What Coffee Does India Have? Introduction to Indian Coffee Varieties and Flavor Characteristics - Which Indian Coffee is Important

Professional Coffee Knowledge Exchange | More Coffee Bean Information | Please Follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat Public Account: cafe_style)

India's Gold – Coffee from the Land of Myth and Monsoon

Our mysterious impressions of India extend beyond its coffee to include tea, temples, yoga, sitar, or even the negative aspects of overcrowded megacities.

However, when I participated in the 2002 India International Coffee Festival held in Bangalore, I felt none of the aforementioned phenomena. I visited a local temple, which was very impressive – its interior was white with a giant black bull painted on the ceiling, looking down upon the visiting pilgrims. But this wasn't unique among Bangalore's temples. Bangalore is India's coffee distribution center and home to the Indian Coffee Board. The city hosts the India Coffee Festival and co-organizes the India Fine Cup Award Competition. Here too, I saw none of the rumored megacity problems – perhaps because there were more auto-rickshaws and smaller Ambassador taxis, but there was no obvious poverty or traffic congestion.

Here, naturally, coffee-related products outnumber tea products. On the streets, small, inexpensive coffee cups are everywhere. Sometimes you can see people dramatically mixing espresso from espresso machines or coffee brewed by other methods with condensed milk. Additionally, many Western-style small cafes stand on street corners, with menus styled like Starbucks, mostly selling cappuccinos and lattes.

Thus, in this coffee capital of India, three common stereotypes about India don't exist: the景象 of temples everywhere, poverty, and tea.

Returning to the Topic of Coffee

So what are the typical types of Indian coffee? In the American specialty market, very few types of Indian beans are seen. It seems that in the specialty world, Indian beans are overlooked. I once conducted in-depth research and reviews on Indian beans provided by two retailers on my website http://www.coffeereview.com/, and both review articles nearly didn't materialize because I couldn't get enough varieties of Indian beans for comparison. The reason so many varieties of Indian beans are available in the American market today is thanks to the tireless Indian coffee expert and importer Dr. Joseph Johns, head of Josuma Coffee Company. Over the past 10 years, through press releases, online reports, and all his espresso formulas incorporating Indian beans, he has paved a smooth path for Indian coffee in the American specialty market.

About 30 years ago, I first tasted Indian beans and had only one impression of them then. I mentioned in my first publication, Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing, & Enjoying: "It tastes like a less complex Indonesian bean, with exotic flavors, but compared to Sumatra, it lacks that earthy taste, sometimes tasting like spices or chocolate. Compared to Sulawesi, it also lacks that fresh forest soil flavor and complex fermentation notes. For those accustomed to specialty coffee, this bean isn't particularly noteworthy – it's just 'a sweet, smooth, easy-drinking coffee.' That was my assessment of Indian coffee beans then, but I truly regret making such comments now.

But I can't be blamed for that. What I drank then was one of the few Indian beans available in the United States. Although today you still can't find many Indian beans, many American roasters have gradually incorporated Monsooned Malabar into their espresso formulas. What a great name for this bean! It's an Arabica dry-processed bean that undergoes several months of humid monsoon winds in India until the beans swell up and turn yellow in appearance – truly coffee's version of popcorn!

However, Monsooned Malabar has one drawback: it has obvious flavor defects that make it difficult for most North American specialty coffee tasters to accept when drunk pure. Monsooned Malabar has extremely low acidity, very heavy viscosity, and a syrupy mouthfeel, but because of its distinctive, strong earthy flavor – which most North American coffee drinkers don't particularly like – it's not very popular. However, in the world of espresso blending, it has gradually emerged, playing the role of a magical ingredient that enhances the flavor and texture of pure espresso, which is a fascinating advantage in espresso. It also performs uniquely in milk-based drinks.

Despite its importance in premium espresso formulas, Monsooned Malabar's position in the American coffee market isn't very popular.

There Are Also Delicious Estate-Grade Indian Beans

We judges who participated in the Flavor of India Fine Cup Competition were sometimes surprised by the performance of some beans. To me, these were like dramatically different types of Indian beans.

The format of India's cupping competition follows the Indian coffee bean grading system, with competition bean samples evaluated according to various grades: Specialty Arabica grade Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold, finely processed commercial grade washed Arabica beans Plantation A and B, washed Robusta grades Robusta Parchment and Kaapi Royale, and monsooned grade beans. All beans entered in the competition seemed carefully selected, with very beautiful preparation, but they were all submitted by large plantations. I noticed that the batches they submitted were usually very large, unlike the Cup of Excellence held in the Americas, where entries almost always come from specialty-grade small estates, with typically small batches.

The first surprise was this year's winning estate beans: Badnekhan Estate (best Arabica) and Jumboor Estate (best Specialty coffee). Like other cupping competitions, all judges describe what impressed them about the winning beans in their unique ways, but there's usually a relatively consistent overall assessment. For me, I think Badnekhan Estate's beans have very strong floral and citrus flavors, somewhat similar to the characteristics of good East African highland beans. Jumboor Estate's beans, on the other hand, have bright, crisp acidity with fruity notes. These two beans are anomalies not seen in other world competitions, each with unique characteristics, which is why they earned the honor of India's Select Estates.

"Who brought this bean?" Such surprised questions often arise in major cupping competitions. "Regional flavor characteristics" don't entirely come from local climate and soil conditions or special local processing methods; regional flavor characteristics also encompass local people's taste preferences and their methods for consistently producing such flavors. In other words, a significant part of regional flavor characteristics comes from the preferences of importers and buyers.

Once a grading system is established, the next step is to find the best-performing beans within that system – beans that best represent the flavor characteristics of the entire large region. However, both of these Indian beans violate this principle – they are anomalies in their region, which makes me suspect there must be more good things waiting to be discovered on India's coffee-growing hills.

Putting Indian Beans on Single-Origin Coffee Menus

If a large region has too many unusual coffee types, perhaps large roasters and general importers don't know whether to create a specific term for this large region, so customers can know whether the bean's flavor is to their liking when purchasing. India is such a large region where it's difficult to establish a specific term. Unless the beans here consistently show stable flavor characteristics and increasingly interesting flavor variations year after year, they can't meet the conditions for complete regional flavor characteristics, and sellers and customers can't have greater interest in beans from this region.

I see a glimmer of hope. In that Flavor of India Competition, although the commercial-grade Plantation A and B beans didn't have very special characteristics, they were all very satisfying and interesting beans, with subtle floral and fruity aromas, and their preparation level was clearly quite good.

India's Plantation-grade beans lack very dramatic flavor performance. This means that when you get a Yirgacheffe, you must taste floral and citrus flavors; when you get a Sumatra, you must taste some earthiness. On the other hand, Plantation-grade beans have good balance and cleanliness, with appropriate sweetness in the acidity that isn't too sharp. In other words, this grade of beans is acceptable to many customers who don't like strong acidity, and they don't need to be roasted too dark, which would burn away the characteristics and acidity.

Marketing Materials

Usually, to get marketers highly interested in promoting a bean, they must be given some fictional or real coffee stories to help. The most famous today is the story of Baba Budan smuggling seven original coffee seeds out of Mecca. This story has more authenticity and historical significance than the other story about the shepherd Kaldi, but both stories are somewhat overused. If the Old Chick variety coffee that Baba Budan brought to India had survived pests and diseases, perhaps this story could still help market Indian beans, but this variety is very rare today.

The real story of Indian coffee is actually quite complex. Returning to the issue of coffee varieties, Old Chick and Kent varieties are very rare today. Kent beans were highly regarded in the past for their pleasant flavor but are now hard to find. However, in this India cupping event, I occasionally tasted flavor characteristics very similar to the Kent variety. On the other hand, India has recently been growing the SLN9 variety, which originates from Ethiopian varieties, so it has floral and fruity characteristics. I also frequently encountered such flavor characteristics during this event.

Regarding socioeconomic issues, most of the Indian coffee I tasted this time was submitted by relatively large estates, some family-run businesses, and some larger corporations, like one Tata Farm, which was a good bean submitted by a corporation. Seeing this, I deeply feel that small farm beans in India will be buried by these well-performing large farm beans, but there's still hope. If small farms can grow beans with more interesting flavors, they might reenact the scenes from recent cupping competitions in Brazil and Nicaragua (Note 1).

For marketers, the best marketing focus for Indian coffee might still be India's own scenery and natural landscapes. Although the participating Indian estates may look quite large, they actually maintain their respective natural landscapes: mostly shade-grown under native trees, intercropped with various spices and crops. Although these farms are large, they have no sense of "mass production."

Note 1: In the 2002-03 Brazil and Nicaragua cupping competitions, many previously unknown small farms emerged unexpectedly. Taking Brazil as an example, many participating small farm beans in this year's cupping competition had flavor characteristics similar to Guatemala and Costa Rica. This is the possibility the author refers to.

Robusta's Performance Wasn't Too Impressive

The next surprise wasn't very dramatic. I once secretly experimented by adding washed Robusta to an old formula of mine. I'm not trying to stir up controversial topics, but the washed Robusta I tasted in this cupping was actually quite good – the best Robusta has no particular aroma except for its "presence." Slightly mild sweetness, wheat-like aroma, and heavy texture. Most cuppers focus their evaluation on mouthfeel and functional characteristics (that is, mouthfeel and functional value in espresso roles) rather than on aroma judgment.

Most Robusta is processed by hand peeling and piled next to piles of rotten pulp. Robusta processed this way usually tastes terrible, and the same would be true for Arabica. The dry-processed Robusta processed this way shows in appearance that its flavor won't be good, and its defect rate is high enough to affect taste. However, fortunately, the India Parchment A and B Robusta I cupped this time had a defect rate of about 4 d/300gr, which is higher than the defect standards of some high-grade Arabica beans.

I deeply feel that these precisely processed Robusta beans are another treasure in Indian coffee. If you know how to use them in espresso formulas, cleverly playing the role of mouthfeel depth and moderate sweetness, they can sometimes be better than using high-brightness Arabica that brings out overly bright sweetness.

The Surprise of Monsooned Beans

What other beans were surprises in this cupping? For me, I think I tasted several good Monsooned Malabar beans, almost completely syrupy in flavor with an extra-heavy texture. The rather annoying earthy rough edges were much reduced, making the overall texture fuller and richer. The complexity was also rich, with good sweetness in the heavy texture. The Monsooned Malabar I tasted this time can be said to be completely above standard performance, leaving a mellow flavor in the mouth rather than the previous earthy taste.

Coffee Intoxication

Every time I participate in cupping competitions worldwide as a judge, what I enjoy most is the period during the final selection, when I can fully absorb the caffeine in the air and coffee brews. This time, what I enjoyed most was being able to drink Badnekhan Estate and Jumboor Estate's Arabica beans to my heart's content.

After the Flavor of India Competition in India concluded, I couldn't forget the wonderful coffee taste for a long time. With this satisfaction, I boarded an electric rickshaw. Although the driver couldn't quite understand why I didn't want to bring some Indian-style souvenirs for my wife and myself but instead drank delicious coffee in the electric rickshaw, I recalled the charming couples in Bangalore and their family members – men wearing pure white tops, women in pleated garments, full of exotic charm.

When I stopped waving goodbye to the Indian children behind the car, I began to think in my mind, deeply feeling that what India's coffee industry needs most is more direct contact with North American specialty market buyers. This should bring more explosive progress to their coffee industry. About 10 years ago, the Indian government was determined to promote India's coffee industry, transforming the country's coffee industry ecosystem with innovation, idealism, and corporate management. India's coffee industry is currently in a highly complex and rapidly changing state. If North American buyers or Central American growers get involved in India's coffee industry, its complexity and changes will be even more intense.

After such a wonderful and fantastic experience in this cupping competition, I can guarantee that these are just the tip of the iceberg, with many more treasures yet to be discovered. The Indian Coffee Board has recently been busy promoting tribal coffee cultivation programs in northeastern India. During this event, I had the chance to meet the chairman of one group in this program. I'm not sure how good these beans might taste, but there's something intriguing about the background. I look forward to them finding the right partners, which would certainly greatly improve the quality of this coffee.

Additionally, among existing Indian coffee varieties, their essence contains infinite possibilities. Today I tasted such excellent and special Indian beans, indicating that there must be other excellent and special Indian beans yet to emerge, such as other dry-processed or "tree-top fermented" beans. Most Indian beans on the market today are either lightly fermented or overly fermented products. If these improperly processed beans were handed over to good processing plants, would they become even more beautiful? Or would we get another version of Harrar or Yemeni beans? Or replace the monsooned processing with other methods? If coffee growers and buyers can find a balance point, these possibilities will all be realized one day.

However, the biggest problem still lies in transportation. Flying from North America to India takes a full day, unlike our flights to Guatemala City or San Jose, which take only seven to eight hours. But from another perspective, the Indian Coffee Board and coffee farmers are friendly and enthusiastic, and coffee-related landscapes are very diverse and interesting. The auto-rickshaw family's attire is diverse and elegant. If one day you have the opportunity to travel outside Bangalore (which is the only thing I didn't do this time), I'm sure you'll also see many temples and tea!

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans, also providing online store services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473