BENGALURU: An exhilarating aroma, creamy golden brown froth and a lingering, slightly sharp aftertaste — that’s how a cup of Indian filter coffee comes on to your senses. But how often do we think about the process that goes behind this heady beverage — the kind of beans, the right degree of roasting, the correct temperature for brewing before it nourishes your weary soul. Roast, Brew and You, a two-month-old Instagram page managed by software engineer Viggnesh V, takes one on a tour of the brews he experiments with.
Viggnesh also works as a coffee consultant and brew crafter. “Back in the 60s and 70s, my grandfather used to get some beans, roast them himself, ground and prepare his cup of coffee. But, he wasn’t happy with the taste in the later stages of life. So, I bought a filter coffee blend machine for him in 2012, and he fell in love with his coffee again. This made me wonder how each variety tasted different,” says Viggnesh, who has been working with brewing methods for around three years.
Crop to cup
Viggnesh visited coffee estates during the harvest season — November to January for arabica variety, and from December to April for robusta. “I started brewing coffee with just water roughly four years back. Gradually I got an idea of what coffee note meant, how roasting pressure and duration would determine the taste. I also started travelling as part of my job to the US, Cambodia and Denmark, and tasted some of the best coffees from around the world,” he shares.
Viggnesh hopes to sample coffee from Yemen, which is considered to have some of the best coffees in the world. “I’ve also tried Iceland’s capital Reykjavik’s coffee. There are three levels of roasting — light, medium and high. Here it does not cross light and that’s rare,” he says. In India he often visits coffee estates at Perumalmalai, Yercaud, Kodaikannal, Chikmagalur, Araku Valley and Nilgiris. “The coffee from Meghalaya and Nagaland is good too,” he says.
Know your bean
In an effort to educate coffee lovers about all forms of coffee, Viggnesh conducts workshops. Coffee cupping or tasting is the practice of observing the taste and aroma of the drink. The farmer passes on the produce of the year to roasters. After roasting, they cup them and understand various factors like uniformity, acidity, body, flavour, notes and balance, based on which scores are given to rate
the quality. “Tasting sessions are not to score, but to understand the underlying flavours present,”
he says.
Meanwhile, brewing sessions expose people to different methods to brew coffee beans. “There’s espresso, aeropress, vacuum siphon and other methods,” says Viggnesh, who has 10 brewing machines and small coffee equipment.
Coffee experiments
Viggnesh spends two-three hours a day with his brewing machines. On weekends, he spends almost the whole day. “I cup different coffees using different brewing methods. For instance, cold brew takes close to four hours. The water slowly drips to beds of coffee beans — each of different grind size — resulting
in a different set of flavour. I do my groundwork before suggesting a bean to a restaurant. Sometimes it
requires spending an entire day,” he says.