Komal, Espresso from India

Coffee Info

How We Brew This Coffee

We brew with the Maro Model 1 at 93 °C and grind with the Eureka Single Dose Pro.

What a powerhouse! According to Nadja, this year's harvest of this coffee is so balanced, harmonious and well-rounded that you can almost brew it however you like. Be sure to try many different recipes, because the coffee shows a different facet each time and thus its extreme complexity. Attention: this coffee demands, like other heavily processed coffees, a finer grind.

While last year's harvest was a roaring lion, Komal has tamed it this year. The coffee still shows its boozy character – if you want it to. Michel even thought the first shot at 14 seconds was already good.

For the standard 9-bar profile, we used a drink ratio of 1:2.1 and 29 seconds and we're thrilled. Sweet passion fruit, tropical fruits, extremely elegant and dense, very graceful and complex. Not sour, not bitter, not dusty. Maro Code: HTTRNBL

Those who prefer the more modern variant of an espresso can pull this coffee at the same drink ratio of 1:2.1 for 50–54 seconds and will be rewarded with a variety of flavours. The coffee now really has room to develop. The cup appears lighter and softer as a result. Nadja really likes this, Michel less so. Maro Code: ANAWEHZ

For the pressure profile, we remove pressure from the main brew and counter that with a slightly elevated brew temperature. In other words: instead of 93 °C we use 94 °C and can thus extract just as much despite lower pressure, but more gently, so to speak. With 20 g in and 42 g out at 29 seconds and complete puck saturation after eight seconds (3.5 bar), then rising to just 7.5 bar, we're floating on cloud nine: this cup is incredibly soft, balanced, structured with extremely sweet notes and a super juicy acidity. Maro Code: PBJUARV

Why Does This Coffee Taste the Way It Does?

After manual harvesting, the cherries are sorted and fermented in a sealed tank for 60 hours. This allows for more precise control of the process as well as higher consistency and clarity in the cup. An extended fermentation time deepens the flavour complexity and also ensures complete breakdown of the fruit flesh (mucilage) of the coffee beans. Komal precisely controls this post-harvest process by adding a custom-made yeast. The whole cherries are then dried for 7–10 days in a controlled temperature environment. Before hulling, the cherries rest for another two months to slow down water activity in the bean and gain more stability in the characteristics of the green coffee over a longer period.

Why Did We Buy from Komal?

In March of this year, Nadja visited Akshay and Komal together with Lennart from «Good Middle Man» This Side Up. «We were immediately on the same wavelength,» says Nadja, who is enthusiastic about their work and research in the field of coffee species. With their South India Coffee Company, the two function like our Claudia in Nicaragua with her company BridAzul. They process the cherries from selected farmers in the surrounding area, invest in regenerative agriculture and thus fight against poverty and emigration in and from the region. All their practical expertise also flows into scientific work. We handle the purchase through Lennart and his company This Side Up. An importer from the Netherlands who not only champions full transparency but also demands and implements it like few others.

How Do We Roast This Coffee?

We roast this coffee as a 20-kg batch on our 30-kg Giesen roaster for 11:40 minutes with a development time of 69 seconds (9.8 %). We decided to roast the coffee light because this green coffee brings a lot of texture with it, which is further emphasized by its post-harvest process. This way we can roast with a clear conscience «edgy» and focus on the acidity and aromatics.