Lounge
How Chennai brews its speciality coffee
Summary
Millennials in the city are sourcing coffee from estates in Tamil Nadu, experimenting with blends and brewing a unique café cultureAt The Woodhouse Coffee & Cocoa Co., a 14-seater café in Nungambakkam in Chennai, the Vietnamese iced coffee is dense and smooth with just the right amount of bitterness to snap one out of an afternoon lull. It is one of the few new cafés that have heralded a change in the city’s coffee culture.
In the post-pandemic era, cafés set up by coffee-obsessed millennials have slowly shifted the focus from traditional filter coffee, and ushered in speciality coffees that place a premium on flavour, blend and a farm-to-cup approach. They make a case for regional beans by sourcing from estates in different parts of Tamil Nadu. Farmers in Valparai, Gudalur and Kodaikanal in the Western Ghats supply beans to cafés such as The Woodhouse Coffee & Cocoa Co., Davrah Coffee and Soroco House.
“The coffee from Tamil Nadu is special. It is grown on higher grounds—elevation of about 1,500m above sea level (coffee is usually grown at 700-1,100m above sea level). For example, Palani hills in the Western Ghats is among the highest regions growing coffee in India. As the elevation is higher, the coffee from Tamil Nadu is dense and has a beautiful aftertaste with characteristics similar to the Ethiopian highland," says Viggnesh V., 34, co-founder of Davrah Coffee, which has five outlets. The name is inspired by the davara, or the traditional filter coffee cup and saucer.
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At the four-year-old Davrah Coffee in Alwarpet, four types of filter coffee are prepared with freshly roasted Arabica and robusta beans and various brewing methods that result in taste notes ranging from bold to fruity. Viggnesh, who wants to put filter coffee and coffee produce from Tamil Nadu on the map, sources beans from Valparai and Kodaikanal and roasts them in-house. As a coffee entrepreneur, he started the Madras Coffee Movement in 2019 to connect the city’s cafés and roasters to coffee estates in the state. He conducts workshops and tasting sessions for baristas and coffee enthusiasts in Chennai.
This inherent pride in championing coffee produced in Tamil Nadu drives several café owners. Samyuktha Sunil Reddy, 29, of The Woodhouse Coffee & Cocoa Co. buys coffee beans from farms in Valparai, Gudalur and Kodaikanal for her 20-seater café, which opened in March. While she outsources the roasting or requests the farms to do it, the grinding and blending is done in-house.
Soroco House, which opened in 2022 and has outlets in Wallace Garden and Anna Nagar, offers single-origin brews from Balmaadi and Valparai. “A lot of cafés in India buy coffee from Karnataka. But award-winning brews are produced in Tamil Nadu too, on farms like the Balmaadi Estate," says founder Gero Francis, 34.
“Balmaadi coffee is special because of its high elevation—we are located in Kodaikanal district. The high elevation is favourable, plus there are a lot of streams flowing and the rich biodiversity helps the soil," says Unnamalai Thiagrarajan, estate manager at Balmaadi.
“Coffee from this estate boasts of flavours such as orange, lemon, berries, honey and floating notes of plum and flecks of chocolate," says coffee consultant Sunalini Menon who runs Coffee Lab, a coffee research foundation in Bengaluru.
Balmaadi also supplies coffee to the six-month-old café Brews & Beyond in Chennai. Co-founder Balamurali Krishna, 29, wanted to bring quality coffee to the city at a reasonable price—ranging from ₹180 for a pourover to ₹240 for café mocha; at multinational coffee chains, a basic Americano is priced at ₹210. He is a full-time cinematographer and has travelled widely to places like Thailand and Vietnam, where he was surprised and impressed with the quality and diversity of coffee available in the remotest of places. They were sourced from local farms and sold at reasonable rates. Drawing inspiration from his travels, he adopted this approach and the beans for his café also come from Balmaadi and Valparai.
Apart from sourcing from farms, experimenting with flavours is big. At Soroco, the most popular drink is Citrus Blast, a cold brew with coffee steeped for 18 hours, and infused with lychee and lemon juice. Other interesting options include the espresso berry tonic with natural strawberry extract, cold drip latte with coffee steeped for 32 hours, and the Madras Bombon with condensed milk topped with a shot of espresso.
A recent launch at Brews & Beyond is the Blue Pea Bliss, which comes in a glass with layers of colour. At the bottom is condensed milk, topped with black coffee, then comes a blue pea flower juice and it’s finished with creamy steamed milk. A handful of coffees are served in a clear glass, aesthetically layered with espresso, condensed milk and steamed milk to make them Instagram-worthy.
At Davrah Coffee, besides the filter coffee, a popular order is Panchatantra, which is coffee with whisky flavouring, sweetened with five drops of sugar syrup. It is named for the Kamal Haasan film Panchatanthiram—a nod to the city’s love for cinema.
Chennai’s speciality coffee places are brewing a culture unique to the city. Soroco’s Francis says, “Our regulars come in after work to enjoy their brews. Now, they know each other, and it feels like a community," which is what coffee is all about, isn’t it?
Sumitra Nair is a journalist based in Kochi, Kerala.
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