South Indian Filter Coffee ☕

A new way of drinking coffee

South Indian filter Coffee

What is Filter Coffee?

South Indian filter coffee is a coffee drink made by mixing frothed and boiled milk with the infusion obtained by percolation brewing of finely ground coffee powder in a traditional Indian filter. The drink is known as Kaapi, which is the South Indian phonetic realisation of "coffee".

The Device

South Indian filter coffee is brewed with a metal device, called, The Filter that resembles two cylindrical cups, one of which has a pierced bottom that nests into the top of the 'tumbler' cup, leaving ample room beneath to receive the brewed coffee. The upper cup has two removable parts:

How to make a delicious brew?

The upper cup is loaded with freshly ground coffee. The grounds are then compressed (tamped) with the stemmed disc into a uniform layer across the cup's pierced bottom. The coarser the coffee grinds, the more one must tamp the coffee to obtain the same extraction. With the press disc remaining in place, the upper cup is nested into the top of the tumbler; boiling water is poured in. The lid is placed on top, and the appliance is left to slowly drip the brewed coffee into the bottom. The chicory retains the hot water longer, letting the water dissolve and extract more of the ground coffee.

How to serve the coffee?

The resulting brew is traditionally, consumed by adding 1–2 tablespoons of the brew to a cup of boiling milk with the preferred amount of sugar. The coffee is drunk from the tumbler, but is often cooled first with a dabarah, a wide metal saucer with lipped walls. Coffee is typically served after pouring back and forth between the dabara and the tumbler in huge arc-like motions of the hand to allow aeration of the mix without introducing extra water.


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Coded by Nivedita Mahesh