Filter Kaapi Lore

Aggressively brewing across the streets of Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu, India, is Filter Kaapi. The long-running tradition of brewing Filter Kaapi in the morning, before the sun fully meets the sky, was introduced to me by my mother - quite the caffeine addict herself - and taking after her, my coffee intake began at the concerning age of ten. It was not concerning, however, to the citizens of Chennai, as they were often found sipping on Filter Kaapi at every hour of the day.

It was flabbergasting to realise that Chennai’s fantasies and glorification of Filter Kaapi never really left the borders of Tamil Nadu, with modest spillover in neighbouring states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. This, I was made aware of, when I left for Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana, for my master's. There, the lack of Filter Kaapi culture, not only surprised me but their disappointing substitution with instant coffee undeniably angered me. 

Upsettingly, this also made me realise that when the words “India” and “beverage” come together, Chai takes the top spot. Coffee, on the other hand, especially Filter Kaapi, despite its notoriety in South India, is minimally recognised. However, I wouldn’t necessarily complain about this epiphany as it further advanced my position as a Filter Kaapi enthusiast.

Filter Kaapi holds a starkly unique flavour. The use of milk and a full-bodied brew makes the sips heavy in the mouth, with its rich aroma sharply sensed in the nose. One can feel its aroma and strong taste lingering in the mouth for several minutes, and sometimes even hours. Its unique brewing methodology is sickeningly scarce outside Tamil Nadu. 

The process of brewing Filter Kaapi begins with hand-ground, medium-roast, Indian coffee beans sold in almost any lane in the cities of Tamil Nadu. Here, they are finely ground and mixed with chicory (witlof), the dried and roasted roots of a plant that belongs to the dandelion family. When mixed with coffee, it enhances the aroma, gives the brew a heavier body, and adds depth to its colour.  Flavour-wise, it leaves behind a staining bitter aftertaste. 

While it bears quite an impressive list of skill sets, its initial introduction to brewing a classic South Indian cup of coffee is a casteist one. The practice of mixing chicory with coffee grounds isn’t necessarily alien and is a centuries-long practice in Egypt. However, its widespread usage was a result of the declining economy during the 1700s. 

Europe initially adopted the practice when Fredrick the Great of Prussia and Napoleon banned imported food products. This slimmed the availability of the beverage and motivated a search for alternatives. Chicory reared its leafy white head. It then reached The United States during their Civil War, and since coffee knitted itself into the daily lives of its citizens during the British colonisation of India, coffee was heavily sourced and exported through the Western Ghats. This led to coffee becoming a staple beverage in India, especially since British soldiers, deployed in India, often brewed ‘Camp Coffee’, a combination of coffee, chicory, sugar, and water, originating from Scotland.

As the Indian population grew, Tamil Brahmins picked up the practice from the French to create a solution for the increased demand for coffee through Puducherry, a French Provincial Capital in Tamil Nadu, India. Since the French, even after the lift of their import ban, continued to favour chicory’s presence in their coffee, and the practice seeped into Filter Kaapi.

Currently, in South India, the ratio of chicory in coffee blends ranges from 10-30%. Only a rare population opt for no chicory in their coffee grounds, due to the aforementioned additions to the brew, and its reduction of caffeine content. The degree of chicory’s presence depends on the sipper’s standards. 10-20% reflects the choice of someone preferring coffee’s natural qualities but slightly enhanced and anything leading to 30% showcases the person’s interest in a strong, bitter, and heavy beverage. People either buy chicory and coffee powder separately and mix it to their preferred ratios or have cafés do it for them.

Once this blend is stacked at home, the brew is filtered through the traditional manual coffee maker. It is cylindrical in shape and consists of four essential metal parts, namely, the lid, bottom cup, basket, and press. My knowledge of how to handle the coffee maker was obtained and still stays enclosed in the walls of my mum’s methodology. 

I’ve seen her assemble the filter, adding the coffee blend to the basket and pouring dangerously boiling water into the basket, unafraid of the hissing, spitting, and sizzling sounds it would make against the walls of the filter. As she’d lift the vessel of hot water from the stove with nothing but a rug separating her hand from it, a shiver of worry and concern would run down my spine. She, however, was steely. Then she’d seal it with its lid and let it sit for around 20-30 minutes, covering the violent plumes of hot vapour the coffee grounds would make on contact with the water. While it alarmed me at first, watching her do this everyday made it an almost soothing visual for me.

The brewing time varies depending on the kind of coffee blend. A coarse blend takes less time while a finely ground coffee blend could take up to 30-40 minutes to be fully filtered. The coffee maker completely revolves around the workings of gravity and nothing more. The filtered brew that gets collected in the bottom cup, is mixed with a desired ratio of milk and sugar, which is then served in a dabbara. Dabbara is a two-piece tumbler set, made of brass, specifically for serving Filter Kaapi. Filters are usually made of brass or steel, with a veneration for brass. The particular preference for brass comes from the metal’s significance in Indian cultural history. 

Brass is considered a holy metal that’s believed to radiate positive energy into one’s life, an ideology propagated through Hindu texts. Since Filter Kaapi was popularised and shared by Tamil Brahmins, an upper-caste Hindu community, brass became the ideal choice of metal. However, with inflation and the beverage reaching the working classes of South India, steel filters have become more popular.

When serving Filter Kaapi, its components of milk, sugar, and the brew aren’t well mixed with one another. Therefore, a dabbara helps the blend of these three ingredients when one pours the Filter Kaapi back and forth between the cup and its saucer. The beverage to cool down.

The manufacture of chicory coffee blends in India was majorly for export purposes but naturally seeped into the Indian culture through the upper-caste community, especially Tamil Brahmins. When the beverage’s popularity and its stance as a staple beverage began to spread, a fear of “pollution” emerged in the minds of the upper castes. Filter Kaapi was and is still maintained as a welcoming drink for visiting guests, and R. K. Narayan, in My Dateless Diary (1960), explained its stance as the touchstone of hospitality in a South Indian household:

“He may beg or run into debt for the sake of coffee, but he cannot feel that he has acquitted himself in his worldly existence properly unless he is able to provide his dependents with two doses of coffee a day and also ask any visitor who may drop in, “Will you have coffee?” without fear at heart.” — about a middle-class South Indian’s relationship with Filter Kaapi.

The fact that caste isn’t superficially recognisable was a disturbing factor for upper caste hosts. This draw is motivated by the prejudiced concept of ‘untouchability’, a prominent casteist belief that anything a lower-caste person touches is “polluted” or its value significantly depleted. For upper-caste people to avoid this “pollution” the dabbara was introduced. Filter Kaapi, when served this way, a light curve in the cup and saucer allows people to drink the beverage without bringing their lips in contact with the utensils, touched by others in its preparation. 

However, the casteism in the practice dwindled when Filter Kaapi began to be served in restaurants and breakfast hubs that swarmed with people belonging to all castes and classes. Though Filter Kaapi was still served in a dabbara, the casteist style of drinking was prescribed by staff to customers. This welcomed individuals to sip from the dabbara, free of casteism. Upsettingly, some households still hold onto the dabbara’s casteist function.

In my city of Chennai, Mylapore is a neighbourhood that’s considered to be a hub of Filter Kaapi, a place where one can hardly find a moment of stillness or silence. It’s flooded with small to large Filter Kaapi outlets and coffee roasters, with its aroma constantly lingering around street corners. The locals pour in and out of their go-to coffee shops, sharing small talk with each other as they wait by the large and loud grinder to push out their brew.

My mum and I, who live a ten-minute walk from Mylapore, were naturally lured into Filter Kaapi culture and became big fanatics. Every day, as the sun rises, my mum and I sip our Kaapis next to each other. Our living room blasts the same Hindu devotional songs that have been playing in our house for years. Unbothered we talk (shout) over the songs’ deafening volume. While I’ve always believed that my mother and I are nothing like each other, the Kaapi we hold in our hands during this hour of our barely conscious but non-negotiable morning ritual proves otherwise. 

Kaapi strings us together. This ritual has helped me flourish and grow my relationship with my mother. We not only solve conflicts by making for each other but “Filter Kaapi Hour” is a time we share our affection and recall heartwarming memories as the slow sips make our otherwise busy lives feel a little less busy.