India Hulikere

Coffee from mainland Asia isn't new -- and, specifically, coffee in India has a storied history that traces back farther than anywhere in the world besides Ethiopia and Yemen. Indian coffee dates to the late 1600s when, according to legend, a Sufi pilgrim named Baba Budan smuggled coffee seeds from the Arabian Peninsula, planting them in the Western Ghat mountains range.

Despite the long history, we haven't always associated Asian coffees with the qualities we seek out, and Huck had previously limited our roasting to a few coffees from the Pacific islands, rather than the mainland.

Over the past few years though, producers in India, China, and Myanmar, to name a few countries, have raised the bar for specialty coffee in Asia, and we've had to reconsider our preconceived notions. Gundhikan and Ratnagiri Estates are among the producers that have forced us to open our minds to coffees from mainland Asia, and both happen to lie in Chikmagalur, India, the same region where Baba Budan purportedly planted his smuggled seeds.

Gundhikan Natural and Ratnagiri represent the best of our first year roasting coffees from India. We're stoked to share these two beautiful coffees with you, and expect that there will be more coffee from mainland Asia - perhaps not only from India - in HUCK's coffee future.

Ratnagiri
Ashok and Divya Patre are 3rd-generation coffee and pepper farmers, and for the past decade or so, the family has focused on innovative processing techniques and equipment to push flavor potential at Ratnagiri Estate. “Anaerobic” can mean many things, but in this case, the Patres depulped their coffee, then fermented the seeds in oxygen-purged, stainless steel tanks, before washing and drying. The result is a coffee that’s bright, clean, and creamy. We’re tasting citrus and mango, balanced out with sweet shortbread cookie and nougat.

Gundhikan
Saif Ulla and his farm, Gundhikan Estate, are founding members of KaadKaapi Collective, a group of environmentally-conscious farmers aiming to preserve habitats and migration corridors for native animal species. Extremely dense shade cover and the occasional downed tree - courtesy roaming elephants and Gaur (Indian Bison) - make for significantly lower productivity and higher costs, offset by pursuing quality and earning higher prices. This small, natural-processed lot is wildly fruity and a bit boozy, with notes of red wine, honey, bittersweet cacao, and pomegranate.

Gettin' wild, but without gettin' too funky. We're kicking off 2023 Ethiopias at Huck with something a bit different from our friends at Snap!

Ethiopia's the birthplace of coffee, with unparalleled genetic diversity, plus unique terroir and processing that can produce super floral, citric washed coffees and the cleanest, juiciest, most berry- and tropical-forward naturals. We look forward to these coffees every year, and we're still looking forward to adding those to the roast lineup!

And Snap Coffees, a quality-focused exporter and washing station operator, has been a longtime partner for us at Huck. We've featured coffees from Snap's two washing stations in the kebele of Worka Chelbesa - the eponymous Worka Chelbesa station, plus the newer Danche station - for most of the last 5+ years, and coffees from within the Snap network often make up at least some, and sometimes all, of our flagship Phantom Limb Blend.

Over the past couple years, Snap has given its washing station managers the opportunity to experiment a bit with processing, and deviate a bit from the traditional washed and natural profiles. In this case Marcelo, one of the employees at Danche, pioneered a weird take on the washed process, keeping the coffee in-cherry, but in a sealed, cool environment, for 5 full days before undergoing a more typical washed process. Risky, but it works.

Earlier this year, we spent some time with Snap in Addis Adaba, tasting dozens of coffees from throughout their network. When we came across this one, it was "wow, wtf is this Amanuel?, we gotta have it" at first sip. And we were tasting samples blind, so even better that it came from a station we've bought from for years.

This one's combines what we love in both the best washed and natural Ethiopias - citrus and florality, plus bigger fruit and body - without some some of the funky wine, pushing vinegar, that we sometimes taste in super-long fermentations. We're tasting bright and juicy berry lemonade, honey, watermelon, and lavender florals in this banger - not our typical start to Ethiopia season, but we're very much into it!

Kenya is back in the Huck lineup, and we're kicking things off with our second year of juicy and complex coffee from Mungaria Factory and Aguthi Cooperative in Nyeri!

Aguthi Farmers Cooperative Society is a union of cooperatives in Kenya's famed Nyeri county, and Mungaria is one of the factories that make up the larger group. In Kenya coffee-speak, a factory is a local cooperative based around a single washing station, and these factories typically organize themselves into larger farmers cooperative societies (FCS) for export efficiencies, farmer trainings, financing, etc. All in all, 219 farmers deliver their coffee to Mungaria, where it is washed using a single fermentation, and dried slowly on raised beds, without a post-wash soak. 

This is Huck’s second year roasting coffee from Aguthi Society and Mungaria factory, both are part of the larger Kenyan Cooperative Coffee Exporters (KCCE) network. The Kenyan coffee industry tends to be dominated by a few foreign-owned businesses, and KCCE is a collective of cooperative societies that market and export their coffee together, to keep a bit more of the benefits within Kenya. This year we were lucky enough to spend a bit of time at Mungaria and chat with factory manager Pharis Kibilenge and Robert Ndurio.

Mungaria is one of the less-established factories in the larger KCCE network, but Robert is well-known for overseeing amazing coffees, most famously at fellow Aguthi factory, Thageini. It’s no coincidence that Mungaria has been among our favorite Kenyas for the second year running.

This coffee is hella juicy, hella sweet, and deliciously complex, like all our favorite Kenyas. We're tasting tangy red currant and key lime, subtly-spiced molasses, and juicy stone fruit. It’s a great start to the 2023 Kenya season!