Monsooned Robusta: The Lot Nobody Talks About

Search for Monsooned Malabar and you will find a great deal about arabica. Search for monsooned robusta and you will find very little, most of it a sentence in someone else's article.

That gap is not a reflection of the coffee. Robusta takes the process well, and for a European roaster building an espresso blend it is often the more useful of the two.

Why robusta suits the process

Monsooning strips acidity and adds body. It also softens the coffee's rougher edges as the bean swells and its cell structure loosens.

Arabica going through this loses a great deal — the acidity being removed is usually the reason someone bought arabica. Robusta has little acidity to lose. What it has instead is body, bitterness and the harsh woody notes the species is criticised for, and monsooning moderates exactly those.

The result is a coffee with robusta's weight and crema-forming character, with the sharper edges taken off.

What it tastes like

Expect low acidity, heavy body, and a flavour running to earth, cereal, dark chocolate and dry wood. Where unmonsooned robusta can read as rubbery or medicinal, a well-monsooned lot reads as smooth and slightly nutty.

It is not a subtle coffee. It is not supposed to be.

Where it fits

In espresso blends. This is the main use. Monsooned robusta contributes crema stability, a long heavy finish, and enough body to carry through milk — the classic Italian argument for a robusta component, with less of the classic Italian downside.

In dark-roast blends where the roast is going to flatten origin character anyway and you want weight rather than brightness.

As a lower-cost body component, which is a legitimate commercial reason and worth saying out loud. Robusta is cheaper than arabica; monsooned robusta lets you buy body without buying acidity you will roast away.

Roasting it

Two things matter more than usual.

Density. Monsooning lowers it. Charge gentler than you would for a normal robusta of the same screen, or the outside of the bean will run ahead of the inside.

Colour is unreliable. The bean starts pale gold. Reading the roast by colour, especially early, will mislead you. Work to time, temperature and rate of rise.

Most roasters find monsooned robusta reaches a usable development window earlier than expected and holds it for a shorter time than a dense washed arabica does. Sample-roast before committing a blend to it.

Buying it

The questions are the same as for monsooned arabica, plus one:

• Which crop, and which monsoon season.
• Weeks of exposure.
• Post-monsooning screen grade — the bean swells, so the pre-monsooning grade is not the grade you receive.
• Moisture at shipment, since moisture deliberately went up during the process and has to be brought back to a shippable figure.
• Whether the base robusta was cherry (natural) or washed. Washed robusta going into monsooning starts cleaner and generally finishes cleaner.

That last question is the one that most affects what lands in your cup, and it is the one least often stated on an offer list. Ask it.

Availability

Monsooned robusta is produced in far smaller volume than monsooned arabica, and it is monsooned during the south-west monsoon, so availability follows the season rather than the harvest.

If you want it for a blend you are launching in autumn, ask in spring.

From this estate

Hoysala grows robusta on the Chikmagalur blocks alongside its arabica, and offers monsooned robusta lots as well as monsooned arabica.

Hoysala’s monsooned robusta is Nandi, monsooned in the estate’s own dedicated unit. Grade, screen, moisture and bag counts by market are on the offer list.

If you are new to the process itself, what monsooning is and how it is done covers the mechanics. For the wider case for the species, see why European roasters are reconsidering robusta.