Black Baza Coffee

Bangalore neighbourhoods and trees Pt. 2

Welcoming June with an aeropress of one magical Microlot against the evening sun.

Black Baza’s ‘Dark Jaggery’ is an unrefined jaggery powder made from organically grown sugarcane. You can notice in the images - its natural texture is quite different from its industrially processed sugar counterparts.

Not only is it a far superior alternative to sugar, it comes with its own nutrition profile composing iron, fibre, and minerals alongside the calories. Safe to use this to sweeten your coffee every day. Heaps healthier in comparison to sugar and also super delicious!

Fun fact - our packaging is made of sugarcane waste too, that makes this jaggery bag a sugarcane baby through and through, except for the one lining of an air-tightening biodegradable pouch to keep it fresh till it reaches you!

Here’s a quick Roast Guide!

Finding out what coffee you like can be a long, exploratory journey. This might help you cut it short by a bit!

Roast types are huge determiners of what the final cup tastes like. If you’ve had a pleasant or not-so-pleasant experience with coffee before, roast levels might be one of the factors you can directly attribute that event to. What roast works best for you?

French pressing is the least tricky way to make yourself a clean cup of coffee! And extra points for the satisfaction resulting from pressing the plunger :)))

What coffee are you currently brewing in this pot press?

Black Baza coffees that work best in the French Press are Wanderoo, Chukki, Otter, Draco and Kaati.

For any equipment, the choice of coffee beans can significantly impact the flavour and quality of your brew. Medium to dark roast beans are ideal for French press brewing because they tend to have a fuller body and more robust flavors.

We’ve witnessed more use cases for this versatile machine - as a milk frother and to even brew tea!

Have you made the switch to cloth filters yet?

The obvious great (reusable, less waste-generating, climate-friendly) reasons aside, using cloth filters over paper ones can help elevate your brew! Let us explain - cotton filters produce a clean, sediment-free cup of coffee with heavy aromatics and a buttery mouthfeel from natural oils and a higher perceived acidity in the brew. In comparison, paper filters are more tightly woven, and clean out most sediments and natural oils so your cup of coffee is clean but diminished in aromatic oils. If you are looking for these characteristics in your brew, we recommend you immediately switch to this better option!

Brew, rinse, repeat, and choose better! An additional perk is that it saves you the worry of recurring paper filter costs.

We have a single-sized Aeropress filter we’ve got them in three sizes for the Pour over. Available to buy on our website!

Our recommendations for the lovers of the darker patch on the coffee roast spectrum!

Otter is a medium dark roast with tasting notes of Baker’s Chocolate, Dried Berries and Caramel.

Loris is a dark roast with tasting notes of Prunes, Dark Chocolate and Almonds.

Chukki is a vienna, our darkest roast, with tasting notes of Dark Chocolate, Roasted Almonds and Caramel.


             
     

Storage equipment that sits pretty against most backgrounds and holds 600g of good beans. We’re on a mission to bring you merch that will last you a few lifetimes!

This coffee canister is made of stainless steel, and later subjected to enamelling. It’s interesting to note that enamelling as a process dates as far back as the Mesopotamian civilisation and was a technique developed for jewellery ✨✨

These are not microwave or dishwasher-safe.

Dropping in to say our offline store in Sahakarnagar, Bangalore is open all week from 9:30 am to 7:30 pm and Saturdays till 1:30 pm. The store is part of our fully functional coffee Roastery!

As a sweet welcome, we’re resuming our offline loyalty programme. Drop by with your dabbas if you’re in the neighbourhood and get coffee at discounted prices :) The logistics of this are tricky to replicate online but we have a subscription model that’ll help you save some bucks on buying coffee regularly. Easy 6, 12 and 24 parcels at the frequency you like! Check our website for more info.

Seriously, you’d regret not planning a visit! The space always smells heavenly - freshly roasted coffee or if you’re lucky you will coincide with the production team packing newly arrived cardamom pods 🤤😅

P.S. We don’t sell drinks! This isn’t a cafe (yet).

As we’re approaching mid-May, the summer is beginning to transition into monsoon. Our Roastery and offline store is located in a rather pleasant neighbourhood. Simply walking around the block will present you with innumerable sights of ripened fruit, especially at this time of the year! We found plenty of mango, jackfruit, papaya, banana, avocado, pomegranate and chickoo trees, all bearing abundant produce.

We hope that it becomes true that city blocks and pockets evolve to accommodate more tree cover, ponds, and lakes and make it a better place for all living beings. If you find a patch of ground that can house a tree, please take the initiative to plant a sapling or sow some seeds, the rain and sun will take care of the rest!

Happy weekend :) Do share with us what’s fruiting or flowering where you are. Tag us so we can reshare!

Familiar with Pulney’s Coffees? You can say Kaati belongs to this category of GI-tagged Pulney’s Coffee sourced from the Palani and Palani hills region in Tamil Nadu. We request you to look forward to a deep dive into how we set footing here on this month’s Field Note (accompanied with all Black Baza purchases) and future social posts! But before that, here are three ways to brew Kaati. Save for later and ask us any brewing questions!


             
         

At Black Baza and are always on the lookout for creating merchandise that is thoughtful, generates little waste and can last at least a few lifetimes.

We looove jewellery, and these are some favourites Arshiya has managed to collect over time. These tokens last forever, and we love the charm they’re able to add to daily life!

If you’re an artist or brand that’s inclined to make nature and biodiversity-inspired pieces, we’d love to collaborate with you or commission some pieces to create for Black Baza coffee! Please DM us. We did this once earlier with Jinal Patel, a sculptor, and we loved the outcome!

Please tag your designer/smith friends/favourite jewellery brands to spread the word!

We’re growing our team! Please see details about these three open positions at Black Baza Coffee Co. These are full-time roles based out of our Roastery in Sahakaranagar, Bangalore.

Please no DMs! Write to us at [email protected] along with a CV and Cover Letter. Check the full requirements on the careers section of our website which is linked in our bio.

 

We are excited to share our newest Microlot - M36 - a Light Roast of Anaerobically Fermented Washed Arabica with unmistakable flavour notes of Peaches, Earl Grey tea, and Hibiscus.

But who is behind this coffee?

Grown by Pushpa and Madegowda, and Kethamma and Kollegowda on their 1 and 1.5 acre farms, where they are first-generation coffee growers in the extraordinary forests of the BR Hills Tiger Reserve. While we have sourced washed Arabicas from them for the past 7 years, this was the first year that we were able to nudge them to adopt post-harvest steps for their coffee.

Why did it take 7 years?

Long story short, post-harvest practices like anaerobic fermentation are tricky to pull off in remote geographies where grower familiarity with specialty coffee is limited.

For our partner producers, an average day would involve a full day of picking, followed by pulping and careful and controlled fermentation of fruit. In anaerobic fermentation, it’s crucial to kick off the fermentation process very quickly after picking. Delays meant that you might be pulping fruit late into the evenings, in the absence of street lights in proximity to wildlife! So, it needed all hands on deck!

In this respect, we must do a special shout out to Pushpa and Madegowda’s son, Madan who was a much-needed taskmaster ensuring that his aunt, uncle, parents and our team completed the pulping and fermentation process as he felt fit!

“I like supervising coffee pulping”, he’d say!

Of course, we’re hoping to bring him on as part of our team a few years from now! In the meantime, enjoy Microlot 36!

                            

Scenes straight out of Jungle Book 🐆🐗🦔 A food chain that’s alive and well!

We were perplexed by the order of these images we found captured by our camera trap this last month and had a good laugh. The boar following the leopard we mean, and back, like they were going back and forth catching up on an incomplete conversation. Jokes aside, the presence of these mammals along with all other smaller critters are crucial indicators of biodiversity in where we cultivate coffee. So we’re always relieved to have them show up in the trap gallery! Excited to see what we find next time 🤞

If you can’t tell by our name already, we hold the existence of birds undeniably close to us. Soundscapes was only our second event as team Black Baza Coffee Co, and we were thrilled to do it on birds! We took some time to write about hosting events at our roastery and kick-starting our bird monitoring programme. Please read and let us know what you think! Link in bio.

 

We’re pleased that a fanbase for our coffees exists and this feeling spills into the species they’re named after. So we made cute stickers out of them ☺️ Treat this as a badge of honour to be part of the community, if you will! They’ll make nice additions to your coffee merch collection.

These vinyls stick well on most surfaces (exceptions: rough, bumpy, uneven, rugged etc), they’re water resistant, so don’t be afraid to stick them on your coffee equipment or anywhere else in the kitchen! These are available to buy on our website.

Hello, hello, to all the new folks here! Let us introduce you to an old coffee, a fan favourite - Loris, a delicious, dark roast!

First off, if you’re apprehensive of darker roasts, know that our dark roast for Loris is none of burnt or bitter, and happily very far from this damaging reputation. When roasted carefully, dark roasts are rich and give notes of dark chocolate with caramel-like smoothness.

However, if you already love dark roasts, you’re going to be obsessed with Loris, so please try! Available to buy on our website.

Note from OP: My only reference for a ‘Kād papa’ growing up was my mom scolding, calling me one, whenever my hair was out of control or I’d dressed shabbily. Very recently I learned kad-papa = Loris. Very recently I learned about this primate when I was illustrating this guy on the cover of our Coffee Handbook.

Lorises live in tree canopies feeding on insects, leaves and shoots of plants. Lorises are also fairly social primates, sleeping in groups, playing wrestling and grooming each other. Little is known about the population and conservation status of Lorises but threats include loss of habitat, fatalities from electrocution on live wires, hunting and poaching. 

They’re nocturnal and shy, we were thrilled to spot them a couple of times in Bangalore! Slide 2 is a stock image, we haven’t been able to photograph a Loris before. Please share with us if you’ve been lucky enough to capture any!

   
 

Cardamom helps in offsetting the few negative effects coffee has on our systems. Especially in offsetting heat, an accentuated worry this summer seems to have brought along with it. Cardamom with its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, is believed to leave a cooling effect on thyself.

If you’re inclined to reap its benefits, try Draco or begin adding a pod of cardamom to your morning cup of coffee!

Draco is one of our unique offerings - our cardamom infused coffee. The medium-roasted arabica in the bag comes from our partner producers in BR Hills, a deciduous forest at the confluence of the Western and Eastern Ghats, and the cardamom comes from a rainforest in Bisle Ghat, Karnataka - two important biodiversity hotspots, and two very delicious ingredients :)

We really cherish our partnerships with independent bookstores. is one such notable affiliations we hold close to our hearts, especially because the people who run it - and wear many hats to keep the space brimming with an enthralling selection of literature, and thriving as a cafe!

Plus book reccomendations for this month preceding ‘Soundscapes’ - our very special bird event this evening ❤️

New coffee!🧊We’ve successfully formulated a cold brew blend that’s worthy competition for Otter and this one’s it! This is a fruity, refreshing, Arabica blend. We recommend you buy a bundle of Microlot 35 and Otter, the pair is even offered at a discount on our store! Both work extremely well as cold brews. M35 being an Arabica-only blend and Otter - an incorporate of Arabica and Robusta beans, ensure you’re spoilt with two explicit and wonder-filled choices for the summer.

Here’s how we recommend you make the cold brew - 1:10, 1 part of coffee with 10 parts of water. Steep your coffee for 16-18 hours if you’re doing it at room temperature. 24 hours if you’re steeping it inside a  refrigerator. Strain the concoction with a Black Baza cloth filter, and enjoy it with ice. Store cold brew in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. 

Let us know if you have a favourite cold brew recipe!

                                  

Women led, administered and operated, it’s mostly us women in the office! 💃🏽

If you haven’t visited and are unaware, our office and roastery are located right opposite each other in two little buildings, separated by a street. We’re standing at the store-front, now part of our functional roastery. Our days are mostly spent moving in and out of these spaces to manage roasting, operations and everything in between. Each of us have created ways to organically work on the mission to weave paths from coffee farms to you!

Happy Women’s Day to everybody that identifies as one today🥰❤️🦀

Second editions of your favourite mug and canister are here! These will sit pretty on your kitchen shelves no doubt, but we created them with an intention to store and help with your coffee needs on the go. Light weight and insensitive, perfect when you’re camping outdoors :)

Also our four-legged brand ambassador is back after quite a long break, this time he’s endorsing the canister - great storage for treats (and for humans this means beans). Goods are up to buy on the webstore! Link is in bio.

Would a silent-disco of bird song interest you?

In the company of Ornithologist Dr. Vijay Ramesh, whose research is focused on understanding how the environment shapes the ecology and behavior of tropical montane birds, we try to share findings from our little documentation effort that captures bird sounds in coffee landscapes.

The popular way of growing coffee involves removing native shade trees which directly contributes in huge habitat loss for birds.

Birds make an important part of any ecosystem and we were curious how birds use this land, especially in the absense of humans. One way to observe bird activity is by listening to them! We set up Audiomoths at certain spots of biodiversity-friendly and some not so biodiverse coffee farms in pursuit of this understanding. Come join us as we share the findings. Next Friday evening, the 15th of March, at our roastery! This is a free event! Not ticketed, but please DM us to RSVP, so we can plan logistics accordingly.

Numerous bird species continue to be significantly impacted by agriculture.
This is an attempt to look for more ways to conserve bird diversity in coffee farms.

Do you think we have too many coffees on the shelf? 🤔 Which coffee would you be okay with us discontinuing it?

Does it get confusing to find a coffee you like/ did it take a lot of trial and error to find the one?

We were thinking about how people select their coffees when ordering from a new roaster, beyond the step of choosing bean type. Is it roast type? And, the next deciding factor would be? How does one go about choosing new ‘estates’ or new origins, is there conviction involved? Is there decision fatigue? Some insight on this would be helpful, thanks in advance!

Containing this jumpy ant in our canvas tote. Wise geese keep light-roasts within reach, they ensure a stronger caffeine kick. If you’re accustomed to darker roasts and want a (healthy) break, please give this bright coffee a shot!

       

How to brew coffee when equipment you’re used to is out of reach?

You indeed can grind your beans with a mortar and pestle. We’re only looking for a coarse grind here, so this is going to easier than imagined. Grounds are then added to a pot of water that’s nearing a boil. Let it sit for a few minutes. Use a tea strainer or cloth to strain and separate the residue. There you have it! Tell us if you know of other unconventional ways that brew you a cuppa! Happy brewing (:

   

Today we’re reintroducing one of our long-standing coffees! Old, popular as hell, has an in-house (our team) dedicated fan club roaring for it.

The last image is a throwback to ancient Wanderoo, from when we launched this coffee!

Wanderoo - Sinhalese for forest-dweller, we use it to describe the majestic Lion-Tailed Macaque and this distinguished coffee!

The Wanderoo is an Old World Monkey endemic to Southern India, spends most of its life in the upper canopy of trees in rainforests feeding on fruit. Only 3000-3500 Wanderoos live today making it one of the world’s rarest and most threatened primates. Its range is increasingly isolated because of habitat destruction, including from the expansion of coffee plantations. So, we are asking if we can grow a cup of coffee in a way that protects rather than destroys the Wanderoo’s habitat?

     

Today we’re reintroducing one of our long-standing coffees! Old, popular as hell, has an in-house (our team) dedicated fan club roaring for it.

The last image is a throwback to ancient Wanderoo, from when we launched this coffee!

Wanderoo - Sinhalese for forest-dweller, we use it to describe the majestic Lion-Tailed Macaque and this distinguished coffee!

This Old World Monkey endemic to Southern India, spends most of its life in the upper canopy of trees in rainforests feeding on fruit. Only 3000-3500 Wanderoos live today making it one of the world’s rarest and most threatened primates. Its range is increasingly isolated because of habitat destruction, including from the expansion of coffee plantations. So, we are asking if we can grow a cup of coffee in a way that protects rather than destroys the Wanderoo’s habitat?

     

Champaca guarantees you the company of freshly brewed coffee with crisp pages of great books!

We send our beloved Ficus to brew at Champaca. The coffee is a joyous blend of washed Arabica and natural, sun-dried Robusta, packed with dark chocolate and nutty flavour notes! The beans are produced by coffee plants nestled under the shade of Ficus among other indegenous forest trees, hence the name.

We hope you get to enjoy this alchemy of coffee and books, a pairing that transcends the sensory to plunge you into realms of thought and imagination!