Krishna Rao

Author: Krishna

  • What goes into making the perfect cup of coffee?

    What goes into making the perfect cup of coffee?

    South Indian filter coffee is the favourite hot beverage for many. But what goes into making the perfect cup of coffee?

    What’s better than a piping hot cup of South Indian coffee? The answer: a cup of coffee that’s not quite ‘piping’ — that is, coffee that’s served between 80 to 90 degrees celsius.

    This came as a bit of a shock to me. For the longest time, the drill for making coffee in my South Indian household had been the same: put powder in the filter, press the plunger over the powder, add boiling water, and wait for the coffee to percolate into the lower container. Next, boil the milk, mix it with the coffee decoction, heat it some more, air it to build up some foam, and serve. And in what has become a standard practice, the coffee would be sent back to be heated some more after dad had taken a sip or two.

     And here I was, talking to experts who were telling me that the first mistake people make is expecting their coffee to be boiling hot. “You should be able to finish your Cappucino in 2-3 sips if required. That’s how hot your coffee should be,” said Gerson Aranha, CEO of Nilgiri Foods and Beverages, which supplies coffee beans to chains like Cafe Moshe’s and Mad Over Donuts.

    “When you boil the water before pouring it into the filter, you are removing all the salts and the dissolved alkalinity. Water becomes flat,” says K Basavaraj, head of quality control at the Coffee Board of India. As I set about understanding the science behind South Indian filter coffee, I came to see that a range of compounds form the building blocks of the rich flavour and aroma that we enjoy. Brewing the perfect cup is really about extracting these compounds in the right proportions. My journey began with the beans. 

    Premium on peaberry

    In South India, peaberry beans are considered a premium variety, unlike in Europe where it is considered somewhat inferior. Peaberry owes its fanatic fan following in India to its shape.The coffee cherry (fruit) usually has two symmetrical oblong beans. As a result, the beans are flat on one side and rounded on the other. But sometimes one half develops more than the other. So, you get only one bean within the cherry, which is rounded all over. This is the peaberry and accounts for around 9-12% of the coffee crop.

    “In the old days, when beans were roasted on a flat pan, the rounded beans would roast better than the ones which were flat on one side. Hence, peaberry beans yielded better coffee than the flat coffee beans,” says coffee coach Sahil Jatana, who conducts workshops on coffee brewing.

     So why do the Europeans frown upon it? The proportion of soluble solids in a coffee bean, i.e., the parts which get dissolved in water, determines the strength of the beverage. A peaberry bean has around 20-22% soluble solids whereas a regular flat bean has 22-26%. The coffee turns out slightly stronger when made using flat beans.

     The colour of the roast

    Europeans also roast their beans to a darker shade to get stronger, more bitter coffee. Coffee beans start green, and are roasted up to varying degrees depending on the desired end result.

     “The cellular structure of the bean absorbs the heat, becomes hard and expands. At roughly 217 degrees, all chemical structure is lost, and a series of compounds start developing. The sweeter compounds develop first followed by the bitter compounds,” says Basavaraj. A light roast such as Cinnamon Roast gives a wider range of flavours, a greater caffeine content, and better aroma, but the percentage of soluble solids is lesser. Hence the coffee won’t be too strong.

     The City Roast is preferred for South Indian coffee. This is a medium roast, which provides a blend of flavour, aroma and strength, and yet not so bitter as to put off the Indian palate. 

    Gravitational pull

    The roasted beans should be ground to a powder of medium consistency — too fine or too coarse is not ideal for the South Indian filter. The filter itself is a simple contraption comprising two containers. The upper container has perforations and fits on top of the collection container. A plunger in the upper container holds the coffee grounds in their place. The water should be heated to 90-95 degrees Celsius — turn the flame off when bubbles start appearing at the bottom of the vessel.

    Basavaraj also recommends wetting the powder with a tablespoon or so of warm water before pouring in the hot water. “Coffee is a fibrous substance. The fibres expand when they get wet, and the extraction will be free flowing.” Because of the gravitational force, the water passes through the coffee powder and collects in the lower container. The light, volatile compounds get extracted first followed by the oils towards the end. Hence, filter should not be disturbed during the extraction.

    Add hot milk and air the coffee by rapidly pouring it from one glass to another — this is best achieved using a dabarah. The oxygen in the air mixes with the coffee to release the volatile aromatic compounds.

    Here my journey ended — my senses taking in the aroma of freshly made coffee, and its rich flavour. The difference was that I knew what exactly goes into the making of it, down to the last compound.

    Image courtesy: Babi’s Recipes.

  • Why I aim to be ‘better’ and not the ‘best’

    We want to be the best. Aiming to be the best is considered a worthy pursuit in the society. I did too.

    But I recently changed my mind because I am trying to evaluate every thought by a simple yardstick: Does this line of thinking take me towards action?

    ‘Best’ is a binary label. You are either the best or you are not. When you struggle – and all creative pursuits involve struggle – it’s difficult to believe that what you’re creating is the ‘best’. This is the easiest way to lose motivation. Pretty soon I’m logged on to Netflix simply because whatever effort I’m putting in, isn’t producing the ‘best’ results. So, pursuing the best, takes me away from the very things I need to move forward.

    Instead, I try to be ‘better’. The cool thing about becoming better is that I can be better in different ways. I can be better to different degrees. Even if I didn’t produce as many words today as I did yesterday, I am still in a better place today because the story has moved forward just that little bit.

    Trying to become better allows me to put in the work.

    So, I aim to be better, not the best.

  • The most important lesson from Steve Jobs we all miss

    The most important lesson from Steve Jobs we all miss

    Steve Jobs’s obsession with excellence has a somewhat mythical status. Many of us believe we can never be as good as Jobs simply because we can never reach his levels of excellence. And yet, there is a counterintuitive lesson from Steve Jobs’s life that productivity and business gurus often miss.

    In 2007, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in front of a packed audience. Since then, once every year, Jobs – and after him, Tim Cook – would get up on stage and announce that Apple had created the “best iPhone ever”. 

    This is untrue. Jobs and the rest of the Apple team knew that the phone on stage wasn’t the “best iPhone ever”. A better version existed in Apple’s research labs. Their engineers knew the current version’s flaws and possible improvements that could be made to it. 

    From this, creators can draw an important lesson: We don’t need to wait to create the perfect story, song, or recipe before sharing it with the rest of the world. Sure there are things you could improve. But your creation with all its flaws – known and unknown – is the “best ever.”

    We can take this logic a step further. You don’t have to wait for the perfect mood, tools, skills, or ideas to create stuff. Whatever skills, tools, or ideas you have right now are the “best ever” at this moment. 

    (Image Courtsey: Blake Patterson)

  • Using time

    Using time

    Today’s Sunday. It’s a rare day when I have time. I immediately started thinking about what I could do with this time.

    That’s the funny thing about time. The moment I notice I have it, I start thinking about how I can spend it.

    The moment I start thinking about how I can spend it, I start thinking about how I can spend it well.

    The moment I start thinking about how I spend my time well, I get anxious. Is there a better way to spend time? Just as there is always a better dress, a better partner, a better restaurant, there is a better way to spend time. This is especially true for those of us who are pursuing a creative calling seriously. After all, the time spent not earning money is the time we have to build our creative portfolio.

    So, not having time brings discomfort. Having time brings discomfort too.

    Accepting this discomfort is key to living a satisfying life.

    Here’s what I am attempting. I give up trying to save time or do more with my time. Instead, I focus on just one thing I can or have to do in the present.

    I’m finding that this doesn’t stem the discomfort that’s inherent to life, but it might just be the path of living a satisfying life.

  • Simple, Wordle

    Simple, Wordle

    I love Wordle’s emphasis on simplicity.

    It’s a game of deduction, not just random guessing. But if you had to choose between two possible answers, the simpler one is usually the correct choice.

    Case in point, a couple of days ago, I came across a word where I had two letters right.

    _ _ _ O R

    I guessed T U M O R.

    As it turned out, the word was H U M O R.

    Lesson learnt. When it comes to Wordle – and indeed many other situations in life – the simpler choice will usually lead you to the answer.

  • Cream biscuits

    Cream biscuits

    How you eat a cream biscuit says a lot about you.

    You see, a cream biscuit is an open invitation to break the rules. It’s like the cream biscuit makers are saying, “Here’s how we made the biscuit. We think you should eat it this way. But we’ve made it really easy for you not to eat it this way. Go ahead. Choose.”

    Kids take to cream biscuits easily because it combines three things they love:

    1. Taking things apart
    2. Licking things
    3. Eating sweet stuff

    At that age, they’d happily choose either as a career – as long they are paid in cream biscuits.

    As a kid, I would separate the two halves of the cream biscuits that came my way. This was a delicate operation because it was critical that all the cream remain on the bottom half. Sometimes, if I were impatient, part of the cream would stick to the top half. Now, qualitatively it made no difference. I would eat all the cream first anyway. But this somehow “spoiled” the experience for me. 

    I was initially worried that my parents would object to me breaking these rules. But they didn’t seem to care that I ate the cream first. What got me in trouble was trying to sneak the biscuits back into the packet after licking off the cream. The biscuits had to be eaten. The problem, of course, is that you are essentially eating the worst part of the cream biscuit – the biscuit – in the end, instead of saving the best for the last. 

    All this changed when I discovered a cream biscuit called Pure Magic. This brand had a dark chocolate cream filling sandwiched between two dark chocolate biscuits. The biscuits were so light that they tasted better than the cream. Finally, eating the biscuit became the best part of eating cream biscuits.

    Soon, I grew up. I discovered there was such a thing as excess cholesterol that my body liked to make. So I cut down on junk food. Rarely do I have biscuits – let alone cream-filled ones.  

    But when I do have one, here’s how I eat it. First, I break the biscuit in half. I eat the first half biscuit and cream together. I then take my time with the second half – separating the top and bottom halves of the biscuit, eating the cream, and then the biscuits. 

    What does this say about me? Perhaps, I’m a freak. Maybe, I’m confused. The way I look at it, I want to have the best of both worlds. I want to have the cream and biscuit together and separately too.

  • Emergence

    When I’m unwell, I lie in bed, down and out, drinking fluids, following the doctor’s advice. I can’t wait to get better – to be up and about, to slay dragons, or, perhaps, attend meetings on Zoom.

    However, there is a state in between. When I’m not unwell, but I’m not well either. Let’s call it Emergence. (I know, that sounds like ‘Alien and Predator’ stuff). I’m not quite sure what to do. Too bored to lie in bed. Too tired to commit to deadlines. So, I test the boundaries of energy. Write a handful of words. Wash a few dishes. Observe. Repeat.

    I find myself in a similar state regarding my creative journey. I’m not a novice, but I’m not a master either. So, I’m not quite sure what to do. It is this uncertainty that freezes me most of the time.

    Instead, a better response might be to test the boundaries of my creative abilities. Write a handful of words. Wash a few dishes. Observe. Repeat.

    What I hope to achieve is to inch forward and, perhaps, slay a few dragons.

  • Come back

    I almost did not write this post today. 

    I started early in the morning trying to write a different post. But the words didn’t flow. I spent the whole day agonising over breaking my streak (I have written a post every day for nine straight days). 

    I was afraid that breaking it would mean triggering the downward slide. That’s how I have given up my earlier attempts to blog. It always starts with letting myself off the hook – one day, then the next, and then the next.

    But here’s the thing about resilience. It is not just about maintaining streaks. It is also about holding on to something you can come back to despite missing your streak. So, if you missed one day, come back the next. And if you missed that day too, come back the day after that.

    Sometimes being accountable is about letting go of the inner disciplinarian who keeps us in line and reminding yourself why you started a project in the first place. Reconnecting with that initial innocence and naivety can sometimes offer a tiny thread that you can grab and get back onto the streak.

  • A better way to make New You plans

    A better way to make New You plans

    Change is in the air as it usually does when the calendar flips and we enter a new year. You sense new possibilities. Hope is renewed. You are excited by your plans to build the New You. Yet, you sense there is a tiny bug creeping about in New Hopeland. You don’t see it. Not immediately anyway. But you are familiar with the bug. It has upended many a plan to reinvent the self.

    The disillusionment begins really on the first day you get back to office and face the same old soul-crushing work you thought you’d left behind on December 24th. Because, come on, who really works full steam between Christmas and New Year? Anyway, back to January 2nd or 3rd, and we are living through the same old meetings, unreasonable client demands, and work that had to happen ‘yesterday’.

    Your New You plans are consigned to the corner of the bookshelf you’re too busy to organise. They join the New You plans from last year, the one before that, the one before that… you get the idea. 

    After going through this cycle for at least half a dozen times, I wondered if there is a way to break out of this cycle.

    The first question we can ask ourselves is, ‘Is our plan actually good?’. There’s no point in relying on our feelings at this stage. Because making the plans always feels good. “You get to experience all the excitement of becoming an entirely different person, without having yet had to put in the effort – and without having failed,” writes Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, in a recent column for The Guardian.  

    But pretty soon the plans will run into the headwinds of reality. 

    The first problem I face is forgetting. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve started and then simply forgotten about a creative project. Or the organic salad dressing with zero preservatives that has been used only once and now lies forgotten in the corner of the refrigerator.

    Then there is the matter of difficulty. It does not feel good to write a story, practice notes on the guitar, or lift weights. The fact that it does not feel good is surprising. But more importantly as with most things that don’t feel good, your mind’s default response is to try and avoid them altogether. 

    And what’s the best way to avoid the new behaviour patterns you are trying to adopt? By falling back on your existing behaviour patterns which are incompatible with the goals you set out to achieve. 

    The result: Creating the New You turns out to be quite the time and effort hog. Something the planning-you is simply blind to. Or as Burkeman puts it, “Schemes for constructing a New You are inevitably devised by the Old You, who has some pretty glaring issues.”

    Burkeman recommends that we make a “wholehearted committment to acceptance”. This may seem like an excuse for mediocrity. But there is a counterintuitive psychology at play here. “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change,” says psychotherapist Carl Rogers.

    ‘Acceptance’ works to neutralise ‘Perfectionism’, which is judgemental and clouds our view of ourselves and the situation we are in. Perfectionism also hates the messiness of reality – like the organic salad dressing which has turned a different colour. On the other hand, ‘Acceptance’ gives us a clearer view and the courage to step into the mess. It provides us with the belief that we can change our imperfect selves – however imperfectly.

    Time to buy a fresh bottle of salad dressing. After all, it’s the New Year!

  • Why I set Yearly Themes instead of Yearly Resolutions

    It’s January 2nd. The hangover has petered down into a mild headache. Declarations of “Never again” have been made. It’s time to turn the not-so-bleary-anymore eye to what lies ahead and make some New Year Resolutions. 

    While New Year Resolutions are routinely ridiculed because of their high failure rate, in a recent newsletter, author David Epstein wrote about why they are, in fact, a great idea. “Rather than perceiving our lives as a continuous river of time, we construct our inner autobiographies more like a staircase, punctuated by important dates, dramatic events, and first experiences,” writes Epstein. 

    While a 2007 survey showed that 80 per cent of New Year Resolutions failed, Epstein points out that it is pretty incredible that 20 per cent of people made a change thanks to the so-called arbitrary act of setting a goal as the calendar switched to a New Year. 

    My own experience with New Year Resolutions puts me among the 80 per cent. If I had succeeded, then by now, I would’ve regularly run half-marathons, wrote books (fiction and non-fiction), contributed to prestigious publications, went on treks to the Himalayas once a year, have an incredible bank balance due to astute investments, and check on ‘Slim Fit’ while looking for shirts online. 

    However, the failure to stick to resolutions is only part of the problem. The more insidious issue is that by failing at them repeatedly, I had come to believe that I’m just not capable of sticking to New Year Resolutions, which represent some of the most meaningful ways in which I want to shape my life. So, I either did not take them seriously – “Oh, I’m anyway going to fail” – or was in a state of constant anxiety – “Oh my god, is this day I finally fall off the bandwagon!”  

    Enter Yearly Themes 

    A couple of years ago, on an episode of Cortex – a monthly podcast by CGP Grey and Mike Hurley – I heard about Yearly Themes. Like me, the podcast hosts had been disillusioned by New Year Resolutions. They proposed an alternative: Set Yearly Themes instead of Resolutions. (Check out Grey’s video on Yearly Themes.) 

    As the name suggests, ‘themes’ are fuzzier than ‘resolutions’. They represent the change you want to bring about in your life – without defining specific goals. As Grey puts it, “Instead of saying I am going to lose X pounds by next year or saying I am going to read one book a week at least, a theme would be something like ‘A Year of Reading’ or ‘A Year of Health’. Now, if that sounds broad, that’s the point.” 

    Let’s say you set a goal to lose 10 kg in 2022. You dive deep. You set monthly weight-loss targets. You figure out how many minutes you need to exercise or your calorie input for each day. Then, you get going in January. In February, a huge project comes along. You are working harder. You don’t have the time to exercise an hour a day for the next few weeks. You don’t exercise for a week, then another, and then another. You’ve missed February’s target. The subliminal message is that you’re going to miss December’s target as well. The goal appears to be getting tougher and more challenging, and your motivation drops. 

    Instead, a Yearly Theme like ‘A Year of Health’ is more adaptable. Don’t have time to exercise for an hour? How about 15 minutes? Not even that? Maybe, you can park the car a bit farther away from the office and log more steps. Maybe, you can skip the whipped cream on top of that cold coffee. As long as you can keep the theme in mind (which is essential), you can figure out alternative ways – big and small – to stay healthy. 

    Themes also encourage us to think about our systems – the things we do regularly – rather than goals – the things we achieve. As Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, puts it, “The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.”  

    And the direction is what ultimately matters. “When you are trying to build a better version of yourself, exact data points do not matter. All that matters is the trend line,” says Grey. 

    My Yearly Themes

    This brings me to my Yearly Themes. In 2021, I adopted two themes. 

    1) The Year of Small Actions

    This helped me in countless ways. I faced some challenging personal issues this year. I don’t think I could have created or exercised as much as I did without thinking in terms of ‘Small Actions’. I walked wherever I could. I worked in small pockets of time. I made 5-minute phone calls to stay in touch with loved ones. I don’t think I achieved any grand results. But I have changed a bit for the better – and that matters.  

    2) The Year of Measurement

    My focus on the second theme has helped me get into the habit of tracking my time in my work life. This has motivated me to work on my independent projects, where I don’t have a team, clients, or deadlines to provide any structure. I also wanted to track my habits. I failed at it – but that’s something I want to work on in 2022.  

    My new theme for the coming year is – drumroll – The Year of Satisfaction.  

    In 2021, I consumed content and contemplated the idea of happiness. Based on this, I have come up with a hypothesis:

    When I say I want to be “happy”, I truly mean that I don’t want to feel dissatisfied. (This is not true in every situation. But it is true in many if not most situations.)

    Satisfaction can be cultivated. That is, I can learn to be more satisfied, no matter what situation I find myself in.

    If I believe that putting in the work (any work) will bring satisfaction despite the results, then I will be more motivated to put in the work.  

    I do have a specific goal to cultivate satisfaction. I want to journal regularly this year, noting what work I put in each day and how that brought satisfaction to me. However, this could also take less concrete or different forms – like taking the time to feel satisfied after I have gone out for a walk or read a few pages from a book each day. 

    And that kind of adaptability is the point of having Yearly Themes. As CGP Grey puts it, “Having a theme is like creating a friendly bot to follow you on a path, to help notice branches and consider choices with you, reminding you to be a little different in little moments sometimes.” 

    Do check out his excellent video on the topic. You can also listen to Grey and Mike’s Yearly Themes for 2022 here.