Coffee couture

Coffee is haute and more artisanal than icecream! Astute entrepreneurs are cashing in by pairing it inventively with varied flavours and ingredients. What’s brewing?

For a long time, Indians were growing coffee and not drinking it much. We were a resolutely tea-guzzling nation, except for the filter coffee enthusiasts who stuck to their wonderfully cosy steel or brass tumblers and sneered at tea. And then the millennials discovered coffee, the credit for which ought to largely go to the cafes and coffee houses that sprung up. Today, coffee is class; coffee is fancy and coffee is it. We are apparently in the 'third wave' of the coffee revolution with a fourth wave waiting to drown us in its aroma. As the smart alecs on Twitter say, coffee is the new coffee. Astute entrepreneurs are cashing in on this new-found fancy by reinventing and reimagining coffee in myriad ways. The beverage is now more artisanal than ice cream; for those in the know, that's really saying something. New techniques of cultivation and processing, some inventive pairing of flavours and ingredients and an explosion of interest in home brewing have ensured that coffee is on everyone's tongue.

Coffee art

“India is mostly seen as a tea-drinking nation, with its famous filter kaapi mostly consumed in the country’s southern parts. With time came higher and more progressive standards, coffee became art and thus became a lifestyle beverage,” begins Abhinav Mathur, CEO, Something's Brewing, adding how value began to shift towards the role of coffee farmers, beans, and roasters, not just the baristas and the machine equipment.

“This came with an increased interest in the flavour profiles of each bean, each region as well as the processing method, ushering in what is now known as the 'third wave of coffee'. The movement has been proudly going desi too, with several indigenous coffee brands taking the country by storm. Cafes and roasters are in the business now to sell rich creamy joes and educate consumers on how to brew that perfect cup of coffee at home," he adds.

Filter coffee going global

It is not just flavoured and artisanal coffees that are riding high. The good-old filter coffee is seeing a lot of innovations too. Millennials are taking over the business and tweaking the idea of filter coffee by serving a variety of options, including cold filter coffee, something that got the purists' goat on social media.

Speaking of which, Bharath Balakrishna, Founder of Bhava Coffee, says, “Speciality coffee shops and other global brands have their customers no doubt but there is a need to cater to a mass group who are only interested in their favourite beverage — the south Indian filter coffee!" A few companies have already introduced filter coffee varieties, with one offering the addition of chicory and the other promoting it as a stand-alone beverage. Bharath's brand offers artisanal pure coffee blends curated exclusively from Indian beans with his personal favourite offering being vanilla-flavoured filter coffee. "Coffee is about the aroma and the taste — it is about the drink's association with feelings of celebration and the good life," he adds.

What's the game changer?

There’s a noticeable demand for high-quality coffee, which is consumed by adapting different brewing methods. Pre-pandemic, this need was satiated by visits to speciality cafes, but the outbreak forced many consumers to look for ways to brew coffee at home.

“With everything available at our fingertips, accessibility to unique coffee equipment has made experiments a lot easier. Scores of people took to coffee brewing as a hobby during the pandemic, leading to a boom in the home brewing market along with a subsequent mushrooming of a lot of B2C brands,” opines Geetu Mohnani, COO Caffeine Baar and Champion Barista, as she pores through current coffee trends in India. Thinking along similar lines, Bharath Balakrishna says, “It is surprising how much the demand for different flavours and blends of coffee has grown in the last year alone."

The burgeoning coffee trend is perhaps one of the key reasons behind an upward curve in the interest in coffee machines in India, ramped up by the remote-working culture that puts emphasis on instant coffee options without compromising on taste.

“People today are pressed for time with busier lifestyles, so convenience and comfort are extremely important. Consumers are also more tech-savvy and well-informed, which is why they understand the benefits of using coffee machines. In addition, a certain segment of the population has adapted to the WFH culture. Most consumers today are looking for better-tasting café-style coffee at home because they are no longer satisfied with cheaper instant coffee options. Because of this, they are open to buying coffee machines, which saves them quite a bit of time and allows them to enjoy a variety of barista-style drinks conveniently. A coffee machine is not very expensive today, especially for someone who is a regular coffee drinker and always wants to enjoy good quality coffee,” adds Rahul Aggarwal, Founder and CEO, Coffeeza.

Artisanal coffee: Busting the myths

With the speciality coffee wave setting in, there are a lot of myths floating around about artisanal coffees. Here we bust some.

* Only imported artisanal coffees are worth it: Wrong. There are several artisanal coffees of high quality produced in India.
* Artisanal coffees have additives and flavour enhancers: Wrong, unless you have bought a fake product. Artisanal coffees focus on natural flavours which are preserved and enhanced with roasting techniques.
* You cannot master brewing artisanal coffee: Well, that's just laziness. Try opening YouTube — there's a whole world of coffee knowledge out there.
* Robusta is an inferior bean: This cannot be more wrong — in fact, the Indian Robusta Kaapi Royale is considered to be one of the finest speciality grade coffee from India.

(Inputs from Abhinav Mathur)

Waiter! There's coffee in my hair!

It seems people are not just drinking coffee — they are eating and applying it too. There are now filter coffee-filled candies (yes, not just your garden variety coffee toffee okay), coffee-flavoured icecreams, coffee-dunked biscuits and a whole range of coffee-based scrubs, soaps and beard-grooming products, not to mention coffee-flavoured protein milkshakes which apparently sell like, well hot coffee. In fact, according to the Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD), in the last five years, more than 200 coffee-based products have been launched across multiple categories, which include snacks, haircare and skincare as well as confectionery. A popular brand has built its entire skin and haircare products around coffee and its co-founder Tarun Sharma once commented that there will soon come a time when people will be applying more coffee than they are drinking. And here we were thinking the 2020 Dalgona coffee trend was peak-level caffeine obsession!

Researchers' favourite beverage!

Every now and then, one hears of coffee being either good for us or bad for us. This time, the pendulum has swung towards the good. In a recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers say your morning cup of coffee could be linked to a lower risk of mortality. According to an article in the Science Times, compared to non-coffee drinkers, those who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups a day (even with a teaspoon of sugar) were up to 30 per cent less likely to die. The coffee consumption data for this research was obtained from the UK Biobank, a large medical database in Britain. Although previous research has linked coffee consumption to a lower risk of liver and prostate cancers as well as heart disease, since this is an observational study, one has to take into consideration other lifestyle factors that may have additionally contributed to the lower mortality risk.

(With inputs from Rashmi Vasudeva)