Certainly, the passionate process entailed sipping every cup of coffee that he brewed that resulted in lack of sleep and crazy-awake moments. However, his desire has finally materialized into what could be called the first ever coffee joint in Kathmandu that does its own roasting.
“In a country that hasn’t yet acquired the taste for coffee is a challenging job,” says the man originally from Taplejung.
Café Society at Baluwatar and Pulchowk sells 13 different varieties of coffee originating from different parts of the world, ranging from El Salvador to Kenya and Nicaragua to Papua New Guinea. Four out of the thirteen brews are decaffeinated brands.
Shrestha speaks passionately about the complexity of the beans. Dry fragrance, wet aroma, and flavor depth are a few things that feature prominently as he expresses a host of adjectives such as tart, nippy and berrylike as if he is speaking of perfumes. To a common instant coffee drinker, this may sound like rocket science. However, sipping the coffee that he brews takes you on a rocket trip.
“In Nepal, only one way of roasting the beans is popular. But here, we roast our coffee in six different ways,” he says. American, City, Full City, Vienna, and French, and Italian are the variations. This is because each coffee, depending upon its origin, has different characteristics.
“Cupping is a method that differentiates between the characteristics of the coffee in question,” he says.
Cupping is one of the coffee-tasting techniques used by cuppers to evaluate coffee aroma and the flavor profile of a coffee.
Coffee Cupping Method
- Weigh 10 grams of coffee to be cupped. Examine the beans for size, color and roast.
- Grind the beans to a medium-fine consistency. Note the coffee’s dry aroma.
- Add 150ml of 95C water. Let it steep for four minutes.
- Break the ‘crust’ of coffee that has formed on each cup with a spoon. Take in the coffee’s wet aroma.
- Remove as much of ground coffee from the cup.
- One by one, take a spoonful of coffee and ‘slurp’ it back with a sharp intake of air. It may seem uncouth, but aerating the coffee in this way significantly amplifies its unique characteristics.
- Keep sampling each cup as it cools. Try to articulate the characteristics of each coffee.
“I’ve always loved coffee, and when I met Peter Grais, an American friend, we got talking about it,” he says. Grais travels around and gets in touch with smalltime coffee farmers from all over and they import it to Nepal.
“In contacting them personally, it’s made sure that the coffee is of high quality and then it’s shipped to the USA, and finally it comes here,” Shrestha pointed out an elaborate process.
In Nepal, Shrestha handles his three outlets in Baluwatar and Pulchowk, and now he has a new outlet opening up at a new restaurant called Cinnamon at Dhobighat. However, reviving this traditional way of brewing coffee is not all that he wants to do in this brewing business. He intends to go to the USA to hone his expertise.
“There are lots of things about coffee that I still want to learn. Since I’ve come so far, this is simply my passion,” he says.
“I’m about to launch my own brand called Arvika Coffee that’s organically grown in Chainpur in East Nepal,” he says. “Although Nepali coffee is very good as the soil and climate is favorable, to compete in the international market against others that have a history of 2,000 years is going to be tough,” he expresses.
A cup of coffee here would cost Rs. 65 to Rs. 95. “Given the places that we acquire it from, and the effort that’s put into it, it’s cheap,” he opines. The coffee beans at Café Society range from Rs. 2,500 to Rs. 3,000 per kilogram.
“Moreover, the froth on our coffees isn’t machine-made but hand-made that gives it a thick consistency, almost yoghurt-like,” he says. “This gives the froth more body and volume, and this is the traditional way to acquire froth for the milk,” he adds rigorously, punching milk in a specialized utensil. This makes the other machine-made froth popular in Kathmandu, akin to micro-waved food as opposed to something cooked on wooden fireplace. The taste is different, too. Unlike machine-made froth, sipping a cappuccino froth made this way smothers the tongue and takes a while to disappear into the insides of the drinker’s mouth.
Ah! This was the volume that was absent in the coffee experience till date.
Shrestha plans to give coffee cupping lessons in the near future. For details, ring 4442261.
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