assign a specific term unless the beans here have stable flavor performance and more and more interesting flavor changes every year. In this way, the conditions for a complete flavor characteristic of the producing area can be formed, and sellers and customers can 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 found in the commercial grade Plantation A and B, they are very satisfying and interesting beans, with a slight floral fragrance, and the preparation level is obviously quite good.

Indian Plantation beans lack a dramatic flavor, meaning that when you get a Yirgacheffe, you have to drink floral and citrus flavors; when you get a Sumatra, you have to drink a little dusty. Plantation beans, on the other hand, are well balanced and clean, moderately sweet in their acidity, and not too sharp. In other words, they are acceptable to many customers who do not like strong acidity, and they do not have to be baked so deeply that they burn off both the character and the acidity.

marketing document

Usually to get marketers interested in pushing a bean, they have to be supported by some fictional coffee story or real coffee story. The most famous story today is Baba Budan's story of bringing the seven native coffee seeds out of Mecca. This story is more true and historical than Kaldi's story, but both stories are a bit too much. If the Old Chick coffee brought to India at Baba Budan survived pests, perhaps this story would have had some effect on marketing Indian beans, but this variety of coffee is very rare today.

The real story of Indian coffee is complicated. Returning to tree species, Old Chick and Kent species are now very rare, and Kent beans were once revered for their pleasant flavor, but they are also rare today. However, at this India Cup event, I occasionally drink flavor characteristics that are very similar to Kent species. On the other hand, the SLN9 tree planted recently in India is derived from the Ethiopian tree species, so it has a fruity flavor, which I often drink at this event.

Again, socio-economic issues, most of the Indian coffee I drank this time was delivered by larger estates, some family-run businesses, some by larger corporations, such as a Tata Farm, a good bean delivered by a Corporation. It's tempting to think that small farms in India will be buried by these well-behaved big farms, but there is a silver lining. If small farms can grow beans with more interesting flavors, it may be possible to repeat the recent drama in Brazil and Nicaragua.

For marketers, the best marketing focus for Indian coffee may still be on the landscape and natural landscape of India itself. The Indian farms participating in the competition may seem quite large, but in fact they maintain their own natural landscape: most of them are planted under the shade of native trees, and at the same time they are planted with other spices and crops. Although these farms are large in scale, they have no "mass production" atmosphere.

Note 1: 2002-03 Brazil and Nicaragua Cup Test Competition in 2009, there are many small farms that have never been known in the past. Take Brazil as an example. There are many small farms participating in this year's Cup Test Competition with flavor characteristics similar to Guatemala and Costa Rica. This is the possibility that the author refers to.

Robusta's performance is not too amazing

The next surprise wasn't very dramatic. I had secretly mixed washed Robusta into one of my old recipes. I didn't mean to stir up controversy, but what I drank in this cup test was a very good washed Robusta-the best Robusta had no smell except for its "presence." Mild sweetness, wheat-like smell, thick texture. Most of the cup testers focused on tactile and functional characteristics in the mouth (i.e., taste and functional value in the role of espresso) rather than on aroma.

Most Robusta is peeled directly by hand and stacked next to a pile of rotten pulp, which usually tastes bad, as does Arabica. The dried Robusta thus processed will not have a good flavor in appearance, and the defect rate is high enough to go bad; however, fortunately, India Parchment A and B Robusta measured in this cup have a defect rate of about 4 d/300gr, which is higher than the defect standard of some high-grade Arabica beans.

I deeply feel that these finely prepared Robosta are another gem of Indian coffee, and if you know how to use it in espresso recipes, it plays the role of depth of taste and moderate sweetness, sometimes better than the bright sweetness of Arabica.

Stunning wind beans

What other beans are amazing in this cup test? For me, I think I got a couple of good wind-stained malabas, almost entirely syrupy, with a super-thick texture, with the more annoying dusty edges much reduced, making the overall texture thicker and fuller. The layers were also very rich, and the thick taste had a very good sweetness. This time, the performance of the Fengzao Maraba could be said to be completely above the standard. After drinking, the warm flavor remained in the mouth, not the dust flavor of the past.

Coffee drunk.

Every time I participate in the cup test competition around the world as a judge, the most enjoyable thing is to absorb the caffeine in the air and coffee soup during the final selection period, and this time the most enjoyable thing is to drink the Arabica beans of Badnekhan Manor and Jumboor Manor.

After the Flavor of India Competition, I still remember the wonderful taste of coffee for a long time. With this satisfaction, I boarded the electric rickshaw. Although the driver always couldn't understand why I didn't want to bring some Indian style souvenirs to my wife and myself, but drank delicious coffee on the electric rickshaw. I recalled the charming couples and their family members in Bangalore. The men wore white shirts and the women wore pleated clothes. It's 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.

(this article is reprinted)