Explained: How ‘filter kaapi’ became South India’s favourite beverage

The “filter” pot used to make it is a metal utensil with two cylindrical parts: coarsely-ground coffee powder is put in the top cylinder, which has fine holes in its base, and pressed down using a metal disc. Hot water is poured over this and the coffee is allowed to brew for about 10 minutes, with the decoction slowly dripping and collecting in the bottom cylinder. The decoction is mixed with milk — cow milk, strictly, if one wishes to make the famous Kumbakonam “degree” coffee – and sugar, and served in the tumbler and davara.

The coffee itself is, ideally, made using freshly roasted and ground coffee beans, with purists insisting that no chicory be added to it. Many commercially-available blends, however, do contain some chicory.

A brief history of filter coffee

While tea/chai established pan-Indian dominance — in large part due to a marketing push in the 1930s by the British who were seeking a wider consumer base for the colonial tea industry, the consumption of coffee has been far more limited. The coffee-drinking habit really took hold in Tamil society in the late 19th-early 20th century. Coffee cultivation may have been established in the Mysore region by the 18th century, but most of it was being sent to Europe. As documented by historian A R Venkatachalapathy in ‘In Those Days There Was No Coffee’, by the turn of the 20th century, an enthusiasm for coffee gripped the emerging Tamil middle class.

Expectedly, cultural anxiety accompanied the enthusiasm, with criticism that connected it with “every conceivable and inconceivable malady”. It was deemed more addictive than alcohol, and Venkatachalapathy notes that women, in particular, were seen as having succumbed to its “dangers”. Despite this, coffee became the preeminent beverage in Tamil society, prestigious enough that not offering it to guests indicated a lack of social grace.

Coffee, or kaapi, had become a “cultural marker” and symbol of modernity, particularly for the Brahmin middle-class, distinguished from tea which was viewed as the beverage of the “urban working class”.

‘Breaking Brahmin orthodoxy’

In his book, Venkatachalapathy records a tongue-in-cheek description from 1926 of the “coffee hotels” (also known as “coffee clubs”) that had become increasingly popular: “A public tavern instituted by Brahmins. A messenger from God to break Brahmin orthodoxy.” Even though coffee hotels were frequented by all kinds of people, they were mostly owned and run by Brahmins and almost always had segregated sections for Brahmins and non-Brahmins. While the caste-based segregation is mostly gone, the influence of Brahmins on the filter kaapi culture remains visible to this day in the very design of the utensils used to drink the beverage: the tumbler and davara were designed with outward-facing, lipped rims so that the drinker could pour the coffee straight into his mouth without letting it touch the utensils.

As coffee-drinking became common in other regions of South India, the establishment of “Udupi” hotels in other parts of the country — particularly Bombay and Delhi — introduced filter coffee to newer populations. Even now, however, the use of specialised equipment, as well as a certain degree of patience and skill, means that only devoted fans will make the effort to prepare filter coffee at home – despite the wider availability of the filter pots and even packaged decoctions.