A

AA / A / AB / PB

Indian and East African screen-size grades. AA is the largest bean, PB is peaberry. Size affects how evenly a bean roasts, but it says nothing at all about how good the coffee is. A small bean from a great farm beats a big bean from a bad one every time.

Acidity

Not sourness. Acidity is the bright, juicy, mouth-watering quality in coffee — the same sensation you get from an apple or a squeeze of lime. High-grown, washed and lightly roasted coffees have more of it. Sourness is acidity gone wrong, usually from under-extraction.

Agtron

A number from a spectrophotometer that measures roast colour objectively. Lower means darker. Roasters quote it because “medium roast” means nothing between one company and the next.

Anaerobic fermentation

Cherries fermented in a sealed, oxygen-free tank before drying. Different microbes take over without oxygen, producing intense, sometimes wild flavours — tropical fruit, spice, occasionally something close to wine or cider.

Arabica

The species that makes up most specialty coffee. More delicate, more aromatic, more acidic, harder to grow, lower caffeine than robusta. About 30% of India’s crop.

B

Batch brew

Filter coffee made in volume by a commercial machine. The workhorse of a café brew bar — consistent, fast, and far better than most people expect when the recipe is dialled in.

Blend

Two or more coffees combined to hit a profile that no single one delivers on its own. Blends are not inferior to single origin; they are a different job. Almost every good espresso in the world is a blend.

Bloom

The first pour in a filter brew, when the coffee swells and bubbles as trapped carbon dioxide escapes. A big bloom means fresh coffee. No bloom means it is old.

Body

How heavy the coffee feels in your mouth. Skimmed milk versus full fat. Naturals, robusta and darker roasts have more of it.

Burr grinder

A grinder that crushes beans between two rotating burrs, producing an even particle size. The alternative — a blade grinder — chops randomly and is the single most common reason home coffee tastes bad.

C

Channelling

When water finds a crack in the espresso puck and rushes through it, leaving the rest of the coffee under-extracted. Produces a shot that is simultaneously sour and bitter. Fixed by better distribution and tamping.

Cherry

The fruit the coffee seed grows inside. Also an Indian trade grade meaning natural-processed arabica.

Chicory

A roasted root, ground and blended with coffee. Standard in South Indian filter coffee at ratios like 80:20 or 70:30. It adds body, a dark bittersweetness and a longer, thicker decoction. It is a tradition, not an adulterant — but you should know what ratio you are buying.

Crema

The foam on top of an espresso, made of carbon dioxide trapped in emulsified oils. Fresh coffee makes more of it, and robusta makes far more than arabica. It looks impressive but tells you very little about taste.

Cupping

The standard protocol for tasting coffee: coarse grind, hot water, break the crust, slurp from a spoon. Everyone in the industry evaluates coffee this way so results are comparable between one table and another.

Cup score

A 100-point score from a certified Q Grader. Anything 80 and above is formally “specialty”. 84–86 is a very good coffee. Above 88 is rare and priced accordingly.

D

Dabara

The stainless steel tumbler-and-bowl set South Indian filter coffee is served in. Pouring between the two aerates the coffee, cools it to drinking temperature and builds the froth. It is not a flourish — it changes the drink.

Decoction

The concentrated coffee that drips through a South Indian filter over several hours. Mixed with hot milk and sugar to make filter kaapi. Strong, dark and nothing like an espresso.

Degree coffee

A Tamil term for good filter coffee. The most likely origin is “degree milk” — milk whose purity was checked with a lactometer — so degree coffee meant coffee made with unadulterated milk. It has since come to mean the first, strongest decoction.

Development time ratio

The proportion of a roast that happens after first crack. Too short and the coffee tastes grassy and sour; too long and it flattens into generic roastiness. It is one of the numbers we log for every batch.

Dose

The weight of dry coffee going into the basket or brewer. Measured in grams, always. “A scoop” is not a dose.

E – F

Espresso

A brew method, not a bean or a roast level. Around 9 bars of pressure forcing water through finely ground coffee in 25–32 seconds. Any coffee can be pulled as espresso; some suit it better.

Extraction

How much of the coffee’s soluble material ends up in your cup. Under-extracted tastes sour, thin and salty. Over-extracted tastes bitter, hollow and drying. Correct tastes sweet.

First crack

An audible popping during roasting, at around 196–205°C, as steam pressure splits the bean. Everything drinkable happens after it.

Fine robusta

Robusta grown, picked and processed to specialty standards and scored on its own 100-point scale. Sweet, heavy, chocolatey and a completely different thing from the commodity robusta that gave the species its reputation.

G – H

Grind size

How coarsely the beans are broken up. Finer means more surface area and faster extraction. Espresso is near-powder; French press is like coarse sea salt; South Indian filter sits between espresso and pour-over.

Green coffee

Unroasted coffee. Stable for many months, which is why we hold green and roast to order rather than warehousing roasted stock.

Honey process

Skin removed, sticky mucilage left on during drying. Named for the texture, not the flavour. Sits between washed and natural — more sweetness and body than washed, more clarity than natural. Graded yellow, red or black by how much mucilage stays on.

M – N

MASL

Metres above sea level. Higher altitude means cooler nights, slower ripening, denser beans and usually more acidity and complexity. Indian coffee runs roughly 700–1,900 MASL.

Microlot

A very small, separately harvested and processed lot — often a single block of a single farm in a single season. Kept apart because it is exceptional. Small volumes, high prices, gone quickly.

Monsooning

A process unique to India. Dried beans are spread in open-sided warehouses on the Malabar coast and exposed to monsoon winds for weeks. They swell, turn pale, and lose almost all acidity, leaving something thick, earthy and mellow. Sold as Monsooned Malabar.

Natural process

The whole cherry dried intact before hulling. The fruit sugars ferment into the seed, producing berry, jam and tropical fruit flavours. The oldest method and the hardest to do cleanly in a wet climate.

P – Q

Peaberry

When only one of the two seeds in a cherry develops, it grows round instead of flat. Roughly 5% of any harvest. Often sorted and sold separately — it roasts a little more evenly, though whether it tastes better is genuinely debated.

Plantation

Indian trade grade for washed arabica. “Plantation A” is washed arabica, screen size A. Nothing to do with where it was grown.

Pulped sun dried

The classic Indian estate process. Skin pulped off, mucilage left on, dried in the sun. Effectively a honey process, and the reason Indian coffee so often tastes of brown sugar and dried fruit.

Puck

The compressed disc of ground coffee in an espresso basket.

Q Grader

Someone licensed by the Coffee Quality Institute to score coffee on the 100-point scale, after passing around twenty separate sensory exams. The closest thing coffee has to a sommelier qualification.

R – S

Resting

The days between roasting and brewing while carbon dioxide escapes. Espresso usually needs 7–14 days from roast; filter is often good from day 4. Coffee brewed on day one tastes gassy and unstable.

Roast date

The day the coffee was roasted. Not a best-before date. If a bag only carries an expiry date, the roaster is hiding how old it is.

Robusta

The other commercial species. Hardier, higher caffeine, more crema, heavier body, lower acidity. About 70% of India’s crop. Bad robusta is genuinely bad; good robusta is genuinely good, and India grows some of the best.

Robusta Kaapi Royale

India’s top washed robusta grade. Clean, sweet and heavy — the grade that proves the species deserves better than its reputation.

S795 / SLN 9 / Chandragiri / Cauvery

Indian arabica varietals. S795 is the country’s workhorse — a Kent cross, disease-resistant, chocolatey and dependable. SLN 9 is an Ethiopian-Tafarikela cross with far more aromatic complexity. Chandragiri is a compact dwarf variety increasingly planted in Koraput. Cauvery is India’s Catimor.

Single origin

Coffee from one place. How specific “one place” is varies wildly — it can mean a country, a region, an estate, or one block of one farm. Ours means the estate, and we name it.

Specialty coffee

Formally, coffee scoring 80 or above on the 100-point scale, with full traceability. Informally, coffee where somebody knows the farm, the process and the roast date.

T – W

Tamping

Compressing the ground coffee into an even puck before pulling a shot. The goal is level, not hard. Consistency beats force.

TDS

Total dissolved solids. In water, it is the mineral content — Delhi tap water runs 300–500 ppm, which is far too high and will flatten your coffee and scale your machine. In coffee, it is the strength of the brewed cup, usually 1.15–1.45% for filter.

Washed process

Cherry pulped, fermented to remove mucilage, washed clean, then dried. The most transparent process — you taste the bean and the terroir rather than the fruit.

Yield

The weight of liquid espresso coming out of the basket. An 18g dose producing 36g of espresso is a 1:2 ratio.