My Coffee Journey Started With the Wrong Beans
In 2018 I walked into a mall in Kerala, bought a kilo of the wrong coffee, and accidentally started a habit that took me six years to get right.
I did not fall in love with coffee. I got stuck with a kilo of it.
In 2018 I went to Kerala for a short trip to meet my cousin and see a bit of the state. Somewhere in that trip I walked into Lulu Mall and found a counter with a grinder, sacks of beans, and a guy who would grind whatever you pointed at.
I knew nothing about coffee. Zero. There were two options in front of me and one of them was labelled green.
Green means natural, right? That was my entire thought process.
So I asked for the green ones. They were unroasted, or barely roasted, I still do not know. Then the guy ground them fine. Espresso fine. Finer than espresso fine. I walked out with one kilo of the wrong coffee, ground the wrong way, and no equipment to make anything with it.
The disaster phase
First I did what most Indian households do. Mixed the powder into hot milk with sugar. It tasted nothing like coffee.
Then I tried steeping it in hot water and straining it. That was worse. It was bitter, and somehow it was also spicy. I still cannot explain that. I could not drink it.
At this point I had two options. Throw away a kilo of coffee, or learn how to make coffee. I am too stubborn for option one.
I found a cheap moka pot at a CCD and bought it. That helped, sort of. It gave me something dark and violently concentrated. I had no idea about ratios, and I was not even a black coffee drinker back then.
So the mistake stayed a mistake. But it made me start reading, testing, and buying things.
Slowly getting somewhere
Next came pre-ground beans from Starbucks and a French press. That combination actually worked. Clean black coffee from the press, rocket fuel from the moka pot.
I also learned that a French press can froth milk if you pump it hard enough. So I started making my own milk coffee at home. Was it good? Not really. Was it mine? Yes. That was enough to keep me going.
Then CCD stopped running the offer that had made me a regular. For a while they were selling a coffee and a snack for around ₹100 online, and I had built a habit on top of that price. Once the rates went back to normal, my brain refused to pay it.
So I bought a coffee machine. Pure economics.
And here is the part nobody tells you: buying a machine does not make you good at coffee. For a long time my froth was flat, my shots were weak, and I could not figure out why.
The thing that changed everything
The first real fix was embarrassingly simple. I learned that ground coffee loses its flavour in about two to three weeks.
I had been using six-month-old ground beans.
The second fix was a one-day masterclass at Marc's Coffee in Pondicherry.
I booked it at the last moment, almost on impulse. Turns out I was the only person booked that day, and because it was such a late booking, the team had not even registered it properly. I showed up and they were figuring it out on the spot.
They could have easily sent me back. Instead they accommodated me and ran the whole session anyway.
So I accidentally got a private lesson. Pure luck, and easily the best thing that happened to my coffee.
That one day rearranged everything I thought I knew:
- How roast level actually changes what lands in your cup
- What tasting notes mean. A pineapple note does not mean your coffee tastes like pineapple. It is closer to an aroma, a hint, a texture
- Why some coffee tastes muddy and what causes it
- How to work out what I like, instead of chasing what the internet says is correct
That last one mattered the most. I stopped trying to make the objectively perfect cup and started making the cup I actually enjoy.
My cup, dialled in
After the class I bought a set of beans that suited my taste and started grinding fresh with a hand grinder. Then I ran the same recipe again and again until it stopped being an accident.
Here is what I landed on:
- 60g espresso shot. I know that is long by purist standards. On my machine, at my taste, 60g is the pull that gives me enough flavour for a real pickup
- 120ml frothed milk. Nothing more, nothing less
- A small spoon of jaggery. Not sugar
I also spent real time on frothing. How long the steam wand sits at the surface, when to drop it deeper, what angle to hold the jug at so the froth folds into the milk instead of sitting on top of it like foam on a beer.
Small things. They are the difference between a home coffee and a good coffee.
One tip I will keep repeating
Swap sugar for good quality dark jaggery powder.
It sweetens without flattening the coffee, it adds a small caramel edge that works beautifully with milk, and it does less damage than refined sugar. I have not gone back.
Where I am now
I make coffee almost every day, and I still keep experimenting.
Some days I pull a shot over sparkling water. Some days it is a Vietnamese cà phê sữa đá with condensed milk. Once in a while I do something odd like cranberry in the mix, just to see what happens. Most of these experiments are worth repeating. A few are not.
Eight years in, the lesson is the same one that kilo of wrong coffee taught me in the first place.
You do not need the right gear or the right beans to start. You need something you are forced to figure out. Mine happened to be a bag of unroasted beans, ground to dust, bought by someone who thought green meant natural.
Best mistake I have made.
What is your everyday cup? I am always looking for the next thing to try.