The mill was a working water mill from 1918 until it stopped in the seventies. The wheel is still there and no longer turns anything. What happens inside now happens in a fixed order, dictated less by preference than by temperature.
4:00 a.m. — the churn floor
Nandini and Vasanthi start first, because the butter will not separate cleanly once the room warms. Two wooden bilonas, ninety minutes each. It is loud in a specific rhythmic way that you stop noticing after a week and then miss on your days off.
6:30 a.m. — the fire
Wood goes under the pots. The rule is that nobody leaves the room, because the last forty minutes are the ones that decide whether the batch is good. Too hot and the solids scorch and the whole pot tastes burnt rather than caramelised. There is no recovering it.
8:00 a.m. — the roastery
Twelve-kilogram drums, three to five batches a day depending on the week. Every batch is cupped the following morning by three people who do not discuss it until all three have written their notes down. Roughly one batch in twenty gets rejected and goes to the staff kitchen, where nobody has ever complained.
10:00 a.m. — the stone wheel
Spices for the chai blend. The wheel turns slowly enough that the stone stays cool to the touch, which is the entire reason for using it. A blade grinder finishes in ninety seconds and leaves you with a spice that has already given up most of its oil to the heat.
2:00 p.m. — the packing hall
Hand-filling, batch-coding, and the note cards. Every order above ₹3,000 gets a card, and during festival weeks that is a lot of cards and a lot of handwriting.
Fourteen people work here. Nine of them live within two kilometres. Four have been here since the first year.
We run mill visits on the first and third Saturday of every month, capped at twelve people. You will be given a cup of something, put to work at the churn for ten minutes, and sent home with whatever came off the fire that morning. It is free. Write to us.
Written by Suresh Kariappa, mill manager.