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Three years ago, the question would have been why is it important to put the roasting date. “Giving more information fulfils the goal of transparency. Now coffee packets go beyond mentions of light and medium roasts to highlight production processes like 30-90 hours fermentation. Coffee growers and roasteries in India are testing new methods, such as lactic acid fermentation and anaerobic fermentation, to create a differentiated cup customers, in turn, are trying out new brewing techniques at home and awareness of provenance and techniques is growing exponentially. While the world is still in the grip of the “third wave of coffee"-the era of conscious consumption and experimental roasting and brewing techniques-some believe that India can now lead the charge in ushering in the next wave.
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View Full Image Mithilesh Vazalwar, CEO of Corridor Seven Coffee Roasters. So we came up with this idea of smoking the green bean using cold smoke, which doesn’t heat the bean but only infuses the smoky flavour into it," explains D’abreo. “Smoked coffee tastes beautiful but the problem with the conventional method, which is to roast the mature bean at high temperatures, is that it loses other flavours, for instance its fruitiness. Their Ol’ Smoky, possibly the world’s first-ever cold-smoked coffee, uses an unusual technique-exposing freshly picked (and still green) Arabica coffee beans, which are kept in a smokehouse, to cold smoke generated by the burning of locally available wood from fruit trees for 14 hours before processing it in the usual way. It took the three founders of Maverick & Farmer, who were also behind The Flying Squirrel, one of India’s first artisanal coffee brands, over a year to come up with, and perfect, three new coffee varieties-among them a unique cold-smoked coffee bean. It’s like releasing a film," says Ashish D’abreo, a qualified barista and co-founder of Maverick & Farmer, an artisanal coffee brand which runs a coffee estate in Pollibetta, Coorg, as well as a roastery and café chain. Coffee growers bottle up new ideas for eight-nine months because the only time you can experiment and try out new techniques are the three months of the harvesting season, and the whole process of releasing a new grind or differently processed beans gets all scrunched within that time.
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