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ICB Fortnight 15 · 25 Oct 2026
The new crop
is
coming.
Hello,
Picking has started in Karnataka. A dry spell brought
the arabica harvest forward this year, and growers on
r/IndiaCoffee have been posting their first hand-picked
cherry. How big the crop will be is less settled: the
Coffee Board's forecast and reports from the estates
point in different directions.
India picks once a year, roughly November to February,
so new-crop lots will reach roasters' lists over the
next few months. This is issue 15. Inside: an Ahmedabad
roaster that builds its list around harvest variation,
80 new coffees, a natural from Tripura, two guides on
the harvest calendar and brewing fresh-crop beans, and
some news of our own from YourStory.
Hit reply if something here is useful, or wrong. We read
every one.
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Freshly Added
What's New on
ICB.
Two roasters joined this fortnight. Crema is a Bengaluru
micro-roaster built around two staples, Notte for espresso and
milk drinks and Giorno for filter, roasted weekly on Mondays.
April Orign gets the spotlight below. The catalogue added 80
coffees from 30 roasters, led by Antidote Coffee Roasters with
11.
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117
Roasters
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1,640
Coffees
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349
Ratings
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+80
Coffees Added
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Processing keeps getting more elaborate.
Four of the new lots are barrel-aged: oak at Fraction 9,
whisky at Red Sirocco, red wine at Zupreme and agave at Bare
Bean Roastery. Yagachi added four fruit co-ferments, made
with rose, orange, fig and lychee.
Liberica arrived twice.
Salawara Estate's Liberica came in from Blue Tokai as a
carbonic maceration and from Rossette as a 96-hour anaerobic
natural. Ratnagiri Estate kept spreading too, with two
inoculated SLN 9 microlots from Quick Brown Fox. Ratings
picked up as well: 16 this fortnight, double the 8 before
it.
Browse the coffees →
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Newly Listed
Coffee
Spotlight.
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Jampui Tripura (Light-Med)
Grey Soul Coffee Roasters · Pune · Jampui
Hills, Tripura
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Arabica
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Natural
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Light-medium
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A natural from Tripura's Jampui Hills, sun-dried on
raised beds, SLN 9 and Chandragiri. It comes from well
outside the Western Ghats belt, and more than 20
listings on ICB now name a Northeastern origin.
See it and rate it →
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Just Joined ICB
Roaster
Spotlight.
April Orign
Ahmedabad, Gujarat · 4 coffees listed
April Orign is a direct-trade roaster in Ahmedabad,
buying single-origin lots from Ram Estate in Kodaikanal,
Karadykan in Aldur, Gungegiri and Attikan. Its stated
position is that harvest variation belongs in the cup
rather than being roasted out. The current list leans
experimental, with a 120-hour carbonic maceration and a
jaggery-fermented natural among its four lots, all
roasted to order and shipped across India.
Explore their coffees →
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r/IndiaCoffee
From the
Community.
Five years of AeroPress. What next?
A brewer with a settled inverted AeroPress recipe and a
Timemore C2 asked where to go from here. They are leaning
towards a Hario Switch as a halfway point between immersion
and percolation, and replies backed it as a gentle step
towards the V60. There's more on the Switch further down.
Read the thread →
The search for consistency
One long post works through Blue Tokai, Grey Soul, Araku,
Subko, Siolim and Devan's, with notes on resting times and
batch-to-batch variation, before settling on GB Roasters. It
was one of several consistency threads this fortnight,
including a request for somewhere else to buy Attikan
Estate. On ICB, Attikan appears in 13 listings from 11
roasters.
Read the thread →
·
Why one estate tastes different from two roasters →
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Curated Picks
Worth
Reading.
Exploring the Vibrant Specialty-Coffee World of Goa, India
Barista Magazine · 23 Oct 2026
Michaela Tomchek visits five Goa cafés, from a coffee
omakase at The Unseen in Assagao to Indiroom, which pours
Delhi's Caarabi Coffee, and nada, which roasts only
Chikmagalur coffee. nada's founder puts it this way: Indian
coffee is "having its own quiet moment."
Read it →
World Coffee Day: Why for Indian aficionados it's time to
look beyond traditional home brews
The Federal · 1 Oct 2026
A World Coffee Day feature on origins past Coorg and
Chikkamagaluru, in the hills of Odisha and the Northeast. It
pairs with this issue's Tripura spotlight.
Read it →
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ICB's map of Northeast coffee →
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Off the Press
Four new
guides.
Origins & Estates
How the Indian Coffee Harvest Calendar Varies by Region
The gaps between regions are measured in weeks, and the
species on the bag moves the calendar more than the altitude
of the estate does. The guide maps each region's window and
traces it back to the blossom showers that set it.
Read the guide →
Brewing Behaviour
How to Brew Fresh-Crop Coffee Differently from Rested
Coffee
"Fresh" can mean a recent harvest or a recent roast.
They run on different clocks, and only one of them can
be adjusted at the kettle.
Read it →
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Field Notes & Buying Guides
What Makes Indian Specialty Coffee Premium
"Premium" has no standard meaning on an Indian bag. The
guide checks which layer the price actually follows:
grade, estate or process.
Read it →
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For the AeroPress brewer above wondering what comes next:
the Hario Switch and Clever Dripper
steep behind a valve and then drain through paper, which makes
them forgiving with Indian naturals and budget grinders.
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New on ICB
Named to
VibeCode30.
IndianCoffeeBeans has been named to VibeCode30, YourStory's
first cohort of 30 Indian builders using AI-first tools to
ship working products. The list was unveiled at TechSparks
2026 on 14 Oct, with Hostinger as presenting partner.
The directory, the field guide and this newsletter are all
built that way, with every figure traced back to the
catalogue. Thank you for reading, rating and replying. A good
share of what ICB covers started as a question from one of
you.
Read the VibeCode30 report →
ICB is on page 22.
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Question for you
The 2026-27 harvest has started early in Karnataka. Is there
a new-crop lot you're waiting for, or a last-season bag
you're holding on to?
Reply with the estate or roaster you're watching for, or the
coffee you'll miss when it sells out. And with Diwali on 8
Nov, there's a short guide to
buying specialty coffee as a gift.
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Share the Coffee
Love.
Know someone curious about Indian specialty coffee? Forward
this along.
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Also on Instagram
The field guide, one card at a
time.
Follow us there for more updates: a weekly roundup of new
drops, catalogue data you can read in one swipe, and quick
fixes for brewing myths. Recent posts covered why 29% of
India's listed specialty coffees come from one district, and
how to tell a wine-like ferment from a defect.
Follow @indiancoffeebeans →
Brewing something you found through the directory? Post it and
tag us. We share the good ones, and the bad cups are usually
more instructive anyway.
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