Milk & Honey - The inside story

Our idea of a good day at work is to brainstorm on some maverick ideas to conjure up unique coffee tasting notes. Because we have a 150 acre estate, a massive drying yard, a state of the art pulping and processing unit, a roastery on the plantation and limitless imagination, this comes easy to us. 

Milk & Honey is a one such delightfully zany innovation. We’ve used the fermentation process (coffee cherry or coffee fruit fermentation is a process that most coffees go through. The fruity part of the coffee is fermented in order to get to the actual seed inside) to make this specialty single estate coffee. Here’s a bit of a description as to how we get there. 

Step 1. The Lactic Acid Bacteria. 

Sugars are broken down by yeasts and bacteria, to produce various kinds of flavours (through flavonoids and Esthers). For Milk & Honey, we use Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) to kickstart this fermentation process. The LAB is made in our lab (yes, we love being funny) in Bangalore - which is a small little section in our roastery.

Step 2.

We mildly pulp the coffee the expose the fruity pulp and then give it a good soak with milk.

Step 3. 

We now introduce the lactic acid bacteria and wait for the magic to happen. Over the next 24 hours the fermentation process takes place. During this time we’re checking for various parameters such as sugar levels, PH levels, CO2 release rate etc. 

Step 4. 

The coffee is now taken to our drying yards and allowed to dry using the Honey Sun-drying method (yes, Milk, and Honey… hence the name!).

Step 5. 

When we arrive at our optimal moisture content the coffee is then husked and bagged. The green beans are sent to our roastery in Bangalore. The beans are roasted daily, on order only.