Vizag

These pictures were taken while my colleagues and myself were on our trip to Vizag (South east India) on our hunt for monkey parchment coffee in the Aaruku Valley in Andra Pradesh.
Vizag is also known as "The Jewel of the East Coast"

A few snapshots of the city


A Local biscuit vendor on a hand cart selling bread toast and Nankhatai's( a sweet biscuit with a snappy bite)

An ancient Temple believed to be over a 150 yrs old ...

The Bay of Bengal

Locals drying fish on the road side ...

Toddy Tapping ....

Sudhir & Clyde savoring freshly removed Toddy

Freshly Extracted Toddy

The Harley of the East....

Fresh Roasted Cashew nuts.....

A Evening Catch....

Fisher Folks eagerly awaiting to see whats in store for the night .........

Small silver fish and a few large ones like Barracuda , Mackerel etc were the catch of the day

Clyde was excited holding the fish .. but the locals were against us clicking pictures saying that it would curse their luck .......

Still gasping for breath .......

sails made of Tarpaulin Plastic

A dingy bought back to shore

Muriel's like these are all over Vizag ..

A cow fight on the beach ...

An over loaded rickshaw...

The rope way in Vizag

Submarine Museum "Smritika"is set near by the Vizag Port. Its located on the serene beach named the Rama Krishna Breach. The Museum is built from "INS Kursura" is a Russian built Sub.This museum is one of the only kind in the Asian Sub continent.

Torpedo's in the Sub

The Main Entrance Shaft.

A visit to the Vizag Fishing Harbour..

The Ship Building Yard

Sword Fish Slices

Just the head weighed 18 kg..

Sudhir Vs Fish

Coffee Cupping

After a 45 drive through the traffic snarled Bangalore city ... Suresh Babu bought us to an Industrial lay out in Bangalore which houses a prominent coffee roaster ..M/s Coorg Coffee Supplies Pvt Ltd. Mr.Surya Prakash (MD) of the company is a engineer and a professor and has thought in some of Bangalore city's well known collages . It was his father who started the company around 50 years back , got into textiles during the 80's and moved back to trading coffee in the 90's.

The man's a walking ,Talking dictionary of coffee. He is the Chairman of the Tasting Commitee of the Coffee Board Of India.

Coorg Coffee Supplies is a well planned unit which procures coffee beans straight from the farmer , specialises in bespoke roasts and also retails under its own brand name .
After a brief Introduction by Mr. Babu on why we were in Bangalore .....Mr. Surya Prakash was quick to get things organised . He had around 100kg of beans ready for us for roasting in batches of 25kg each. he took us to his Roasting section .

Clyde,Sudhir understanding the whole process

The Control Panel

The roasting section has a huge dry air roaster (an Indian Make) with a jazzy control panel (like the ones u see in the old Hindi movies ). One side of the roaster has a Hopper funnel which sucks in the coffee into the roasting chamber .While the other side of the machine has an extruder which throws out the cooled coffee.

Mr . Prakash meticulously checks the roast temperature because its the degree of roast which will give character to the coffee. He also has a light sensitivity meter on which he grades the colour of the roast so that we could get the same degree of roast each and every time .

If you look closely at the pic above you will see how the bean after loading goes from being pale white to light brown to dark brown . The whole process can be viewed through a small glass in the roaster . Hot air is passed through the beans at a temperature varying from 175*C to 186*C for a dark roast . We froze at 182*C as suggested by the master roaster Mr. Prakash himself.

A Roast Diary is maintained specifying the origin of the bean , grade of the bean ,Temperature of Roast and but obviously the date of roasting .

After the roasting is completed ....other beans are sent for blending . Blending is a process of mixing two or more beans or chicory root powder to the coffee(after grinding). The Factory has 2 power full grinders for bulk grinding of beans .

After grinding e went to the cupping area . "Cupping" is a term used for tasting coffee (similar line of wine tasting)
A round turn table with basin's are provided so that the tasting panel can taste coffees.On day one we went through close to 90 cups of coffee and were high on caffeine.

The Tasting WheelThe Cupping Sheet

We kept the tasting wheel with us as a guideline .... but filling the cupping sheets was taxing ...never the less we had to do it ,cause it was the reason we were there for ....