What the bag is worth.

The median 200g bag on ICB works out to ₹438 per 100g. At 500g and 1kg it is ₹240. Which reads as a brutal penalty for buying small — except those rows are five different sets of coffees.

Run it again on coffees sold in more than one size, where the only thing changing is the bag, and the discount shrinks hard: 6% going from 250g to 500g, 13% from 250g to a kilo, 15% from 200g to 500g. The bag is worth a tenth, not a half.

What separates ₹438 from ₹240 is what goes in it. Coffees that stop at 250g run ₹344 per 100g and are 67% single origin; coffees you can buy by the kilo run ₹235, and 47%. Small bags hold the boutique single-estate lots. Kilos hold the house blends. So ₹900 for 200g — ₹450 per 100g, against a 200g median of ₹438 — is the going rate for that tier of coffee, not a surcharge for the size.

Medians across active listings, one price per coffee per pack size, subscriptions and bundles excluded. A snapshot, not a trend.

What's New on ICB

No new roasters joined the directory this fortnight. All the movement was in coffee: 127 new lots, and most of them came from a handful of roasters refreshing seasonal ranges at once. The processing mix kept its experimental lean, with 17 anaerobic, 6 carbonic maceration, 5 experimental and 1 double-fermented lot arriving alongside 37 washed and 23 natural. Ratings ran at 18 for the fortnight, up from 6 the time before.

Where the new lots came from

The one in the argument.

The two bags the thread was actually arguing about, side by side.

Devan's Monsooned Malabar AA New Delhi · Medium roast · Arabica AA ₹220  / 100g ₹550 / 250g  ·  ₹1,100 / 500g The cheaper cup, and the flatter deal: ₹220 per 100g whether you buy 250g or 500g, so there is nothing to gain by sizing up. Devan's has sold coffee in Delhi since 1962, when D. Vasudevan left the Coffee Board of India. One rating on ICB so far, at four stars. Rate Devan’s →

Blue Tokai Monsoon Malabar AA Hoysala Estate · Medium-dark · Single origin ₹280  / 100g ₹700 / 250g  ·  ₹2,380 / 1kg The one that started the thread, and a rare case where the bag really does pay: ₹280 per 100g at 250g falls to ₹238 by the kilo, a 15% cut. Roasted darker than the Devan’s, single estate rather than a graded lot. No ratings on ICB yet. Rate Blue Tokai →

Both are monsooned arabica; both are medium or darker; neither is the other's substitute. And they are 2 of 30 monsooned lots on ICB, from 25 roasters.

Roaster Spotlight.

Bloom Coffee Roasters Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh Bloom added 20 new lots this fortnight, more than any other roaster on the directory. They work out of Bhopal, a long way from the southern growing belt, and run wholesale-first: 150-plus outlets supplied, with barista training alongside the beans. Small batches, lighter profiles, and an unusual willingness to put serious effort into robusta rather than treating it as filler. Explore Bloom's coffees →

From the Community.

Worth Reading.

New on the Field Guide.

Processing & Flavors

One in five coffees in the catalog now carries an experimental process tag, and 29 of this fortnight's 127 arrivals were anaerobic, carbonic maceration, experimental or double-fermented. This is the reference guide to what separates the four, which Indian estates produce them, and what the data says about their flavour patterns.

Processing & Flavors How Fermentation Shapes Coffee Flavour Every coffee ferments; the variable is how. Why one estate can produce both a clean chocolate cup and a grape-forward lot from the same harvest.

Origins & Estates Wayanad Coffee: Regional Characteristics One of India's largest coffee regions by area, and among the least engaged by specialty. Two crops, two markets: GI-tagged robusta at scale, and an arabica tier emerging higher up.

New on ICB: Wishlist.

There is now a heart icon on every coffee image and coffee page. Click it and the coffee saves to a wishlist in your profile, so the bag you meant to try in three months is still there when you come back to it. Given the arithmetic higher up this email, it is a reasonable way to sit on something until a larger pack size or a restock shows up.

Thanks to Digant Patil, a signed-up ICB user, who suggested it. If something on the directory is missing or awkward, reply and say so — that is how this one got built.

Share the Coffee Love.

Know someone curious about Indian specialty coffee? Forward this along.