Filter
Filter Kaapi
A steel two-chamber filter that drips for a quarter of an hour and yields a decoction, not a cup.
- Ratio
- 1:5 - 1:6
- Coffee
- 25-30 g
- Water
- 125-180 ml
- Water temp
- 96 °C
- Time
- 5:00-15:00
- Grind
- Medium-fine
A starting point - adjust to your beans.
That ratio looks alarming next to a pour-over until you remember the milk dilutes it a second time. The blend usually carries chicory, commonly somewhere around a tenth to a fifth, which is why the decoction runs darker and thicker than the numbers suggest. How much milk goes in is the part nobody settles: published amounts put decoction to milk anywhere between equal parts and one to eight, so that is a household habit rather than a recipe.
Made differently elsewhere
Degree coffee
The Kumbakonam style is a grade, not a brand: it uses only the first, undiluted pass of the decoction, lets it drip far longer, and finishes it with unskimmed milk.
- Time
- 15:00-30:00
How to go about it
Fill the upper chamber, level it, and set the perforated press disc on top.
Pour water just off the boil over the disc and close the lid.
Leave it until the lower chamber has filled. This takes minutes, not seconds.
Boil the milk, mix it into the decoction, and pour the drink back and forth between tumbler and bowl two or three times.
Where these numbers come from
Sprudge and Home-recipe consensus.