April 2010

Monsooned Malabar Blend

If you have been following us on Facebook of late, you would have seen photos of The Baron and The Enthusiast’s trip through India in January. Being that our distributors have just received their current Indian stocks for the year we though it time to bring back a favourite of some of our long standing customers....

In olden times, coffee was shipped from India to Europe in wooden sailing vessels, taking four to six months to sail around the Cape of Good Hope before reaching their destinations. Coffee, stored below the water line and kept in a humid atmosphere by the little moisture seeping through the wood, underwent a form of treatment on its long voyage to the market. When that coffee reached Europe, it had changed its colour from bright green to pale gold, and had lost its new crop acidity. It was mellow in the cup and easy on the stomach. Europeans loved this coffee not realizing at the time just how unusual it was.

As shipping methods and vessels improved, the coffee arrived less damaged and the flavour tended to be more natural. The coffee began arriving fresh, now tasting spicier, more acidic and less earthy. The Euopeans were upset wanting the coffee they had grown to love, the original taste of this coffee was lost, but not forever.

In India now there is a common process called Monsooning, recreating the taste so loved in Italy all those years ago. After the coffee beans are washed, instead of the normal drying process, they are spread out onto a warehouse floor during the Monsoon season. They are not directly rained upon, but instead soak up moisture from the humid air blowing though the building. In this 12 to 16 week process, these beans swell to nearly twice their original size and develop colour ranging from a pale gold to a light brown and in the process acquire a special, unique flavour. At this stage, the moisture content is 14.5%, up from the average 10.5% for regular Indian coffee, and most importantly, it has become the lowest acid coffee in the world.

Rather than go down the track that we have been before, this time we have two different Monsooned coffees in a blend. The first being the Monsooned Malabar AA, which has great crema and balance, but is quite mellow in flavour. To counteract this we have also added some Monsooned Buttons (Peaberry). These generally have a bit more of a gutsy flavour and give the blend some boost.

Roasted separately due to the extreme size difference, the AA shows through when drinking this coffee as an espresso, or black. The acidity has been removed through the process for you, but the peaberry add that upfront kick. Then for those who enjoy their coffee with milk we have taken this into consideration too as the balance between the two beans give you a good flavoured cup with a smoother finish.

The best of both worlds, old and new, show what can be done before it even reaches our roasters!

Enjoy

The Koffee Purist