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COFFEE GOES FROM INDIA TO INDONESIA
in 1696 & 1699
The Dutch ruled the Island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) through the Dutch East Indies Company from 1658 to 1796. They also occupied some parts of India, particularly the coastal regions of western India. The following account is taken from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers:
"In 1696, at the instigation of Nicolaas Witsen, then Burgomaster of Amsterdam, Adrian Van Ommen, the Dutch Commander at Malabar, India, caused to be shipped from Kannanur, Malabar, to Java, the first coffee plants introduced into that island. They were grown from seed of the Coffea Arabica brought to Malabar from Arabia. They were planted by Governor General Willem Van Outshoorn on the Kedawoeng Estate near Batavia, but were subsequently lost by earthquake and flood.
In 1699 Henricus Zwaardecroon imported some slips, or cuttings, of coffee trees from Malabar into Java. These were more successful, and became the progenitors of all the coffees of the Netherlands Indies. The Dutch were then taking the lead in the propagation of the coffee plant.
In 1706 the first samples of Java coffee, and a coffee plant grown in Java, were received at the Amsterdam botanical gardens. Many plants were afterward propagated from the seeds produced in the Amsterdam gardens, and these were distributed to some of the best known botanical gardens and private conservatories in Europe."
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AVAILABLE: MYSORE PLANTATION-A, Kent
Kent is a natural-hybrid Arabica first discovered in the Doddenguda Estate in the Chikmagalur district of Mysore, and is named after the British owner of the estate at the time. British planters shipped this popular cultivar to several of their colonies, including Kenya and Jamaica. Because Kent is susceptible to leaf rust, many Indian growers uprooted and replaced this coffee. However, small blocks of these heirloom plants, now more than 80 years old, remain in a few estates. This particular lot is from an estate at an elevation of 3,800 feet. These Kent coffees have a light flower fragrance and a clean, refined cup. They are packed in 132-pound bags.We have been importing Plantation-A grade of coffee for many years.
Contact us for price and availability information.
For additional information see:
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Dear Recipient:
There is a common perception that Indian coffees we bring cost more than Indian coffees available from other importers and brokers. We are not convinced that such a perception is correct.
There is no question that the quality of the coffees we bring are far superior to those available from others. We encourage our growers and processors to spare no effort in trying to produce the very best coffee they are capable of, year after year.
You will see below a variety of steps taken by those growers to upgrade the quality of their coffees. You will not see any single change that causes a dramatic improvement in quality. The industry is too mature for that. But you will see a large number of steps that improves the quality a little bit at a time. Some of these are described below.
It is widely accepted that the horticultural practices employed by the coffee estates in India are world class; as good as any in the world and better than many. As a result, I believe, and estates that work with us have signed on, that a fully ripe coffee cherry is at the peak of its flavor at the time of picking. There is nothing one can do to make it better, but there is a whole lot one can do to let it get worse. All our efforts are directed, as best as we can, to preserving the quality as it exists at the time of picking. That costs money and is very labor intensive.
However, by purchasing coffees directly from the estates in India, and by selling the coffees directly to roasters in the US and Canada, we eliminate several layers of middlemen, and we are able to pass on the resulting savings to you. Elsewhere in this newsletter we have provided you representative prices for some of the coffees we bring, so you can get some idea of our prices and the value high quality represents.
Sincerely,
Dr. Joseph John, President
Josuma Coffee Company
PO Box 1115
Menlo Park, CA 94026
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HIGH QUALITY COMES AT A COST
 | | Hand Sorting Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold to Isolate Partially Defective Beans |
All large coffee estates in India claim that they pick only the fully ripe cherries and that they send their pickers to the same plants for four or five rounds during a two month picking season. While this may be generally true, we find a high degree of variation in the ripeness of the beans they accept.
 | | Not Acceptable |
 | | Acceptable |
The photo on the left shows the pile of fully ripe cherries accepted by an estate from which we do get coffee. The photo on the right shows the cherries with partially ripe (orange), under-ripe (yellow), and unripe (green) cherries that is accepted by an estate from which we do not get coffee. We find their standards not high enough since the unripe cherries contribute to the astringency we detect in the cup.
 | | Mid-Day Sorting of Cherries in the field |
Most estates in India wait till the end of the day to bring all the cherries picked during the day to the pulp house and sort them to remove unripe and under ripe cherries inadvertently picked before they are pulped. In most estates pulping started only after the sun goes down. By waiting till the end of the day, some of the cherries that were picked early in the morning run the risk of fermenting in the skin. To reduce this risk, the quality oriented estates are carrying out the sorting and weighing in the field before the pickers break for lunch. They spread tarps in the filed and carry out the sorting on these tarps. In those estates, pulping starts soon after lunch, thus eliminating even the small risk of the cherries fermenting while still in the skin.
     
The first day's drying, after the coffee has been de-pulped, fermented, and washed, is very critical. It was customary to spread the wet coffee on concrete or brick floors of drying yards where the coffee remained wet for many hours. A lot of water drips from these wet beans and the water tended to pool, since the concrete and brick did not absorb the water quickly enough. All of the estates we work with have gone to using raised platforms during the first day or two after the coffee has come out of the washing tanks. On those platforms, the water drained from the beans on to the ground and was no longer in contact with the beans.
Each estate has adopted its own design for these raised platforms, many of which are shown above. Some use elaborate permanent structures with blower fans installed underneath for faster drying while others use removable trays for moving the beans from one location to another as required.
   Some of the worst damages were being done on the drying yards, either while spreading/raking the beans on the concrete or brick surfaces of the yard or while the beans are gathered in the evening into heaps and covered with tarpaulin to protect the coffee from nightly dew. In this process, by using stiff wooden boards as seen in the three photographs, the beans scrape against the hard floor of the drying yard and rupture the hard skin, or pergamino, that is protecting the coffee beans inside.
Several estates have developed devices to minimize the damage caused by the hard surfaces of these rakes. Using one's bare foot is still the simplest, although labor intensive, way to protect the coffee beans while they are on the drying yard.     | Prongs of this rake are shallow compared to the depth of coffee
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After leaving the drying yard, we have the coffee rested, or reposed, for 30 to 60 days. The beans are piled in a large heap and covered by tarps during this period. The moisture in the beans gets redistributed so as to be uniform within each bean and from bean to bean. This leads to very even swelling and uniform development during the roasting process.
The final stage in the elaborate quality control process is hand garbling, whereby each bean is looked at to identify the beans that are partially blemished. Beans that are completely defective can be isolated using electronic color sorters; but those sorters are ineffective when it comes to picking beans that are only partially defective. This has to be accomplished by human intervention.
Photograph on the left below shows a bank of women inspecting Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold as they are spread one bean thick on a conveyor belt. The photo on the right below show piles of Monsooned Malabar-AA Super Grade beans being inspected, one bean at a time, to segregate beans that are only partially monsooned. Both are extremely labor intensive.
 | | Beans are picked over by hand, one bean at a time |
 | | Separating Partially Monsooned Beans by hand |
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REPRESENTATIVE COFFEE PRICES
Given below are current prices for some of the coffees from India we offer:
100 bag 1 bag
purchase purchase
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Monsooned Malabar-AA Super Grade $ 2.55 /lb $ 2.98 /lb
Monsooned Robusta-AA $ 1.99 /lb $ 2.33 /lb
Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold $ 2.84 /lb $ 3.32 /lb
Mysore Plantation-A, Kent $ 2.88 /lb** $ 3.02 /lb
Premium Washed Robusta Kaapi Royale $ 2.12 /lb $ 2.48 /lb
** 20 bag price
All prices are ex-warehouse basis and are subject to change without notice.
Coffees are warehoused in Alameda, CA, Hayward, CA and Auburn, WA
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