From Blossom to Bag: How Our Coffee Is Grown and Processed at Hoysala Estate
04 October 20265 min read
Written by Tiny Tiger Coffee
What happens to coffee before it reaches the roaster? Every bag of Tiny Tiger starts as a white flower on a coffee plant at Hoysala Estate, our certified organic and biodynamic farm near Mudigere in Chikmagalur. After that come about 9 months of ripening, a hand-picked harvest, and the processing that shapes the taste in your cup.
What organic and biodynamic actually mean on a coffee farm
Few coffee farms in India are certified organic, and just three, Hoysala Estate among them, are also biodynamic.
Organic means no synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides, so there is no bag to buy when the plants look hungry and nothing to spray when a pest arrives. Manure from our own cows feeds the soil, and the birds and earthworms on the estate do the rest.
Biodynamic farming goes a step further, treating the whole farm as one living system that feeds itself, with leaf mulch, compost and fermented preparations instead of chemicals. Organic farming is mostly about what you leave out, and biodynamic farming is about what you put back.
Two preparations, both made from our cows' manure, do much of that work. BD 500, or horn manure, is manure packed into cow horns and buried for months, then stirred into water and sprayed to wake up the life in the soil. CPP, or cow pat pit compost, is manure mixed with eggshell, basalt dust and herbal preparations and left to become rich compost.
Horns packed with our cows' manure, laid out in a pit before they are buried to become BD 500.Two biodynamic preparations we use at Hoysala Estate, both made from our own cows' manure.
A healthy farm under native shade ripens coffee slowly and evenly, which is where good flavour starts. We've written about that in Why is Indian coffee shade grown?
A year on the estate
The coffee year in Chikmagalur. Months shown are typical for arabica in the district.
Blossom. In April, a few days after the first good rain (the blossom shower), the whole estate flowers at once in white, jasmine-scented flowers. Each pollinated flower becomes a cherry holding two coffee beans, and a second rain a few weeks later, the backing shower, helps the fruit set.
Flower buds a few days before they open.
Ripening. For arabica, the green cherry takes the better part of a year to ripen. Our cherries come from two arabica varieties as well as robusta. At around 1,200 metres the cool nights slow ripening, so the cherry builds more sugar and a denser, sweeter bean.
Multiple rounds of selective harvest. Cherries on the same branch ripen on different days, so we pick by hand and go over the same plants several times, from about October or November to January. Only ripe red cherries go in the basket, and they are sorted by hand again before processing.
Ripe cherries, picked by hand at Hoysala Estate.Sorting the day's cherries by hand before processing.
Natural or washed: what processing does to the taste
A coffee bean is the seed of a fruit. Around it are a skin, a layer of sweet, sticky fruit, and a thin papery shell called parchment. Processing is simply the job of getting the seed out and dried, and the big choice is when the fruit comes off.
The layers of a coffee cherry. Processing decides which of them come off before the bean is dried.
The best example we can come up with to explain this is actually the grape. If you sun-dry a grape over a long period of time, you get a raisin, intense and fruity. If you peel the grape and dry only the seed, it tastes a lot like the seed itself. Coffee works in a similar way.
Natural (cherry coffee)
Washed (parchment coffee)
What happens
The whole cherry is dried with the fruit still on, then the dried husk is removed
The fruit is pulped off, the seed is fermented and washed, then dried in its parchment
What it tastes like
Fruitier, sweeter, heavier body
Cleaner, brighter, more transparent
Risk
High: the fruit can spoil if the weather turns during drying
Lower, but it needs a lot of water and careful fermentation
Our coffees
Frozen Candy, Caramel Espresso
Toasted Almond
Left: ripe cherries, which become a natural when dried whole. Right: a pulped cherry with the skin peeled back, the first step of a washed coffee.
Neither is better. Choose a natural for fruit and sweetness, black or as a pour-over, and a washed coffee for clarity, or one that sits cleanly under milk.
From the estate to your cup
We roast to order about twice a week and ship directly, so the roast date on your bag is days old, not months. Roasters in Germany, Italy and France buy the same lots, and our coffee is the house coffee in over 50 cafés across 13 Indian cities.
Frozen Candy, Caramel Espresso and Toasted Almond, roasted to order from Hoysala Estate coffee.From our farm in Mudigere to your cup, with no traders or warehouses in between.
Which of our coffees to try first
Frozen Candy is a 100% arabica natural: fruity and sweet, best black or as a pour-over.
Toasted Almond is a washed coffee: clean and nutty, black or with milk.
Caramel Espresso is a natural espresso blend with 20% robusta, made for milk drinks.
Velvet Mocha is our South Indian filter blend, 70% coffee and 30% chicory.
If you run a café, our Café Program page explains how we supply cafés, and you can order a paid Café Sampler to taste the coffees on your own machine.
Common questions
What is the difference between natural and washed coffee?
A natural coffee is dried whole, with the fruit still around the bean, which makes it fruitier and sweeter, while a washed coffee has the fruit removed before drying, which makes it cleaner and brighter. In the Indian trade, naturals are called cherry coffee and washed coffees are called parchment or plantation coffee.
