Lasya Shree Lasya Shree, maybe it's a yoga technique. Or the sound made when the truck comes barrelling toward an unsuspecting pedestrian. |
Roadside Temple Crammed between businesses, roadside Hindu temples are everywhere. |
Lil' Fancy Boy I think Indians are obsessed with school uniforms. Maybe it's a British thing. It seems out of place in this photo. |
Central Coffee Research Institute We were on our way to visit the Central Coffee Research Institute of India, something I was very interested in, specifically to see their coffee gardens |
Dr. Jarayama, Director The good doctor of the Central Coffee Research Institute was very hospitable and we discussed their mission. It seems focused on new cultivars for pest resistence, given the fact the stem borer (a beetle that kills coffee branches) is a big problem in India. Not much talk about cup quality. |
Central Coffee Research Institute Library The facilities were amazing. Their library has tons of journals, many coffee books I have never heard of, and bound editions of all kinds of botanical journals going back to the early part of the centrury |
Central Coffee Research Institute The bound periodicals department for science journals. This is the kind of stuff universities now toss out regularly to make space. |
Coffee Books They seemed to have a very complete collection of books on coffee. |
Coffee Market Intelligence Report I liked this, because it truly seemed to be a bit sneaky. |
The research gardens The Central Coffee Research Institute weren't exactly what I expected. I thought we would see a garden of many types of cultivars, but they showed us blocks of their most recent hybrids only. I wondered if they didn't want photographs of all the other types, Ethiopia types and such. |
Plating Map A map showing the plots in one area. You can read a couple interesting ones. Cavery was a catimor type with a fairly poor cup that is still used in some areas. Cioccie is the one of particular interest |
SLN 4 SLN 4 or Cioccie has more Ethiopian inputs in its genetics than other types, and was released quite some time ago by the coffee board. But farmers did not like it because of lower yields, even though the cup was supposedly good. |
SLN 4 Green Tips As opposed to the bronze tips of SLN 795, SLN 4 seems to have green tips on the new leaves. |
Nagra Awaits You The 5 headed snake god Nagra had a little roadside temple, as we were leaving the India coffee research station |
The River Badra You can see timber bamboo here, which are masive clumping types of over 100 feet. |
Badra Coffee Curing Works Next we had a visit to Badra Coffee Curing Works. What we call a "dry-mill", where dried parchment coffee is removed from its shell, graded for size and density, and bagged, is called a Curing Works in India. This is the director, Mr Bopanna |
Nishant and Badra Curing Works Nishant of Sethuraman estate and bags of his coffee ready to be processed at the works |
Good Coffee Shute It's so simple. We get all our coffee from the GOOD coffee chute. |
Nifty Panel I just liked the colored lights. |
Cups n Helmets Workers cups and helmets and the curing works |
Lot Details You can see this was a bulk lot of wet-processed robusta, 1500 kgs, 10.5 moisture. Garbling means the cleaning process, screen separation and density sorting. |
Hand Sorting This area of the warehouse is where workers do visual hand sorting. They had just repainted it white to help with visibility. |
Great English Language A Godown is a warehouse. Don't ask me why. |
Tarzan The warehouse was empty and these ropes were hanging down. I thought I would try swinging from one, wondering if it would hold me... |
Outdone The crazy Miguel Meza came along like a fellow with his pants ablaze, climbed up a good 15' and made like a superhero! |
Nice Bullet Outside the works, one of the nicest Royal Enfield Bullet 350's I saw, vintage. |
Pinhalense Roaster They had a 3 barrel Pinhalense, just like my old one. |
India Coffee Grading This chart shows the system of grading Indian coffee. Plantation is the name for wet-processed arabica coffee. Parchment is the name for wet-processed robusta (but in most countries parchment means any coffee still in the parchment shell, not yet dry-milled). Cherry is the name for robusta or arabica naturals (dry-processed, dried directly in the coffee cherry). |
International Poster Paul thought this was funny becasue the Hebrew was upsidedown. |
The Massive Robusta Leaf Next up was Sethuraman Estate, and this gives you some sense of how large the Robusta leaf can be. |
Mr Nishant Gurjer- Sethuraman Esttae Nishant is the owner of this all-robusta farm. They had made necklaces of coffe cherry for us ... very nice! Brian is in the background |
Forced Fun Next it was time for the picnic games, meaning we were going to pick coffee, meaning I had to put on the "skirt" that both keeps you from getting dirty and gives you a place to put all the cherries you pick. |
Paul Schuster and Friend Paul from Ravens Brew and one of the women that were already picking in the area. |
Fake Coffee Picker. Nonetheless, I went at it with a vengeance. The good thing is that Mohan showed me the trick - you put a tarp down and pull all the cherry off onto it, and pick it all up later. |
You know I won My bag was full - realy full. Those other wimps had nothing on me... |
Oddly composed Sherri Johns and I in an oddly parrallel posture. Someone's biting my style. What's with that? |
Doh. Sherri kept tossing her leaves and green coffee into my bag - total cheat. |
Liberica Coffee Along the farm road, the Liberica coffee is planted. This is the other species, not arabica, not robusta. It grows into a solid tree form, which is why planters used to use it to line the roads and mark off plots on the farm. |
Liberica Coffee Cherry It has quite a different appearance than arabica or robusta, and when you break them open the mucilage is very sticky and thick. |
Liberica Leaf Tips The Liberica leaf has a unique shape, and grows to be even larger than robusta. The leaf starts brown but unlike other types, has a period where it is both green and brown. |
The Sethuraman Mill Next up, a visit to the Sethuraman Mill |
Shy Girl I caught this little girl peeking at us, until she got scared and ran! |
Cherry Robusta Natural robusta coffee drying on the patio |
Actually Using Rakes Workers raking the coffee on the patio. In the forground is the dark Cherry Robusta (dry process) and in the back is the wet-processed Parchment Robusta. |
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