The coffee planters meet at Karnataka Planters Association in The Serai Resort, Chikmagalur.

On the 10th of this month, we had been to The Serai, a resort at Chikmagalur to attend the annual conference of Karnataka Planters Association. As a coffee planter, it was very important to know and learn from the coffee experts about the new practises that happen at the farm and the new cafes that are interested to purchase from the Karnataka coffee planters.

Chikmagalur is known for its lush green mountainous landscape which is filled with caffeinated plants. Arriving at Serai gave a whole picture of shade grown coffee plantation. The plantation had tall, silver trees which over towered the coffee bushes. Any sunlight that comes in gets filtered and reaches the leaves, in turn the maturation of the plant becomes very slow.

Before I dive deep into this event, I’d like you to know little bit about me. My name is Lynn Mascarenhas, I am a coffee planter from Karnataka and I work with processing and specially producing specialty coffees. It’s just been a couple of months since I’ve been a Karnataka Planters Association member. This was my first event that I have attended at KPA.

As I entered the resort building, I could see a table full of files, ties and gifts.

The main event people welcomed us and gave us a file each and sent us in the direction where the event would be held.

The event started at 10 a.m, the hall was filled with planters who had Estates up to thousand acres. The esteemed members filled into their seats and the program started right away. Started with an overview of the world coffee conference that happened in September. By the way it was the first time in India that the World coffee conference was held. It is known to be held once in five years it was incredible to see such a large gathering of not only planters, roasters, cafe owners, but also coffee enthusiasts, homebrewers, baristas who participated in the competition and even won.

Many of the planters gave names of their workers children to be enrolled for the scholarship. The scholarships were handed by the President of KPA to these children. They also awarded the five pillars who managed the entire responsibility and financing of the world coffee conference. They mention how planters being so involved in producing these coffees were also interested to be paid delegates at the event and not take it for granted but gain the value of the workshops and conferences.

The Indian Forest Officer highlighted that his topic was on human animal conflict. What made it more realistic was that two days back, a neighbouring planter had to face a massive elephant at 7:15 AM, the elephant came into his premises and stamp the head of a worker and then stomped on her back. Her body laid there for days until the government connected to that village and spoke in behalf of the grief, the villagers had to go through.

A lot of arrangements were being placed by the government to translocate the elephant to a safer area. The government even promised that they would get compensation for the loss they incurred.

The forest officer presented his research and hard work they did at Tamil Nadu and how it could be similarly applied to Karnataka too. He focused on the do’s and don’ts that the general public needed to know. What was disheartening for me is that the public including the forest officials were using crackers to distract the elephant and scare it to retreat back into the wild. People don’t realise that this had a trauma for the elephants could harm them in the future because elephants are known for their memory. Instances where the elephant comes back to the place where they were traumatise and destroy any building or crops that exist.

The second talk was given by Suhas Dwaraka, who owns three companies, the first one being Benki brewing tools, which is a caffeine superstore that has equipments, cups, spoons, coffee gears and incredible coffee machines. He is also an authorise trainer of SCA coffee processing, brewing and sensory analysis, barista and roasting techniques. He also owns total coffee which is a brand that gives a one-stop solution for farmers and roasters to sell their beans without having to negotiate or even speak to the customer.

He spoke about specialty coffee in terms of the pricing that can be done at the farm without costing too much from the planter since they already spend a lot on maintaining the plants. He divided the processing steps and spoke individually of what is required and the costing of each equipment.

The main part he focused on what is the raised beds, which is required to slow dry the coffee cherries, nowadays with the climate change occurring during the harvest time creates a lot of unpredictable issues that a farmer has to face. This is an added burden since they have waited a whole year slogging on the farm just to reach the harvest to have a bountiful crop. Such change in climate creates drying issues because there isn’t any sunlight, but only continuous rain. Hence, new and improved ideas have led to producers making Poly house tunnels which grab as much as the sunlight as possible through its solar sheets. any excess humidity is controlled by a humidifier machine along with four exhaust fan and four turbo ventilators.

They serve lunch by the poolside and they put up big white tents under which the resorts catering served some authentic South Indian delicacies. Since it was cool place, they served mutton sourbah soup first, and then had a big table filled with salads.

A massive queue of hungry planters lined up with your plates, peaking over the aromatic food that was placed. The Biryani paired with Raita, naan with the butter chicken, and a simple peas Pulao for the vegetarians. Last, but not the least there was Gulab Jamun with vanilla ice cream for desert.

After such a sumptuous meal, we grabbed a Budweiser beer. This was before the afternoon talk, which was given by Mr. Rahul Reddy, the co-founder of Subko coffee, Mumbai. It was nice to meet so many coffee planters from our region who introduced themselves and Spoke about the concerning issues, they have to face at their farm.

When the talk began, the room was super cold as the AC was on full blast!!

Rahul spoke about his journey on starting his brand “Subko” in Mumbai, and how he started it just before the pandemic literally 2-3 days before the lock down. He also shared from where the coffees that he purchases come from. The tribal Araku people are one of the people that he buys it from, including some coffee planters all over Chikmagalur. Lately, it’s been incredible that they have been able to purchase cacao from various parts of India and create bars of chocolate so rich and so delicious, and even have a bakery potion attached, at their Cafe.

He highlighted how last year coffee producers worked on Koji ferments, and the hype on the flavours were absolutely mesmerising. What’s incredible is that they were able to replicate similar fermentation with the chocolate bars that they produced. It was unique and unthought of, which made it a lot more tempting.

The last talk that we attended was on the impact the bees had over the coffee flowers. This was specifically for the cross pollinated robusta specie of coffee.

The research who spoke told us about the opportunity he got to work at Tata Estates. He got to compare different blocks and statistically analyse the data, he grabbed from the various coffee bushes and the flowers that had been pollinated.

He highlighted the importance of the bee boxes and honey extraction and how these additional bees can be a benefit for coffee production. Sometimes these benefits also have negatives such as competitive, bees killing the local bee population.

Benki brewing tools has made batches, cards on flavour profile, flavour wheel and even roast profiles.

He had opened up a stall for the KPA event, where his company would teach people to cup coffees. Sadly, I had miss this opportunity, even though I went all the way from a village to the town, to cup up some beautiful coffees.

Although I wasn’t completely disappointed because I grabbed a lot of knowledge from these experts and it was nice to have some suveniours from the event.

Another stall that was put up was by Kaapi solutions, they had brewing equipment, Grinder and even the Ikawa roaster. Demonstration of how the machines and equipments needed to be used and handled were shown.

This was the last glimpse when I left from the event building. I must say, it was very well organised, and absolutely one of the most elegant resorts to have such a gathering. It almost felt like a little vacation and yet valuable.

Once I was done with the talks, we left towards the town to go shopping and of course we couldn’t leave without grabbing something special to eat. That is one of the sweet peda’s.

Since my parents are diabetic, they always ask for slightly less sweeter tender Coconut to drink. While I had a massive tender coconut, which was so sweet, and so filling that I almost had to unbutton my jeans.

The coconut meat is absolutely creamy and delicious that I prefer to eat the coconut meat than to drink the coconut water. Chikmagalur was known for its greenery because it has so many varieties of plants which are not just medicine and commercially produced crops. What’s ironic is that coconuts used to be served locally from the same area. But in the recent presents all the Chikmagalur coconuts have been sold to Mumbai. Which has caused the price to increase and also have varieties that we aren’t really used to.

The last thing that I wanted to grab was a couple of baskets for my farm. Well there’s more to tell you about it but for next time. I hope you enjoyed this little post and I will be back shortly.

This is me saying bye we meet on the next post.