Fifty-one sittings, logged with the verdict intact. Most of them taught us what not to make. Six of them changed the coffee, and those six are below.
If you prefer stories, read the journal. If you prefer numbers, see the shift, measured.
Nobody asked her what was in it. She tasted the cup, and from six feet away she said the word out loud. For months the aroma had been vanishing into the milk. That morning it did not. That cup is Rukh, and nothing about it has changed since.
Rukh · sitting 25We chased it through grind size, dose, water temperature and steep time for weeks. It was the cardamom. Ground at home it oxidises within days and turns bitter, and it takes the whole cup down with it. Sealed commercial powder, fresh batch, fixed in one sitting.
Rukh · KisseTen millilitres either side and Rukh stops being Rukh. Too little and the cardamom shouts; too much and the coffee thins out and the whole thing goes flat. We only found the edge by crossing it, twice, on consecutive mornings.
Rukh · sittings 31 and 32Cup after cup of Baarbara Estate came out tasting like cardamom milk with a rumour of coffee in it. Beautiful beans, wrong job. It took eleven sittings to accept that the bean was the problem and not the dose.
Rukh · sittings 3 to 14A tenth of a gram of mace does something to Kisse that nobody has been able to name. Testers reach for whiskey, for smoke, for a spice they cannot place. Double it and the effect vanishes entirely, which is the strangest part.
KisseLamhe needs a signature aroma the way Rukh has cardamom, and roasted hazelnut is the current candidate. Sehar is still being tuned. Both are unfinished, and both are on this page before they are solved.
Lamhe · SeharHow do you feel, one to five? Before the cup, and again after it. These are the answers, plotted. Direction matters more than magnitude.
One note a fortnight. What is on the bench, what failed, and what is coming next.
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