Our first release since that incredible visit to India back in March and this is the boozy 'Dark Room 5' Natural. Ratnagiri Estate is owned and managed by Ashok Padre who is something of a legend of Indian speciality coffee. We had the pleasure of being hosted by Ashok on the farm and in his home and it was one of those truly memorable experiences. Ashok has scoured all the current processing research and adopted a scientific approach to processing. Recognising that Indian plant stock is not the best material in the world and that the land has been aggressively farmed over generations he has used science to create incredible flavour profiles. Entering the Ratnagiri QC lab was like walking into Willy Wonkers dream world. All the glass walls were adorned with detailed notes of a huge number of processed coffees from their previous visitors from Korea. Looking through the glass down to the array of stainless steel vessles and pipes, it looked more like a science lab than a coffee cupping space. Ashok has invested heavily in equipment and expertise to enable controlled processing including an ozone washing station, temperature and pH controlled bioreactors, fermentors and a controlled dehumidification dark room. In addition they have a full time micro biologist measuring popluations of microbes and creating their own cultures for fermentation. It was all very impressive and the most advanced processing we've seen anywhere. We cupped 52 coffees over the course of 3 sessions and a few stood out including this 'Dark Room 5' Natural. The 52 coffees were about half of the experimental processes and variety selections that Ratnagiri were working on, with the objective of making a selection of 10-12 that will become the Ratnagiri recipes. I have a strong feeling Dark Room 5 will make that final cut. Ashok sent through the process details for this coffee and the detail is as complex as the flavours in the cup: "This is a 72-hour extended terroir yeast and lactic fermented natural processed coffee. It is from the SLN 9 varietal grown on our farm at 4425 feet from the block called GODOWN Patte. The Brix of the coffee cherries was 25.8 when harvested and they were put into Bio fermenters after floater removal. A particular strain of Saccharomyces yeast from our terroir along with Lactic acid bacteria was added to the coffee in the fermenters and allowed to ferment for 72 hours in a carbon dioxide rich environment. After removing the coffee from the Bio fermenter, it was directly put on raised beds for surface moisture drying for two days and then moved to dehumidifier dark room and dried at 15% relative humidity for 12 days."