Hands down, this is THE BEST COFFEE I have ever tasted. I am not joking and I am not exaggerating, and by the end of this post I hope you will see why.
You know how, with most coffees, you have to go a long way down into the cup to find the note that is printed on the bag? Not this one. There is one prominent note here, Rose, and it makes itself felt on your tongue and in your nose the moment the cup comes anywhere near you.
I was lucky in the way that a fellow coffee enthusiast gifted me this bag, and I will be forever grateful for that. This is also not my usual review, because I was not only tasting a coffee but also testing a new brewer, the Origami Dripper. I do not know whether it was just luck or whether they were meant to be, but across every method I tried, this coffee and this dripper were a match made in heaven.
About the Roaster
This bag comes from Coffee Ideas!, who roast in Auroville, Tamil Nadu. The coffee itself is the Ratna Raga – Competition Lot: an Arabica from Ratnagiri Estate in Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka, grown by producer Ashok Patre at 1356 masl, with an anaerobic double-washed process using a YB culture, as printed on the bag. The roaster calls it a filter roast at Agtron 75 and lists the flavour notes as caramel with a hint of spice, blood orange and rose. I did not buy this bag myself, so I cannot tell you about their ordering experience or their wider range. What I can tell you is that if this lot is anything to go by, these are people who know exactly what they are doing with a very special green coffee, and the bag says all the right things: a roast date, a batch number and a producer’s name. The rest of this post is my attempt to do it justice.
About the Beans
| Bean Characteristics | Description |
| Roast Level | Medium-light roast (the bag calls it a filter roast, Agtron 75) |
| Bean Appearance |  |
| Roast Consistency | Very evenly roasted beans, with merely a couple of beans that were lighter than usual. |
| Origin | Ratnagiri Estate, Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka, India (producer: Ashok Patre), 1356 masl |
| Varietal | Arabica – Catuai and SW5 |
| Process | Anaerobic double-washed, YB culture processed |
| Roaster’s Notes | Caramel with a hint of spice, blood orange and rose; intensity medium-to-high |
The first time you open the bag and take a whiff of the beans, you are greeted by that earthy coffee smell, which is immediately taken over by this Rose scent. And this is not some overpowering Gulabjal smell. It is more like you are walking past a rose garden and a whiff of those roses reaches you and reminds you of everything that is good with life. I digress.
Grind these beans and, for a few seconds, the rose smell intensifies a bit, though you will have to be quick, because the coffee-coffee note takes over soon after.
About the Brewer: Origami Dripper
Origami is a tough brewer to get used to and, in my honest opinion, a tough one to extract a good cup from. The ridges are so pronounced that the water drains extremely quickly. In fact, you only get about 15–20 seconds, sometimes less, to have a proper bloom. The paper sits far away from the walls because of those ridges, so there is nothing slowing the water down. Pre-heating the brewer means you will need to cycle hot water through it at least twice. I do it thrice.
However, once you get past these things, it is a beautiful and highly capable brewer. On the surface, the coffee it makes can be compared to a V60, but that could not be farther from the truth. The quick extraction means you have little room to play with, but it also means you get a good cup in less time. You can grind finer, if that is what you prefer, or you can experiment with faster drain times, as I did here.
Also, without prejudice to the above, it is a gorgeous brewer and an absolute treat for the eyes. I got it in the Pink colour, as you can see above, and I do not regret it at all. It has definitely increased the aesthetic quotient of my coffee bar.
About the Brewed Coffee
| Characteristics vis-à-vis Brewing Methods | Origami Dripper (Flash Brew over Ice) |
| Recipe | 15.5g coffee – 180g water (~89°C) – brewed directly onto 75–80g ice Grind: Baratza Encore ESP at 26–27 (coarse, nearing French press) Origami Dripper with a standard Hario V60 paper |
| Taste & Texture | Clean and crisp, and sweet. Not just the absence of bitterness, but actually sweet on the tongue, to the point that I checked twice that nothing was contaminating my glassware. Light, silky body that coats the whole mouth. |
| Tasting Notes (in order of perception on the palate) | Rose on the nose the moment it is brewed, then a wave of sweetness carrying that rose through every sip, with a clean coffee backbone underneath. Keep drinking and a boozy, Negroni-like finish lingers in the mouth afterwards. |
| Visuals |      |
Brewing Method
These beans were so freaking easy to pull a good cup from that I had no problem at all. However, once I did, I could see how the best of these beans was yet to be unlocked, at least according to my palate.
Usually we grind finer to get a better, more intense cup. That was not the case here. I had to leave traditional pour-over thinking aside and start from scratch. I went with a pretty coarse grind, somewhere near French press, albeit a tad finer than that. On the Baratza Encore ESP, that was grind setting 26–27.
| Step No. | Description |
| 1. | Pre-heat the brewer and the carafe by cycling warm water through both at least 2–3 times. The Origami dripper is hard to warm up because of how quickly it drains and how far the paper sits from the walls. |
| 2. | Put the entire blob of ice (75–80g) in the carafe, so that the hot coffee drips straight onto the ice, cools immediately and keeps all the volatiles. |
| 3. | Add 15.5g of coffee ground at 26–27 on the Baratza Encore ESP to a standard Hario V60 paper in the Origami dripper. |
| 4. | 1st pour: ~60g of water at ~89°C to bloom. Rest for ~20 seconds. |
| 5. | 2nd pour: ~60–80g in a spiral. Let it drain completely. |
| 6. | 3rd pour: the remaining water (180g in total), again in a spiral. |
| 7. | Swirl the carafe to melt any remaining ice shards. |
| 8. | Serve in a beautiful glass over one large cube of ice. Remember, you drink with your eyes first. Enjoy. |
My Honest Review
Again, I am not joking or over-exaggerating when I say that this is THE BEST COFFEE I have ever tasted.
The moment you smell the brewed coffee, it smells of roses. You take a sip and your entire mouth is coated with this wonderful, clean and crisp taste of coffee and a very, very sweet rose flavour that props up every other aspect of this coffee. The sweetness is the part that caught me off guard. I have had plenty of coffees that are “sweet” in the sense that they are not bitter. This one is sweet in the sense that your tongue registers sugar, and I had to check twice that nothing was contaminating the glassware I was using.
Then there is the finish. Keep drinking and, at some point, it starts tasting a little boozy. Allow me to explain. If you have ever had a good Negroni, you will know the feeling of taking a small sip, gulping it down, and then having those volatiles sitting in your mouth afterwards. It is almost exactly that. I did not like it when the Negroni did it, but I loved it when this coffee did.
As for the dial-in, this coffee asked me to unlearn a habit. Finer did not give me more; coarser did. The coarse grind, the hot water and the Origami’s fast drain together gave me a short, clean extraction that let the rose and the sweetness through without anything heavy sitting on top of them. Of everything I tried with this bag, this is the best method I found, and it is the one that brought the best out of this coffee: the sweetness, the rose and that lingering finish all showed up at once, in the right order, with nothing muddying them.
Who is this for? Everyone (yes, you). If you have ever wondered what people mean when they say a coffee tastes like flowers, this is the bag that will explain it to you in one sip. If you want your coffee dark, roasty and chocolatey, this will not scratch that itch, and that is fine; it is not trying to.
The only real catch is availability. This is a competition lot, so it may not be around for long, and the batch I had was roasted on 28 August 2026. Everyone should try this coffee at least once, if it is made available again by the good folks at coffeeideas.in (Instagram: @coffeeideas.in).
Coming Up…
Now that the Origami has earned its place on the coffee bar, expect to see it a lot more here, including with coffees that are less forgiving than this one. Till then, Drink Up!
Gear used in this post: Baratza Encore ESP, Origami Dripper (Pink) with standard Hario V60 paper. In case you feel that something is missing or something seems wrong, please feel free to submit your Feedback.