Coffee Chronicles: Travails of a Philistine Devotee

Coffee came to India in mid-seventeenth century. Legend says Baba Budan, a Sufi saint, tasted this drink, Qahwa, on his pilgrimage to Mecca. As he sailed home from the port city of Mocha in Yemen, he smuggled seven beans of coffee, strapped to his chest—for Yemenis were extremely protective of their coffee industry. He planted these in the backyard of his hermitage at Chikmagalur in Karnataka. Coffee plants spread onto the surrounding hills known as Baba Budan hills and grew wildly for centuries. Dutch attempted to develop coffee plantations in India, but it was British who relentlessly drove Arabica coffee plantations in the hills of southern India.

A Coffee garden in Chikmagalur

Coffee, thus arrived in India about five hundred years ago, piggy-backing on a holy enterprise. But it has yet not reached north India. Coffee that is drunk - if at all - in the north, is not coffee but a preposterous imitation of it; the instant coffee. This according to Vir Sanghvi ‘is to genuine coffee what a garden lizard is to dinosaur.’

Arrival of multinational coffee companies, growth of indigenous chain of CCD - the trendy Caffe Coffee Day, and proliferation of their ubiquitous cafeterias in north Indian cities since mid-1990s, creates an illusion of increasing coffee popularity in north. But this is misleading. Barring few, for most young who throng them, these cafés are merely a fashionable haunt, a cool and funky way to spend time with friends over a cup of ‘coffee - the favourite beverage of the civilised world.’ (Thomas Jefferson, 1824) Real coffee is yet to cross the thresholds of north-Indian homes.

In my childhood, coffee was considered an esoteric drink in family. Only coffee we knew was Nescafe. My mother never made it at home. I tasted it at my cousins’ place; who my mother said had married girls of modern tastes. ‘Won’t you have tea? A little cold drink? No? Have coffee then.’ Coffee was thick buffalo milk with a smattering of Nescafe granules, worked up into a frenetic foam, and cloyingly sweet. I loved the special drink.

Instant coffee is produced by subjecting the concentrated extract of coffee beans to various industrial processes as freeze-drying, spray drying, etc. India owes its love for instant coffee to Britain, where 80% of coffee used is instant. In another great coffee-loving nation of the world, Italy, only 1% coffee is instant. Merit of instant coffee is the ease of preparation.  Boil a little milk, add sugar, and a spoonful of instant coffee, and the drink is ready. But this production for the masses, kills the soul of the coffee-bean; the spirit which has to be patiently and gently unmasked in the hands of an expert coffee maker.

The variety of coffee, most popular in north is Expresso coffee. Like Basmati rice, north India holds intellectual property rights for Expresso coffee. None knows how it got invented. Any similarity with the real coffee ends with the similar sounding name. Expresso is a thick creamy milk that is turned frothy by the steam hissing out of the angry spout of an Expresso machine. Homeopathic doses of instant coffee are added and chocolate powder is sprinkled over the froth. In north, soul of coffee is believed to reside in its thick milky froth.

I do not remember how I got into the habit of drinking coffee after dinner. A warm aromatic drink in the quite of the night when kids slept, appeared to enhance the joys of the Hindustani and Carnatic music, I had been listening for a few years. Coffee was instant, the only coffee I knew to make then. And like the music, I knew little of its nuances; Perhaps the idea appealed more than the inherent taste of both.

I was posted to Bangalore. I soon came across Kaapi – the south Indian filtered coffee. As the name suggests, this is not instant. Coffee is filtered freshly from the ground coffee beans.

Kaapi

Fog of intoxicating Kaapi, perpetually bathed the small, immaculately clean Darshini restaurants. Coffee vapours rose from the huge cylindrical coffee percolator and milk boiled continuously in a large cauldron. One cook supervised the coffee corner of the restaurant. He would first set the small steel tumblers in steel bowels on the granite counter. Then pour the precisely measured decoction in each glass. With an enviable panache he would top up the glass with boiling milk, working up an evanescent foam, from beneath which emerged ‘a brown akin to the foaming edge of a river in flood’ as RK Narayan wrote in his essay on coffee. It was love at first sight—rather first whiff. I learnt the taste and the flavour of real coffee only in Bangalore.

I tried to recreate the magic of Darshini’s Kaapi at home.

Kaapi percolator

I bought a steel percolator. It’s a simple two-chambered filter. Coffee powder is placed in the upper chamber which has fenestrated bottom. Boiled water poured over the coffee percolates into the lower chamber as the concentrate. But the decoction I conjured had not a whiff of celestial Kaapi.

My inability to make a good cup of coffee only increased my fascination for this exalted drink. I developed a special reverence for coffee-makers and its connoisseurs. R.K Narayan, one such aficionado of coffee, was indignant when he was asked at a self-service cafeteria in New York regarding how he would like his coffee, ‘Black or White?’. ‘Neither,’ he replied haughtily and further elaborated, ‘I want it neither black nor white, but brown, which ought to be the colour of honest coffee—that’s how we make it in South India where devotees of perfection in coffee assemble from all over the world.’ To be fair to his American hosts, nowhere in the world is coffee prepared like the south Indian Kaapi.

My strong affinity for a good cup of coffee notwithstanding, I remained abjectly ignorant of the art of conjuring one. Few desiccated granules of Nescafe continued to colour my post-dinner drink.

A north Indian friend in Bangalore declared that my coffee decoction was abysmally weak. He considered his knowledge on the subject vast. He would boil the powdered coffee beans in water and milk, like tea leaves; the outcome not coffee in taste or aroma.

In the wonderfully stocked utensil shops in Bangalore, I spotted a stovetop coffee maker—also called a Moka pot.

Stovetop coffee-maker/Moka pot

This I thought, would adequately strengthen my feeble Kaapi decoction. Coffee powder in a Moka pot is added in a basket which sits atop a water chamber. As water boils, steam is led into an upper chamber through a snout and condenses there as the decoction. My pot delivered a dark liquid smelling and tasting of burnt charcoal.

A kind neighbour suggested I mix a little chicory in the coffee powder. This is a common practice in south. Roots of chicory plant are roasted and ground, and taste like coffee, besides being many times cheaper. Chicory made my drink, darker and thicker, and unpalatably bitter. But it had sucked the little aroma I had succeeded in squeezing into my cup. It was a lifeless coffee.

My pathetic ignorance in the matters of coffee was announced in myriad ways.

An European street cafe

I, and my wife, were strolling on the streets of Windsor, after spending a very contented hour at the castle. Street was pregnant with the delicate smells of coffee, like any bazaar street in Europe. We ordered Espresso at a café. Huge cups whetted our appetites. We carried the tray outdoors to enjoy the sights of the bustling marketplace while we sipped our Espresso. Tray felt alarmingly light. We shook the glasses, but there was hardly any coffee in there. We pried open the lids. A few spoonfuls of plain dark fluid, with a thin layer of brown foam, stared back at us. We felt cheated.

On way back to London, in the tube, I read about various coffee preparations on net. Espresso is the 25-30 ml extraction of coffee beans obtained from the espresso machine. It is usually drunk unadulterated. It is a bitter sweet coffee that originated in Italy. Its quality depends on the coffee beans, roast of the beans, quality of grind and technique used to brew it. Each shot of espresso has a crema—a layer of foam that is the essence of the drink—on the surface. It is dark tan to golden in colour. Espresso is the foundation for different types of coffee recipes. Macchiato coffee is one shot of espresso topped off with milk foam. Café Latte has three parts steamed milk, Cappuccino is made with espresso, hot milk and foam.

Coffee recipe

The heavenly aroma of coffee that rinses the shopping arcades of Europe, turned my head. It would be an unmitigated sin, I thought, if I didn’t try to create a little of this heaven in our home. I cleaned the electric coffee maker, which was a gift, and was rusting for long.

Electric Coffee-maker

In electric coffee makers, steam is made to traverse through the coffee basket and it condenses in the carafe as decoction. I tried various coffee powders available in the city. After a long hit-and-trial, I could brew a cup of coffee which smelled and tasted a distant relative of Kaapi. We threw the bottle of Nescafe. Post-dinner ritual acquired a patina of honesty.

On another visit to UK, our hosts at the lovely inn we had booked in the picturesque Welsh village, Betws-e-Coyed, served us a very delicious coffee in breakfast; a mild, subtle flavour, pleasantly warm. The quaint contraption, a glass jar with a plunger and coffee within, sat haughtily on the dining table. It was a French-press.

French-press

On my return, I immediately added another item to my coffee-paraphernalia.

A south Indian friend brought us few blends of coffee powder from Chennai. These were wonderful. I read every word on the packet to learn about the coffee. I read the words—Arabica, Robusta, medium-roast, fine-grind—mesmerised. They meant little, but excited my coffee quest anew.

Through web—where knowledge is scattered like snow in Antarctica—I learnt the finer details of coffee making. Arabica and Robusta are the popular types of coffee beans. Arabica accounts for 60-70% of world production. It is grown at higher altitudes and humidity. Robusta, as the name suggests, is a sturdy variety and also much less expensive. Mixed with Arabica in various proportions it gives many blends. Peaberry is a mutant variety of bean. Instead of two beans in a pod, about 5% of pods contain only one bean. This is Peaberry. It’s smaller and rounder. It also has a distinct sweet taste. We love it at home. All three varieties are grown in India.

Essence of coffee lies hidden in its green beans. To release it beans are roasted. Roasting releases the aromatic oil, Caffeol. Degree of roasting determines the flavour of the final product. Light roast gives a distinct subtle flavour to the drink. Longer roasting releases more oil. Dark roast beans are oily and the coffee stronger and bitter. I like the beans roasted medium—a balance of delicate flavour and bitterness.

Once the beans are ground, lager surface area of coffee is exposed to atmospheric air and coffee deteriorates rapidly. I soon started buying roasted beans, and ground a little every time before brewing coffee. Online shopping empowers the most helpless coffee-lovers in the deep north Indian towns, where eXpresso and Nescafe rule the roost. Many coffee vendors of the states of Andhra, Tamilnadu, and Kerala have online platforms for retail. Soon choicest of coffee-beans from south, roasted to my choice, were being delivered at my doorstep. My larder never ran out of coffee beans. It is a minor luxury to drink a different blend of coffee every day of the week.

I learnt, yes on the web, that size of the grind should match the type of filter one uses. Espresso machine takes finely ground coffee, medium grind is ideal for electric machines, while a percolator works best with coarse grind.

Vain as I am, I often gloat in my new familiarity with the art of coffee brewing, which seemed distant in past. A coffee enthusiast’s enunciation gently pushes me from the high pedestal I perch myself in my arrogance. ‘Coffee-making is a task of precision…My mother maintained our house-reputation for coffee undimmed for half a century. She selects the right quality of seeds, almost subjecting every bean to a severe scrutiny, roasts them slowly over a charcoal fire, and knows by the texture and fragrance of the golden smoke emanating from the chinks in the roaster whether the seeds within have turned the right shade and then grinds them into perfect grains; everything has to be right in this business.’ (R.K. Narayan in his Dateless Diary)

My latest acquisition in pursuance of this tradecraft is a home espresso machine.

Espresso Machine

Coffee gets denatured if exposed to temperatures above 90-92 degrees. Steam in an electric coffee-maker may be above 100 degrees. Espresso machines generate high pressures, above 9 bar, to push heated water (temperature controlled to 90 degrees) through the coffee powder. Pressure is essential to endow coffee with rich texture and aromatic crema.

A chance article, often punctuates my hubris teaching me newer facts of this craft. Even the type of grinding machine influences the taste of coffee produced. Conventional grinders, the one I also use, are the blade grinders. Blade rotates at a high speed and cuts the beans. Burr grinders crush the coffee seeds between the rotating wheels as in a flour mill. This grinding method preserves the aroma of the beans. I have a small hand coffee-grinder which has porcelain burrs.

Hand Coffee-grinder

Urge for a cup of coffee cannot be held hostage to the erratic power supply in our cities.

A beautiful coffee-machine, I saw recently on web, is on my urgent to-buy list.

Coffee-siphon

It looks like an apparatus in a nineteenth century science lab, complete with a spirit lamp. I suspect this would not be handy for daily use, but will grandly compliment the coffee corner of a kitchen. This is a coffee-siphon.

 

My friends are now accustomed to my coffee-lust. Unfailingly, we play a ritual after the dinner, when they visit us at home.

‘Shall I brew you some coffee?’

‘Is it filtered?’

‘Yes, I will grind the beans fresh.’

‘Oh, we would love it then.’

We mouth our well-rehearsed dialogues. The hackneyed forewords, the timeworn process, all seem to enhance the joys of coffee.

Craving for coffee is unalloyed hedonism. But man lives for pleasure. Joys of spirit and body are alike. Quest of a coffee fiend for that elusive cup of perfect coffee can’t be told apart from the saintly search for meaning in life. Both are illusions.