FRIEDHATS India

Ok, imagine it’s 1789. You’re a coffee enthusiast living in the Netherlands and you just ordered some coffee from India. You have never tried coffee from India before so you can’t wait to taste it. Obviously you’ll have to wait because FedEx didn’t fly there at the time and boats were dependent on the wind. Six months later, your coffee arrives, but the beans look a bit funny. They look swollen and more pale brown instead of green. You roast it and brew it, but just like you expected it doesn’t taste very good. It’s very full, round and smooth but not in a good way. There’s no acidity, no brightness, nothing exciting.

So you give it to some of your friends and they all love it…weird.

That’s what it must have been like to be a specialty coffee person in the 18th century. In a way, little has changed.

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The coffee I’m referring to here is Monsooned Malabar from India. The story goes that back in the days coffee from India travelled a long time in very humid (sea)conditions and that gave the coffee a specific flavor profile that apparently many people loved. So much so that by the time FedEx was fully operational, people still wanted this moldy smooth and round flavor. So what did they do? What most companies do, they give the people what they want: they re-created the six month shipping conditions in terms of humidity and moisture content.

The first time I tasted Monsooned Malabar, I thought it tasted like eating old popcorn while smoking a wet cigar. I never gave Indian coffee a second chance. But maybe I was wrong (:

Things have changed since then because now there are producers like Ashok Patre that focus on cup quality and experiment with new processing techniques.

The farm is located in the Sahyadri mountain range at an altitude of 1800-2000 masl, in a lush rainforest full of flora, fauna, panthers and tigers. The coffee trees are shade grown and very well maintained.

All of this makes for a coffee that is unlike the old Malabar.

Ok, cool but what does it taste like? Dried Stonefruit, Spiced hot chocolate and hazelnut.