South Indian Filter Coffee
Filter kaapiFIL-ter KAA-pee
A small steel tumbler of sweet, milky, frothy coffee, poured from height between the tumbler and its saucer-bowl until it is cool enough to drink. The decoction is thick and bitter from chicory, and the milk is boiled, which is what makes it taste of South India rather than of a latte.
At a glance
- Decoction : milk
- 1:4
- Active time
- 3 min
- Total time
- 8 min
- Makes
- 1 tumbler
- Serve
- Hot, frothed
- Kit
- Tumbler and davara
Ingredients
Note: The decoction method, with the dose, the pressing and the overnight trick, is on the South Indian filter page. This page is about turning it into a tumbler of kaapi.
Method
-
Make the decoction
Brew the decoction in a South Indian filter: a pressed bed of coffee and chicory, boiling water poured over, left to drip for fifteen to twenty minutes. You want the thick first decoction, about 30 ml per tumbler.
Drip 15 to 20 minutes -
Boil the milk
Bring the milk to a full boil in a small pan and let it rise once. Take it off just before it boils over.
Boiling is not optional. It changes the flavour of the milk and the froth it makes.
-
Sugar and decoction in the tumbler
Put the sugar in the tumbler and add the decoction.
-
Hot milk on top
Pour the boiling milk into the tumbler. The colour should be a deep tan, not pale beige. If it is pale, there was too little decoction or it was too weak.
-
Pull between tumbler and davara
Pour from the tumbler into the davara from as high as is safe, then back, four or five times, raising the height as you go. A thick froth rises.
Serve it in the tumbler, set in the davara. You can pour a little into the davara to cool it as you drink.
Why this works
Filter kaapi is a decoction drink. The South Indian filter produces a very small amount of very concentrated coffee, roughly one part coffee to five of water, over a long, slow drip. That concentration is what lets four parts boiled milk turn it into something that still tastes strongly of coffee. Most Western milk coffees use a fraction of the coffee by comparison.
Chicory is the other half of the flavour. The roasted root has no caffeine but dissolves into a dark, thick, pleasantly bitter liquid that adds body and a slightly sweet, woody depth. A blend of around 80 percent coffee and 20 percent chicory is common, and some families go to 30. Pure coffee filter kaapi exists and is lighter and more acidic.
Boiling the milk changes it. Heating milk to the boil denatures its whey proteins and starts Maillard reactions between lactose and milk proteins, giving the cooked, slightly caramel flavour that South Indians expect in coffee. It also makes a different froth from steamed milk: looser, airier, built by the pouring rather than by a steam wand. The pull between tumbler and davara aerates the drink, dissolves the sugar thoroughly, and cools it to a temperature that can be sipped.
Coffee in South India begins, by tradition, with Baba Budan, a Sufi said to have smuggled seven beans out of Yemen in the seventeenth century and planted them in the hills of Chikmagalur in Karnataka. Degree coffee, the prized version in Tamil Nadu, is often explained as coffee made with milk tested pure on a lactometer, which reads in degrees, though other explanations exist.
Variations
- Degree coffee: made with the strongest first decoction and full-fat milk, as at Kumbakonam.
- Black kaapi: decoction with hot water and jaggery, no milk.
- Less sweet: one teaspoon of sugar, or jaggery for a darker flavour.
- Cold kaapi: decoction, cold milk and sugar shaken over ice.
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Questions
What is filter kaapi?
South Indian coffee made by mixing a strong coffee and chicory decoction from a metal filter with boiled milk and sugar, then frothing it by pouring between a tumbler and a davara.
What is degree coffee?
A term for the best filter kaapi, usually made with the first strong decoction and pure full-fat milk. The name is often explained by the lactometer, which measures milk purity in degrees, though that origin is debated.
Why is chicory added to South Indian coffee?
Chicory adds body, a dark colour and a pleasant bitterness, and it made coffee go further when coffee was expensive. Many people now prefer the flavour with it.
Why do you pour filter coffee between two cups?
To froth it, to dissolve the sugar, and to cool it. The tumbler and davara are designed for exactly that.