On my first day of the Barista course in Rome, surrounded by people from different backgrounds and nationalities I am sitting on the first row, feeling both anxious and excited to learn about coffee. Did I just waste 1,200 Eur? What did I not know about coffee? I have been drinking it for more than a decade now. My trainer – medium height Italian guy, tattooed mostly around arms and very energetic enters with two open bags of coffee beans and wants us to close our eyes and smell. I recognize this, this one smells smokey, woody and burnt just like coffee that I drink every day. Oh, how much I love it! Then I take a whiff of the second bag, it smells like freshly baked bread with some nuts and caramel and I open my eyes. My mind went (sorry for lack of better expression) Voahhh! Is that Coffee?
I called myself a coffee lover but I knew nothing about coffee. I didn’t even that know that it was a fruit and the seed of the fruit is what we call coffee bean. I also didn’t know that coffee is not bitter. Much like wine, it has inherent notes. It can be chocolaty, nutty, sweet and even tangy. Sadly, (not too sad as it was a great experience) I had to go to a foreign land (where coffee is not even grown) to learn about coffee. India is the 7th largest producer of coffee and more than 75% of coffee is exported. While the world is brewing Indian coffee so beautifully, we are drinking bad quality instant coffee (which has less than 50% real coffee) or burnt and badly roasted coffee. I had to come back and do something about it.
I quit my job at a Real Estate Private Equity firm (this wasn’t as easy as it sounds as according to a lot of people since I am a woman and I should stick to “comfortable corporate job” instead of running a business)to introduce people to good coffee and proper brewing. Most of us were missing out.
When coffee is grown, processed, roasted and brewed with a lot of care it is called Specialty Coffee. Care at every step. We, my brother, who is also my business partner and I decided to find good coffee. Although Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters grabbed the millennial mindshare, there were other speciality coffee roasters too in different parts of the country roasting some exceptional coffee. Since I understood brewing well, we decided to bring them all together and brew their coffee well while educating customers.
In April 2019, we opened our first takeaway outlet at One Horizon Center in Gurgaon, the office complex where I used to work. We needed a slightly bigger space to conduct coffee workshops and educate people, hence we opened our second outlet in Gurgaon, a small but comfortable 300 sq ft coffee shop. At Sixteen Grams Coffee, every cup is brewed with precision and care out of respect for coffee farmers and roasters.
The coffee shop became a place where people talked about coffees from different origins, about various brewing styles. It became a space where our Baristas could teach people how to brew at home… And then the pandemic hit. While our coffee shops were shut for more than 2 months, like everyone else we had to go digital to continue our mission and save our business of course.
This is when www.sixteengrams.com was born, an online space where one can not only discover coffee from country’s best speciality coffee roasters or buy a coffee maker but also learn about coffee or subscribe to coffee basis their taste preference. We have partnered with more than 16 coffee roasters and listed about 100+ coffees. sheena sheena
Our mission is simple –to make it easy for people to discover quality coffee and every cup of coffee that they consume or brew should be the best damn cup. sheena sheena sheena sheena
