Pūrnashadjam

After a lot of searching, we finally found a robusta we liked; and it's from our O.G. parter farm! We have always wanted to feature robustas but never found one that blew our socks off, until now! The good folks at Mooleh Manay have thrown the kitchen sink at processing their robusta with the aim of making it delightful in the cup and boy have they delivered! For this lot, ripe C×R cherries are floated to remove defects and then fermented in sealed pressurised barrels with a custom cluture for 120 hours. The combination of pressure from the CO2 and the custom culture ensures proper breakdown of the mucilage. The cherries are then slow dried on raised beds to stabilise water activity. The result of all this care is a cup that has none of the harshness that is usually associated with robusta. We have infact roasted this coffee to medium as it would be a crime to mask the complexity with a darker roast! All our test roasts were smooth, sweet and fruity! We taste a pleasant sweetness and nuttiness that reminds us of raisins and biscotti. The cherry like fruitiness present in the aroma shows up towards the end especially as the cup cools. We were stumped by how soft all test batches tasted! This is indeed a robusta revelation. The elegance of this coffee reminded us of the rāga pūrnashadjam (which is a slightly rare but has oodles of consonance). Pūrnashadjam the coffee makes for a delightful manual brew (we prefer a 16.5 g dose for 300g water to deal with the extra caffeine) on a v60 7 days post roast and makes for a sweet sweet shot of Crema laden espresso 18 days from the date of roast.