Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/491365
STiR tea & coffee industry international 49 K.D.Thimmaiah is the general manager at Aspinwall's coffee division, a Mangalore-based coffee processing arm of a trading company that dates back to 1867. The Mangalore facility is the largest and oldest of six local processors. Its curing capacity is 6,000 metric tons of coffee annually. Aspinwall has emerged as one of the finest and best produc- ers of Monsooned Malabar AA and Monsooned Robusta AA and also processes several other speciality coffees including Robusta Kaapi Royale and Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold. Dr. Joseph John has marketed Monsoon Malabar-AA Super Grade since 1992, paying a premium to large growers for select beans. "Our Monsoon Medley makes an excellent straight varietal coffee," explains John. "Its cup characteristics include very low acidity, extremely high body, and a pleasant earthy taste," he said. "It can also supply an espresso blend with plentiful crema and allow it to produce thick, syrupy shots without becoming over- whelmingly bright or sour," said John whose Josuma Coffee Co. in Northern California imports and roasts green coffee and dis- tributes to restaurants and coffee shops. German and Italian roasters typically blend monsooned Ar- abica (and sometimes robusta) in their espresso. Adding 30 to 50% high grade Monsooned Coffee produces thick, syrupy shots and abundant crema. A monsooned coffee was recently selected by Nespresso as the base for an elite Nespresso Fortissio Lungo espresso blend "rich with cereal notes." Several competing roast- ers offer similar blends. A few sell 100% Malabar whole bean or ground which retails for $11.95 to $13.75 a pound in the U.S. Thimmaiah is passionate about the processing, preferring to control every aspect of the delicate dance of water and beans. "I want unwashed coffee from small growers in lots of one to five tons," he says. He scoops for me a random sample of hand-sorted beans that are nearly perfect, pale gold in color, free of wrinkles and significantly larger than a few "ordinary" beans that reveal a characteristic blue-green hue. As he walks the length of massive drying beds built in the 1950s, Thimmaiah describes the labor intensive repeated loading and spreading of beans, raking and loading into sacks. The coffee is processed in 25 lots of 20 tons. On the garbling floor there are 67 women sitting in 10- to 50-kilo piles of beans deftly picking and discarding small, dark, odd-shaped, and broken beans. Aspin- wall employs 125 workers and 25 machine operators. Aspinwall's coffee division has received the "Flavor of India - The Fine Cup Award" for its Monsooned Coffee for six con- secutive years and "Best Exporter" award for speciality coffee for 8 years. The initial selection of high-grown Arabica and the long regimented exposure to moisture and care in polishing and sorting are necessary to ensure quality. Coffee is then tasted and quality checked at Aspinwall's in-house cupping lab and finally by Cof- feelab Ltd., Bangalore. All that takes time, he explains. No one knows exactly how the process works. Aspinwall is one of the pioneers in monsooning with experience that spans decades. Many variations in curing to speed up the process have failed including attempts to spray the coffee with water. In some experiments a layer or two of coffee would swell but mildew, rot and weevils spoiled most of such attempts. The entire monsooning process from harvest to completion takes at least a year, sometimes longer. Experience has shown that the monsooning requires many steps and a bit of magic "and that there are no short-cuts," said Thimmaiah. To achieve an AA grade, garblers hand sort small and defective beans from those swollen by the monsoon rains. Monsooned beans, above. The beans are stacked vertically in 50-kilo sacks for maximum exposure to moist winds. Photos by Dan Bolton