Coffee Powder Pure Arabica, No Chicory

A SOUTH INDIAN FILTER (what this coffee is ground for)

TWO TO FOUR TABLESPOONS in the upper chamber. NOT teaspoons. This is the single commonest reason home filter coffee tastes weak

LEVEL IT, then TAMP IT with the press disc. This is not optional - it is the whole mechanism. Loose grounds let water channel straight through and you get brown water

Pour JUST-BOILED water in, filling the upper chamber

COVER IT and LEAVE IT ALONE. FIFTEEN TO TWENTY MINUTES. Do not lift the lid to check, and do not press it down harder to hurry it

The decoction that collects below is concentrated. Roughly one part decoction to three or four parts hot milk, to taste

THE FROTH

Pour between two tumblers, from a height, several times

It is not showmanship. It aerates the coffee, mixes the decoction and milk properly, and drops the temperature to drinkable

DRIP MACHINE

Works, at a push. This grind is finer than a drip machine really wants, so expect a slower flow and watch for over-extraction

Use slightly less than you would with a medium grind

DO NOT USE THIS IN A FRENCH PRESS

We would rather say so than take your money and let you find out

A press needs a COARSE grind. This is fine. Fine grounds go through the mesh and over-extract, and the result is bitter and silty

If a press is your machine, you want whole beans and a grinder

NOT ESPRESSO EITHER

Espresso needs a grind dialled in against your specific machine. No pre-ground pouch can do that

STORAGE

AIRTIGHT. Away from LIGHT, HEAT and MOISTURE

NOT THE FRIDGE. Coffee is porous and it will take on every smell in there, and the condensation each time you open it is worse than the cold is good

The freezer works for long storage IF it is genuinely airtight and you do not keep taking it in and out

BUY SMALL AND DRINK IT. Ground coffee is at its best within ONE TO TWO WEEKS.

A kilo of ground coffee is a kilo that will be stale before you finish it

Smell the pouch when you open it. If it smells of almost nothing, that is the answer

No chicory. None. Most filter coffee in this country is a fifth chicory or more, because chicory is a root and roots cost less than coffee. There is none in here.

100% Arabica, which means more aroma and about half the caffeine of robusta.

Ground for a filter, and we will tell you what it is not for. It is not French press coffee. A fine grind in a press gives you a bitter, silty cup, and we would rather say so than let you find out.

Grown and roasted in Karnataka by our farmers' cooperative, using 100% Arabica coffee.

We will tell you it goes stale. Ground coffee is at its best for one to two weeks. Buy the size you will actually drink.

Some time in the 1600s, a Sufi from Karnataka went to Yemen, and came back with seven coffee beans.

The story goes that Baba Budan found coffee at Mocha, that the Yemenis guarded the live seed jealously and would export it only roasted or boiled so it could never be planted, and that he carried seven green beans home strapped to his body. He planted them in the hills above Chikmagalur.

Those hills are called BABA BUDANGIRI now. And every coffee plant in India descends, one way or another, from that handful.

That is roughly 200 kilometres from where we are sitting. KARNATAKA GROWS ABOUT 70% OF THIS COUNTRY'S COFFEE - Chikmagalur, Kodagu, Hassan - and Indian coffee is one of the few crops in the world that grows almost entirely under shade, beneath standing forest canopy, alongside pepper and cardamom on the same land.