Journal
Essays on filter coffee and the shop that makes it.
3 min readA case for drinking coffee out of metalCeramic and paper won the argument in most places coffee is drunk. Metal is still how South India takes its filter coffee, and that holdout is worth defending on its own terms.Read essay 
Reading a coffee pack properlyA coffee pack states more than most people read, and stays quiet about more than most people notice. Here is how to read all of it, not just the ratio.3 min read
The same cup, eight thousand kilometres awayA filter coffee made far from South India follows the same steps as one made on Kasukadai Street. Worth asking honestly what actually stays the same when it travels, and what quietly doesn't.3 min read
What a small shop can actually doBeing small is not a marketing position. It changes what is genuinely possible, in both directions, and the honest version of that argument has to include what a small shop cannot do.3 min read
Chicory's two livesIn parts of Europe, chicory in coffee is remembered as a wartime substitute. In South Indian filter coffee, many people drink it by choice.2 min read
What “fresh” actually promisesAlmost every coffee pack claims to be fresh, and almost none of those claims can be checked by the person holding the pack. Here is what the word can honestly stand behind.3 min read
Objects built to be pouredSet aside what the tumbler and dabarah are used for and judge them only as design, and they turn out to be solving a harder problem than a cup and saucer ever had to.3 min read
Why the hand filter is still in the kitchenEspresso machines and electric filter-coffee makers are easy to buy, and some homes use them. Many South Indian kitchens still reach for the plain metal filter first, and taste is only part of why.3 min read
The twenty minutesFilter coffee is one of the few things left in a house that refuses to be rushed, and that refusal is doing more work than the coffee itself.3 min read