CHENNAI: An exhilarating aroma, creamy golden brown froth, a fulsome nutty flavour and a lingering, slightly sharp aftertaste — that’s how a steaming 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 and grinding, the correct temperature for brewing before it nourishes your weary soul. 

Roast, Brew and You a two-month-old Instagram page managed by Madurai-based software engineer, Viggnesh V takes you on a whistlestop tour of the brews which he experiments at home. If the brew is connected to a variety available at a particular coffee estate, then he writes about the place — what they’ve got, and why coffee plantation is important to their livelihood. 

Viggnesh also works as a coffee consultant and brew crafter. He conducts coffee-tasting and brewing workshops in the city. He also helps certain cafes in Chennai improvise their beverage menu.”Back in the 60s and 70s, my grandfather never bought coffee with chicory. He used to go to India Coffee House, get some beans, roasted them himself, ground and prepared 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 considering the beans were all similar in colour,” says Viggnesh, who has been working with coffee beans and brewing methods for around three years. 

Crop to cup

After extensive research about coffee plantations in India, Viggnesh visited coffee estates during the harvest season — November to January for arabica variety from, and December to April for robusta from. He spoke to farmers and producers about the methods of growing coffee. “I started brewing coffee with just water roughly four years back. Gradually I got an idea of what coffee note meant, what grind size would do to coffee, 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 recently tried coffee from Africa. He 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. Roasteries there source coffee beans from Bolivia. There are three levels of roasting — light, medium and high. Here it does not cross light and that’s rare. Denmark has Coffee Collective where direct trade is practiced where farmers are paid 10 to 20 times the money for the produce. The market is transparent, so people can taste fresh coffee directly from farms. Cambodian coffee and the ones in the US are good too,” 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, but not recognised. 

Know your bean

In an effort to educate coffee lovers to all forms and types of coffee, Viggnesh conducts workshops. Coffee cupping or tasting is the practice of observing the taste and aroma of the drink. As a general practice, 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. A coffee that scores above 80 per cent is called speciality coffee. “Tasting sessions are not to score, but to understand the underlying flavours and taste note that’s present in it,” he says. 

Meanwhile, brewing sessions expose people to different methods to brew coffee beans. “There’s espresso, aeropress, vacuum siphon and other methods. If a cold brew is prepared using espresso then it will not taste good,” says Viggnesh, who has 10 brewing machines and small coffee equipment. The manual espresso machine is his favourite.

Caffeine 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.

This passion has opened his palette to a variety of coffees available in the market. “A person from Mylapore would prefer filter coffee without chicory for the price of an espresso. There’s more to coffee than its bitter taste. If people become ambassadors of change, then we can all have good coffee. My initiative — Madras Coffee Movement is a cause for a good cup of coffee,” he says.