Monsoon Malabar Coffee

Monsoon Malabar is a coffee of the Malabar coast whose character was made by the sea voyage. Coffee from the Karnataka and Kerala hills was once shipped to Europe in sailing vessels round the Cape, and the months in damp holds, under monsoon air, left the beans swollen, pale and mellowed in a way the trade came to prize. When steamships shortened the passage the beans arrived unchanged, and the coast's coffee houses learned to reproduce the effect on land. The method belongs to the Malabar coast and to the planters and curing-yard workers of the coffee country, who carry it today.

It is Arabica or Robusta coffee, Coffea arabica or Coffea canephora, dried as cherry, then spread in open-sided warehouses and raked through the monsoon months while the damp west wind passes over it. The bean swells to roughly twice its first size, loses its green and turns a pale straw-gold, and the acidity falls away as the body deepens. It is roasted light to medium so that the mellowness is kept, and it is ground for the South Indian filter, the steel pot of two stacked chambers, then served in the davara and tumbler. The cup is heavy, low in acidity, earthy and slightly musty in the manner the style requires.

It is drunk with milk and sugar in the morning and mid-afternoon, beside idli, dosa, vada and the plain South Indian breakfast, and with fried snacks such as banana fritters. The structural reason is that the heavy, low-acid body stands up to hot milk without turning sour, while the bitterness cuts the richness of fried batter and coconut chutney.