For me, India has always been was of those ..meh.. origins. Tried a few .. not really inspired, and passed. I did have a nice Red Honey from a place called Ratnagiri Estate back in 2020 which was pretty good.. but nothing amazing.
Then I met Pranoy Thipaiah in 2022, first virtually through Lucia Solis’s amazing podcast, fermentation camps and discord channel, and then in person when Pranoy came to the UK for the London Coffee Festival and detoured down to lil ole’ Exeter. We held a mid-week, mid-afternoon cupping of his Arabicas and a Robusta and I was firstly surprise the number of attendees (most of whom I’d never seen) and then how good the coffees were (including the Robusta).
Last year I bought a few sacks of the Kerehaklu Anoxic Natural which got a great reception. We’ve been in contact since, and in late 2024 Pranoy planted a seed (no pun intended), by suggesting that I visit him around March of this year. So, here I am in India (for the first time), having just had 4 amazing eye-opening days, starting this trip report. I’m sure it’ll take me a while to get through it so you won’t be reading this until I’m well and truly back in the day to day of Crankhouse. Before leaving for Bangalore (Bengalaru), Pranoy had planned an itinerary which started with me visiting Kerehaklu and then swapping over with Jacob from Little Bear roasters in Albuquerque New Mexico, with me going to Ratnagiri Estate and Jacob to Kerehaklu. The addition of Ratnagiri to the trip was exciting since I’d had one of their coffees previously and had seen the impressive work they had been doing recently with processing.
Kerehaklu was started by Pranoy’s great grandfather and the history here of colonial rule, independence, land ownership and creating a coffee plantation in the jungle forests of the Western Ghats is quite incredible. Ajoy (Pranoy’s father) is the plant guru. He can name more tree and plant species than I’ve had hot dinners (sorry.. very English expression that some might not get). At one point, when coffee production was at its peak, Ajoy had 200 staff on the site during the harvest, with a visiting doctor every Sunday who would administer free treatment for those that required it.
These days it’s difficult to get the pickers and the change in weather pattens (yes, climate change is very real here) and increasing damage by pests and diseases have reduced the output considerably. But, there are better, hardier varieties, more understanding of plant and soil science and most recently, post-harvest processing (including fermentation) advancements. That’s where Pranoy stepped in, returning after his Biology studies in Sydney to help drive quality and put Kerehaklu on the international map in speciality coffee. In the last four years Ajoy and Pranoy’s coffees have been served and sold by some of the world’s best and most respected roasters, which is a testament to the work that this very likeable and hospitable father and son duo have put in.
Getting to Kere from Bangalore takes you through Chikmagular with a sign on it’s outskirts stating you’re about to enter the home of Indian Coffee. It is after all where Baba Budan was supposed to have planted the first seeds in the 17 Century, and the highest peak in the Giri mountain range is named after him. One of the first things that struck me as we neared Kere was the number of tall trees. I honestly thought we were entering a forest, but at eye level you could clearly see an increasing density of coffee plants protected under a beautiful canopy. One hundred years ago this would all have been wild jungle and native forest, but unlike some other places that have stripped the land and removed all the native forest, this is different. This feels wild.. native.. almost untouched but of course it has the hand of agriculture and processing close by.
Ajoy built the house 30 years ago based on a design and layout he found in one of those home improvement magazines of the era (with a few twists of his own). The small bar in the corner of the living area with its polished red hardwood surface and matching stools would have been used frequently for G&T’s no doubt over the years. These days it’s been taken over by Pranoy for coffee brewing and the array of coffee bags from all over the world displaying Kerehaklu Estate was quite amazing. Since coming back from his Biology degree in Sydney and joining his father, Pranoy has given Kerehaklu a voice within the speciality coffee industry worldwide. Pranoy’s got a mystical energy and he considers India to be a sleeping giant, and not just in speciality coffee (but of course that’s where most of our conversations headed eventually). With 1.4 billion people (that’s almost 20% of the entire world’s population), and with many of the world’s leading tech and manufacturing companies located here, he’s in no doubt.
But what about the coffee I hear you ask! I’m getting to that but before I do I need to tell you about my tour with Ajoy of the Kerehaklu Estate. As I mentioned Ajoy is like a walking encyclopaedia when it comes to plants and trees in this dense forest where their coffee grows. During the tour Ajoy stopped the jeep to show me a few interesting things, many of species of trees including strangler trees (including a 400 year old one), dried out elephant dung, bison damage and smouldering trees and shrubs, the result of fire damage in the valley just outside of the Kerehaklu borders. Ajoy had no doubt that the fire was started intentionally to try and stop elephants coming into a small settlement, but without a care of the potential consequences. Through a connection in the media Ajoy was able to get a response team to beat down the fire (no chance of getting water in here). From the same vista Ajoy pointed out the adjoining forest.. a Tiger reserve. The devastation caused by the fire could have been catastrophic.
Back to the coffee and many of the trees are the Selection 9 variety developed in the 1970's. These are gradually being replaced with the Selections 6 and 10, partly because 9 ripens earlier and as temperatures are increasing due to climate change that is getting earlier and earlier. It’s making the season too long and difficult to manage. Through Pranoy’s recent guests and travels he’s also managed to get some seed stock for some varieties grown elsewhere including some SL28 and some Yellow Bourbon, and fingers crossed we might be seeing Indian SL28 and Yellow Bourbon as well as some other more exotics in years to come. There's also Robusta and Liberica on the farm and the latter were full of cherry waiting for harvesting... by ladder !
But it’s the processing where Pranoy has focused his work which is changing the game and why Kerehaklu coffees are being sought after worldwide. He’s creating starter cultures and mostos from the rich and diverse local flora for the fermentation stage for the Arabica's and Robusta's (as well as the little Liberica they have on the farm), and ‘sequentially’ fermenting the washed and natural’s with these powerful substrate’s full of microbes and yeasts. Think of the culture and mosto like a sour-dough starter (prized in bread making) and fuel for the fermentation giving the unique characteristics for Kerehaklu coffees. Robusta's fermented with Liberica mosto, Arabica's with coffee flower and fig leaf mostos (and many more). Since the Arabica harvest finished a while ago some of these lots were ready to sample roast and cup and it was the first time even Pranoy had tasted the results. Lucky lucky me.
Another special treat was being taken to the Kadur planters club in Chikmagular for dinner and meeting up with my next host Ashok Patre from Ratnagiri as well as Jacob from Little Bear. Back in colonial times the British built these members only clubs for coffee producers (plantation owners), as transit clubs. Ie. you could use these clubs if you were passing through the town, but not if you were a local resident. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much polished red hard wood furniture and the bar and huge dining table were incredibly opulent and from an age long past. Some of the other ‘furnishings’ adorning the walls were stark reminders of that era of hunting for sport which thankfully is also well in the past. It was a fun evening and I had a sense that my time at Ratnagiri was not going to be dull, but I really was not prepared for what was about to come.
After two incredible days at Kere with Pranoy, Ajoy and Kivi (Pranoy’s beagle), it was time to move to Ratnagiri, but not before a stop-off at a small mill and roastery in Chikmagular. There I was tasked with roasting a batch of Kerehaklu coffee for Pranoy’s latest project RUCKUS. If you’ve been follow in our socials recently you might have seen that I’d been invited to roast coffee for the second special release of RUCKUS (@onlyruckus), following in the huge footsteps of Christopher Feran (one of our industry’s leading educators) who was with Pranoy a few weeks ago. The machine was an old 5Kg Probat with no data recording and very very rudimentary controls. One test batch of 3.6Kg then off we went. I can’t say it went according to plan since I felt like I had very little control of the machine or idea what was happening with the coffee. But I turned green to brown (ish) and the very limited number of bags (about 14 x 150g) will no doubt get snapped up in seconds. That’s the power of social media.
Next stop Ratnagiri and we stopped right outside the QC lab and office. Up the steps and through the glass doors and WOW. This was next level for sure. Below us were the stainless steel fermenters and new bioreactors, looking more like a science lab than coffee processing facility. The glass walls of the lab were adorned with writing from a recent visit by Korean roasters last week. The level of detail of flavour notes and explanations of yeast and bacterial influence on flavour profile were incredible. I felt like I’d just arrived at coffee nirvana. We were warmly greeted by Ratnagiri’s owner Ashok Patre and his head of QC Dhiraj Agrawal (who has his own roasting company too). For many in the industry Ratnagiri IS Indian speciality coffee, and that’s down to what Ashok (and his father and grandfather) built.
Ashok seemed to know everyone and anyone in the speciality world and travels frequently to other origins meeting producers and processors to learn and share. He’d just returned from Colombia and had been to see both Diego Bermudez and Wilton Benitez as well as many other top-name producers. One of the phrases that came up frequently was ‘game changing’, and I quickly got the impression that the work Ashok and his team are doing at Ratnarigi is exactly that. I’d learned from Pranoy’s father Ajoy, that Ashok had taken Pranoy under his wing and become something of a mentor (the two families have been friends for ever). Another penny-dropped.
Throughout the day we cupped about 70 coffees in total, mostly Ratnagiri but then a round of Kerehaklu’s and finally from Little Bear and Crankhouse. We’d both brought coffee with us for a special RUCKUS event in Bangalore for the weekend and Ashok, Dhiraj and Pranoy were keen to taste them. Between rounds we definitely needed breaks and the first of which was lunch in Ashok’s house a two minute walk from the QC lab/office. I say house, but it is probably one of the most beautiful and beautifully appointed homes I’ve ever seen, let alone stayed in. Definitely another WOW moment. Lunch done, and other round of 24 cups of super interesting and diverse coffees and by this time it was late afternoon and Ashok wanted to show us something ‘special’ (as if what we hadn’t already seen was special). We did a brief tour of the wet and dry mills using some of the latest technology including the huge drying room (or dark room). Like a huge walk in freezer, but this is a massive dehumidifier and drying room with shelves and shelves lined up floor to ceiling. Another game changer.
Then we jumped in the jeep with some wine glasses and a couple of bottles that Jacob had brought all the way over with him from the US (he’s a wine guy as well as a coffee guy), and up we went. A windy narrow trail up and up to a lookout way above the estate. Ashok had made a clearing and intends to build a small cabin cantilevered over the drop where guests can stay. I was learning that his mind is full of ideas and he’s not afraid to put his energy and passion into each of them. He did admit that at 56 he feels like he’s slowing down ! I couldn’t imagine what a driving force of positive energy he was like 20 years ago. The vista was incredible and we were treated to a full moon which seemed quite appropriate.
Whilst we were enjoying the wine and the view Ashok told us about how he got water to the farm when he first planted some of the lots. He pointed to a ridge in the distance and said there was a lake on the other side. He built 11km’s of piping and pumped water from the lake to irrigate the farm. In the early days workers had to carry containers of diesel to keep the pump running, until Ashok built an access road to get a vehicle closer to the lake. Of course that would be illegal these days but back then that’s how stuff got done.
Back for the final round of cupping and on the table from Jacob and I were 9 coffees, 8 of which were Colombian (honestly this was not planned or intended). They all tasted great and when Dhiraj got to one of the Crankhouse Coffee’s he called Ashok over. He tasted it, then they smiled at each other (they did a lot of that). They said it reminded them of one of their own coffees from on of the new profiles they’ve been working on. It was our Cereza Paiso Natural, a big super fruity Strawberry bomb.
The coffee’s we tasted through the day were an extraordinary mix of profiles. The Ratnagiri coffees were a random selection of the 100 or so experimental profiles they’ve been working on with the bioreactors, thermal shock, mosto's and dark room drying. This season is all about collected data and then narrowing down which microbes work best with which process (washed, natural, anaerobic) to give the best cup profile. Once they’ve analysed the data they’ll select the best 8-10 processes and create protocols for those going forward. This is another thing learned from one of Ashok’s recent trips.. this time to Daterra in Brazil. They don’t offer variety or plot based coffees (except for the Masterpiece’s) but coffees based on flavour profile which were made up from the varieties, plots and processes they use. Ie. You want a coffee that tastes of mango and pineapple with a big syrupy body.. then this is the protocol that will give you it. Game changing.
My time at Ratnagiri was coming to an end but not before I’d made a selection of the coffees from the day before and cupped them again to narrow down my selection further. You’ll definitely be seeing some Ratnagiri and Kerehaklu coffees on the Crankhouse list later this year using some of these advanced techniques and diverse profiles. You won’t believe they come from India.
The final event worthy of mention was the RUCKUS showcase 001, featuring guest roasters Little Bear and Crankhouse. Pranoy organised it with a friend who owns as speciality cafe called Nerlu in Bangalore and they put 20 tickets up for sale online (at a very nominal fee to pay for a few nibbles at the end). 20 tickets went in minutes and it was opened up to a few more which only took another few minutes to sell. Jacob and I took our coffees and brewed (with fabulous assistance from some willing helpers) them and handed them around the full space one by one. The room slowly warmed up (I don’t mean temperature .. it was hot), and the questions and discussions started flowing freely. It was a great event with some fabulous and well informed questions and some very generous and kind comments about our coffees and the way we presented the information about the producers and their work. Pranoy has created something for people to get energised about and even though he mentioned that he doesn’t really have a plan for RUCKUS he wants it to shake up the old school ways with a little chaos.
This has been (another) long trip report and honestly probably only touches the surface of the experience I had. My parting thoughts and memories are that Indian coffee is going to make it’s mark in the speciality world imminently, that the people I met were incredibly generous and kind, the food is super tasty, Bangalore traffic is unbelievable, Bangalore nightlife is energised and Kivi is not a little puppy anymore.
Any trip, be it a holiday or a 'work' trip to meet producers is made by the people you share it with. In this case I feel very fortunate to have shared this with Pranoy and his father Ajoy, Ashok and Dhiraj and Jacob from Little Bear.
I’ll leave you with two words that sum up my Indian experience.
Game Changing