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India Monsooned Malabar "Elephant"

Sweet Maria's Coffee

Our new premium India Monsooned lot is from the Bibi Plantation run by coffee farmer Faiz Moosakutty. Faiz' beautiful farm in Sunticoppa, Karnataka State, complete with small residences for all the workers, dairy, rice paddies, etc. The main farm is called Bibi Plantation where you see (rather uniquely in the coffee world) Arabica and Robusta growing on the same estate. Since Arabica and Robusta are processed in the same manner, this has led to India producing one of the world’s better Robustas in their washed Robusta parchment, but that doesn't concern us here since the Monsooned Malabar is 100% arabica coffee. Faiz also owns a very fine mill in Kushinagar where he processes his own coffee giving full control over the cup quality of the final product. We "discovered" the coffee recently via a tip from the British folks on a coffee trip to Colombia I was on, and I was really impressed with the quality of the cup and the preparation of the coffee. Monsooned coffee is certainly unique. Monsooned coffees are stored in special warehouses until the Monsoon season comes around. The sides of the structure are opened and moist monsoon winds circulate around the coffee making it swell in size and take on a mellowed but aggressive, musty flavor. The monsooning process is labor-intensive: coffee is spread on the floor of the special monsooning warehouse, raked and turned around by hand to enable the seeds to soak in moisture of the humid winds. The monsooning process takes around 12 to 16 months of duration, where in the beans swell to twice their original size and turn into pale golden color. Then there are additional hand-sortings to remove any coffee that did not expand properly, and the coffee is prepared for export. The dry fragrance of this coffee is not it's strong suit, but add water and the wet aromatics have sweet nuances, with a strong roasted nut smell. Cup flavors are very nutty (dry roasted peanut) with caramel and pipe tobacco. While a good Monsooned coffee should be pungent, agressive and almost musty, these should be clean flavors: nobody wants coffee to taste like mold! The Elephant is exactly that, which means it is great for espresso blending (I am partial to a 50-50 blend with Sulawesi Toraja).

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For more information on this product, visit Sweet Maria's Coffee's website.