Finally back to the community after a long hiatus haha, well anyways i’ve been meaning to try out this Microlot for quite some time, and my girlfriend surprised me with this from her recent trip to Bangalore few days back and I was super excited to try it. It's been a while since i've brewed something from Subko mostly because they are available only in Mumbai & Bangalore and I haven't been able to visit either of these places in a while nd they don't deliver to my city as well.
One thing to note about Subko is that they take great care in the details of their products like literally everything coming out of this company is extremely detailed down to the packaging, the covers the logos everything is painstakingly detailed due to which it also carries a premium price tag compared to other Coffee Distributers in India.
This is Microlot #RK-01, (Method of Processing is Koji Naturals) from Rathnagiri Estate in Karnataka, India owned by coffee producer Ashok Patre.
What is Koji Naturals Processing Though?
Firstly, processing is a stage in coffee production where coffee beans are prepared using certain methods before roasting.
In recent years, you have a lot of coffee producers around the world experimenting with their coffees to get a different yield different flavour and things like that and Koji naturals is one such experiment.
Koji is basically a mould that is used in the making of various products such as sake, miso and other various umami products in Japan and someone thought that it would be interesting to have such umami flavours in their coffee and they decided to introduce Koji mould to the coffee cherries during their fermentation process.
This is a Medium - Light Roast Coffee with notes of Juniper Berries, Candy & Bakers Chocolate. Did I identify any of the notes you ask? Hell No! 😂 well I did identify the subtle Berry notes but that’s it.
Here's the in a package which is a nice pouch with subtle design elements on it, but it does not have a one-way valve which lets out the excess CO2. This is something that I don't understand as I believe it is very important to for coffee to degass especially if it's freshly roasted.
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In the box, you also have a nice postcard from the estate and a booklet that talks about the Microlot & Nanolot for Subko by the Rathnagiri Estate called Project Pearl. This booklet gives you some great info about the Ratnagiri Estate and about the biodiversity of the place, Also towards the end of it you have the list of all the lots from the harvest of 2021 to 2022 and a special compilation of Ashok Patre’s Vinyl Collection titled Sounds Of The Farmer.
Incredible right ? The amount of details that Subko has put ito their packaging for just a coffee is mind blowing!
Here you have a Portrait Black & White Picture of Ashok’s Grandparents who started the farm which also happens to be part of the packaging, and it’s a pull-out image
Like How Cool Is that?
This would be the Lot Number Sticker on the outer most packaging
Post Extraction Sludge Left Behind
Here’s the final extracted cup with my ugly as ever glass Sigh must upgrade to a nice ceramic cup which has a good heat retention.
Got the whole process on video recorded using my Insta360 GO 3. To start of with I got my kettle to the ideal temperature of 92°C. I am using 14 g of Coffee to 200 g of water which is a 1:15 ratio I suppose? IDK I suck at ratios 😂
My total brewing time was about 2 minute and 30 seconds. I went a little slower than expected. I was aiming to finish it by two minutes but either ways the extraction was alright since I got a round cup of coffee, Well rounded flavours and not too much off acidity as well. I still need to tweak the recipe though to get the more chocolatey notes in.
I ave this other brand of coffee that i'm currently using called EVENTIDE which is a Speciality Coffee brand from Madras (Chennai), The one i'm currently using is also a Microlot called Head In The Cloud sourced from Greenlands estate, Valparai in India. I should definitively put up my experience on this one as well since it's my goto coffee at the moment.
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