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S2E5: Meet The Bhopal Brewing Club
101 Plays2 years ago
How did a sailor, photographer and strategy consultant team up to make a positive impact in the Indian coffee community?
Recently we had a special interview with the three founders of Bhopal Brewing Club, Navneet Tiwari, Arun Thomas and Neeraj Pathak. In this episode, these three gentlemen shared how they created a local coffee club to help new coffee drinkers learn about coffee.
You can read their story on our website here
https://notabarista.org/bhopal-brewing-club/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to the I'm Not A Barista podcast. We're here to talk about all things coffee from industry careers, brewing tips, community support and more with some really incredible people who love coffee as much as you do. Because humanity runs on coffee and together we can empower all the people behind every cup.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, you lovely coffee people.
Meet the Bhopal Coffee Club Team
00:00:31
Speaker
My name is Miki. I'm your host of M. Na Burista podcast. Earlier this month, we talked to three passionate coffee people from India. They are the persons behind the Bhopal Coffee Club in India. They are Navit Tiwari, Aaron Thomas, and Neeraj Pathak.
00:00:50
Speaker
So how did a sailor, photographer, business consultant team up together and make a positive impact on the local coffee community? So in this episode, let's get to know these three awesome coffee people, the heroes behind Bobau Boring Club.
00:01:05
Speaker
Alright, we're live guys. Thank you for joining us today. So the story is that I got to know Niraj through our boring game on Instagram earlier and then I found out he was just sharing a lot of coffee events, videos. I was curious what was it and then asked him to tell me more about it and he told me that, oh, this is a local boring club. It was really
Neeraj's Coffee Journey Around the World
00:01:29
Speaker
fun. I saw the pictures and then I think, wow,
00:01:32
Speaker
I wish, I wish there was a club when I was a beginner in coffee. And Neeraj, how about we start with you? I know that you're a sailor, not barista. So how did you end up in coffee? Sure, sure. I've been a sailor since 2008. I've been going around the country and that's how my coffee journey got a boost up trying the coffees around the world.
00:02:00
Speaker
And I was not knowing that Indian coffee scene was building up meanwhile. I was only aware about the coffee scene outside India. So like in 2017, later part in 2018, beginning, I started home brewing.
00:02:18
Speaker
And once I got into home brewing, I slowly connected with people. I came to know about Mr. Navneet over my right. And he owns a cafe handcrafted, a speciality coffee cafe in Bhopal, the only one in the state. And he also owns a roastery. He runs
Aaron's Photography and Coffee Marketing
00:02:39
Speaker
a roastery along with that. Here I met Mr. Arun, who's on my left side.
00:02:45
Speaker
So Mr. Arun keeps coming to Handcrafted and also does some photography work for Cafe Handcrafted. So there we all three connected and we have been trying to build this community. Arun will tell you the further story like after the intro.
00:03:06
Speaker
Thank you, Dheeraj. And thank you for the introduction of our two guests today. Welcome,
Navneet's Transition to Coffee Entrepreneurship
00:03:12
Speaker
Aaron. And tell us about your relationship with coffee. How did you end up in coffee?
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm a photographer and when Nanit started his cafe, I really enjoyed the coffee that he had and I started clicking some photos of it, gradually kept on improving and now I handle the social media and marketing for his cafe and his roastery now.
00:03:38
Speaker
So he has been into this coffee line for a long time, but I've been introduced to specialty coffee and brewing just about two years ago because of
Promoting Coffee Culture in Bhopal
00:03:53
Speaker
Mr. Navneet. So last year, Mr. Navneet was called to be a judge at AeroPress Championship, the zone level championship that we had in Nagpur, which is a city nearby.
00:04:08
Speaker
So we went there and I saw that a lot of people knew so much about coffee and proved so well that they were participating in the AeroPress Championship and I felt like my town and my city should have some of it. I knew a few people, maybe three or four people who
00:04:31
Speaker
But I wanted to build that culture and spread awareness about coffee because even now people are not aware about coffee, at least about good coffee in my city and in my state, we could say that. When I came back from there, I connected with Neeraj and I told him we need to start a community.
00:04:52
Speaker
nothing special. We just need to brew coffee. We just need to inform and educate people about all the coffee and
Challenges in a Tea-Drinking Region
00:05:00
Speaker
brewing and stop all misconceptions about coffee being bitter, being expensive and all that. So we started this club to introduce all that to people who are beginners and to connect with people who brew already. So that is how we started.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah. So I'll just give a quick background about myself as well. So I wasn't always a coffee roaster. So before I got into coffee, I was actually a strategy consultant. So I used to work for a few big four firms. Deloitte, Ernst & Young might have heard. So I was based out of Singapore for about a decade. And that's where I picked up all the skills about coffee. That's where the interest peaked.
00:05:58
Speaker
Then when I had to come back to my hometown, then we decided, me and my wife, we decided that let's set up our own coffee roastery. It was sort of a professional challenge as well to build a market where market doesn't exist. We are a very relatively small city in terms of population and economic activity in India, but we wanted to do something
00:06:21
Speaker
that was unique and you know it's unheard of. So that's how Cafe Handcrafted came into being and we have been sort of one of the missions that we followed ever since inception is to
00:06:38
Speaker
Build a coffee community, spread the knowledge, educate and impart our understanding of coffee, our version of what good coffee is. Our motto is to make people drink real coffee instead of the commercial stuff or the instant stuff. So that's what we had been working towards.
00:07:01
Speaker
As things progressed, we had been quite successful in sort of carving out a niche for ourselves. But whenever we used to do any kind of trainings or any educational event, it sort of always looked like a marketing event from our side. We were trying to market ourselves, which we were.
Educational Coffee Events
00:07:23
Speaker
I mean, I'm not going to lie.
00:07:24
Speaker
So that's why this idea of Opal Brewing Club then was quite good because then you're sort of disconnecting yourself from the brand itself and actually building the coffee community. And to be honest, even a passive building of coffee community ultimately benefits my business because the more people drink coffee, the more they'll appreciate our kind of operation. So that's where sort of I was involved in it. Thankfully, I'm in a position where I can
00:07:54
Speaker
You know, so, for example, we did a session recently where we did roasting.
00:07:59
Speaker
So a lot of people who would participate in the brewing sessions didn't really know about coffee roasting, for example. They might have known that coffee beans are roasted, but to go through the whole process, to see the colors change, to hear the beans cracking and all of that, that was an interesting site for them. So that's where we see ourselves in this group and making sure that whenever people have any questions, we are there to answer.
00:08:28
Speaker
sort of bring the subject matter knowledge. We do sell a lot of coffee equipments and all of that. So if someone wants to see a particular brewer in action, they can always walk into our store, have a coffee.
00:08:45
Speaker
make up their mind and then decide to sort of invest in a brewing equipment or something like that. So that's where we are sort of helping the community grow and adapt and be more responding to the newer trends. So, you know, because we live in a connected world, people see some new brewer being used by someone on Instagram or a YouTube video or something and they want to try a new technique.
00:09:14
Speaker
So yeah, they come to us we help them out. That's that's where we help out the coffee community. I guess I've spoken much What a story guys. That's really really awesome. I have to say and Self-organized coffee events. Nothing's better than that. Yes
00:09:33
Speaker
I really liked the workshop and events you guys have over there. I saw the photos from Neeraj's Instagram and I saw the videos. That was amazing. I saw happy faces there, trying new boring methods. It's just so lovely to see that you guys are helping new coffee drinkers, beginners to get to know coffee. That's very important.
00:09:58
Speaker
Can you guys tell us more about your events and how you organize everything? How is it growing and how to join your club? So we get a lot of queries like how do I join this club and is there a membership fee to this or is there any fees to attend the event? And we need to tell them that our events are completely free and anyone can come and join.
00:10:26
Speaker
And there is no obligation to bring in a brewer or bring in some coffee. We allow
Barriers to Coffee Brewing
00:10:32
Speaker
them to brew themselves also. We brew ourselves also to show them how they can get started. And I'm happy to say that a few people who attended our events have started brewing on their own. So that is a very good
00:10:50
Speaker
Notion for us like we inspired a few people but mainly we connect through the social media and People see okay. There is something Coffee related even going on in Bhopal most of the time people are like we have only done instant coffee and we want to get into brewing, but we don't know where to start so what we are providing is a platform where
00:11:15
Speaker
a person without with zero experience in coffee with not knowing anything about coffee can come attend the event and take something at least learn one brewing method or learn something about the coffee and we always open to take questions like there are lots of questions from the new people like okay what what is this thing like where does this bean grow and why it is brown in color what you're doing when you're pouring hot water
00:11:42
Speaker
What is a cold brew? I've heard a lot about cold brew. What is cold brew? There are a lot of queries and we try to answer their questions and we try to inspire them that it is very easy. Try the easiest thing first. Do the easiest way. Start with the French press. Even if you don't want to go to the French press, there are ways you can make coffee without buying any equipment. You just need to get the
Shifting Perceptions of Coffee
00:12:10
Speaker
coffee.
00:12:10
Speaker
And we have like last few sessions, a few of the people had tried how to brew and then they went home, they ordered stuff. And like a person told me that she already started brewing at home. So I was really happy. Okay. We inspired a few. And I know it is a long journey. It's not done in one day, but one step at a time.
00:12:36
Speaker
I don't look great. As a beginner, brewing coffee can be, brewing specialty coffee could be very, very intimidating. So you guys definitely help a lot of people there. So Neeraj, you're our sailor. What kind of coffee do you brew at work? So on the ship, when I go on the ship, mostly what I was getting was instant coffee. So my first step was to demand something like Neskefe gold, which is upgrade from Neskefe classic for me.
00:13:06
Speaker
Then later on, when I started realizing there are a lot of other people who are also interested in coffee. So we got those Nespresso machines with the capsules. And later on we went to these retail coffees like Folgers and Maxwell.
00:13:26
Speaker
sometimes like if we are in a specific region like Colombia or near Jamaica so we could get the local coffee like I remember getting like two three bags of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee on board and like everyone was very happy about it oh this is really nice coffee so at times you have to sacrifice everything and go back to the instant coffee with nothing else is available but at times we do get a good coffee
00:13:55
Speaker
I'm sure your colleagues are very happy that you worked there with them together so you can make great coffee, tasty coffee for them. You must be very popular. Yeah. Sometimes people are not much into coffee, but when they see a person brewing some good coffee, because the aroma is something which attracts everyone.
00:14:17
Speaker
So they come, they try and they are like really happy, okay, this is a good coffee. Sometimes I find like-minded people, we start a small coffee culture on board, like we fix a time like morning 10 a.m. is the coffee time or evening 4 p.m. is the coffee time.
00:14:35
Speaker
Everyone
Growing India's Coffee Market
00:14:36
Speaker
will gather and will brew some coffee and everything change like they have their own preferred ways of drinking coffee someone wants with milk and someone with sugar that is fine but it is like a small get together for 15-20 minutes a quick coffee session and then everyone goes back to work.
00:14:55
Speaker
So you are a coffee trainer, coffee ambassador at work on boat and you are helping people to understand what is coffee, how to make coffee or why coffee tastes differently. That's very awesome. It's great to know that you also have a little coffee club at work on the ship, on the sea. That is just so cool.
00:15:16
Speaker
Alright so let's talk about your coffee club on the land. So how do you guys promote your club since it's very new and how you get this club known by your local coffee community? So the first rule of our club is talk about our club.
00:15:33
Speaker
So we just rely on people and us sharing stuff about this club manually because we haven't spent anything on this club right now. We have a social media account, but we haven't spent anything on promotions. We share it to our friends and whoever joins us, they share it to their friends. Mr. Naounit was a great resource because he runs a coffee shop.
00:16:02
Speaker
when he shared the post a lot of people didn't respond because his followers are actual coffee lovers so so he got a good response from him absolutely since he is the owner of the coffee shop when he posts a on social media everybody's happy oh free coffee let's join the club and go there
00:16:23
Speaker
yeah and go to the events and meet people that's awesome regarding the location of events where do your most events at the brewing section happen in a coffee shop yeah and and for the brewing events we organize it at different coffee shops or cafes that are in town so so so in that way we get a lot of people who are interested in coffee and would like to try
00:16:53
Speaker
brewing or specialty coffee. Sometimes it happens the cafe owners they themselves come up and ask okay what you are brewing it is different from what we have been selling and like the last even we had the owner himself came and tasted the coffee so even the staff where we are hosting the owners they themselves get interested okay
00:17:17
Speaker
So in a way, we
Local Coffee Industry Development
00:17:19
Speaker
are also influencing the cafes to get more better coffees than what they are serving. And eventually it is about awareness. Like anyone who comes and asks for help, okay, I need help in brewing and in doing something related to coffee, how can I improve? We are there to help them out. That is the whole idea. Like spread the awareness, get more people into drinking coffee.
00:17:43
Speaker
The community grows organically. We can't do much, but yes, we are trying to inspire people.
00:17:52
Speaker
I want to say that's very, very smart because through this collaboration with the local coffee shops there, you guys created this new system that is a win-win solution for the coffee shops, for the new coffee brewers, beginners, any of you guys. So it's very cool and smart. I'm pretty sure organizing events and running events like this, and you have to explain a lot of things, a lot of preparations, and what keeps you guys motivated
00:18:21
Speaker
I get to try new coffee. That's my only passion. That's my drive. And like every day I learn something new about coffee and coffee in that matter is very interesting. Like always there is something like the same coffee won't taste exactly same the other day.
00:18:38
Speaker
So I keep reading, I keep learning new things and I like to share things. I have been approached on Instagram from people like, okay, I am trying to do this, but I'm not getting it. So this
The Role of Photography in Coffee Culture
00:18:52
Speaker
was like a very good opportunity for me to share my knowledge, what I have gained from the personal experience and personal learning.
00:19:01
Speaker
And yes, I would love to see more coffee people around me because I eventually want a coffee community because that also helps me in many ways. Like there would be many more cafes where I can go and sit and there would be many more new coffees around me to try.
00:19:18
Speaker
So yes, it is a self-help in a way and also a help to the community. So we are situated in Bhopal, the city we are situated, it is Bhopal. Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, you might know this from the chemical incident which happened in 1984. There was a gas leak in Bhopal.
00:19:41
Speaker
All right, I didn't know that because I was boring after that. That's one event our city is infamous for.
00:19:51
Speaker
Well, that is a real tragedy. I'm sorry to hear that. So let's talk about your local coffee community in your city, in your state. And as far as I know, India in recent years, especially the last of three or four years, and especially the coffee community is growing very, very fast there. And I talked to a few Indian friends there from the coffee community. They explained to me that there are more and more people for love with coffee. So,
00:20:20
Speaker
How big is
Unique Indian Coffee Beans
00:20:21
Speaker
your coffee community there? How fast is it growing? Yeah, so the industry, the coffee, I would say it starts with awareness. Once the awareness is there, the interest and the sales, you know, every time there is a new coffee drinker, he will obviously go out and introduce a few more people to good coffee.
00:20:46
Speaker
and that's why the growth has been exponential like if we compare even the patrons walking into our cafe maybe two or three years ago versus now it's a it's a multi-fold increase people are now much more aware of
00:21:01
Speaker
coffees, they are trying newer things. Even the coffee planters whom we buy from, they are very happy and surprised, like pleasantly surprised about a city like us. So we are basically in the middle of the tea drinking country. Everyone drinks tea here. And it's a big surprise for everyone when they hear that there is such a big coffee community now.
00:21:29
Speaker
No doubt that India is one of the biggest markets in the world because of the population. We also know that India is famous for its tea drinking culture. I believe from
Inclusive Coffee Education
00:21:41
Speaker
your perspective as a business owner, you also see that there's a huge potential for the market for coffee.
00:21:49
Speaker
My question to you is, when you sell coffee gears, what is the price there for, let's say, the borrowing draperies? And if you compare with other countries, how much more expensive or it is cheaper? See, so this is how it works. In the money that you would require to buy, say, a hand grinder, a decent quality hand grinder,
00:22:15
Speaker
You could actually go out and buy a good quality two-wheeler in the same money. That sounds expensive. That's how expensive. Say for example, a commandante is.
00:22:29
Speaker
So, but then what we need to do is we focus, so we as a cafe, like Cafe Handcraft, we focus on making home brewing accessible. So even within the specialty brewing products, we are able to identify the products which are not much of a sticker shock for the new coffee brewer. Once they get introduced to coffee brewing, and if they really feel the passion for it, people have the money to invest in it. People will find their
00:23:00
Speaker
niche and what they like. But yeah, I mean, in terms of coffee brewing equipment, it is on the expensive side, but people have the purchasing power and you just need to peak their interest in buying coffee equipment.
00:23:16
Speaker
Well, the coffee market is very profitable, no doubt. And which is also one of the reasons that I think many people don't really get too deep into the specialty coffee because everything is very expensive. And if we talk about espresso machines, we talk about coffee gears.
00:23:32
Speaker
or even a draper's, they are just more expensive than they look like if you think about that. So we often say this in the coffee community that coffee, everybody deserves good coffee, but then, well, good coffee is expensive. And if you want to brew coffee at home, you have to buy a lot of things and they are expensive too.
00:23:55
Speaker
Really, especially coffee is not that accessible for everyone, unless we can afford it. We talk about the most people, the majority of the population who live a regular life. And so let's say India, you have relatively lower income than the developed countries. So how do
Future Plans for the Club
00:24:16
Speaker
your community respond to expensive coffee gears? Do you think the expensive gears could be a reason that stop people enter the coffee world?
00:24:25
Speaker
See, so there are two parts to it. So let's first talk about the coffee, like the beverage prices, etc. So yes, people do see coffee beverages as an expensive option as compared to walking into a tea shop and having a cup of tea. But then at the same time, it is fortunate for us that coffee or, you know, entering a well-designed cafe
00:24:54
Speaker
and sitting in a good coffee shop and ordering a good cup of cappuccino is also seen as a luxurious experience or something that people aspire towards. So we have that aspirational emotion going for us. Whenever people are walking into a cafe, they are looking for a good experience.
00:25:19
Speaker
So, in terms of whether we are competing against the tea drinking industry or the tea drinkers, I would say they are both different niches. So, people would drink tea as a regular day-to-day beverage, while coffee would be considered something that you
00:25:38
Speaker
Invite your friends over you go on a date to a good coffee shop and enjoy a cup of coffee so it's considered to be at a different level you know naturally that gives coffee a more gourmet feeling to it or a gourmet perception to it.
00:25:54
Speaker
which helps us again. It helps us price it at a bit more premium. And that's how we are able to pass on the benefits to the farmers, etc. Now coming to the brewing equipment, I would say right now the home brewing community in India is very, very small. It's I guess less than like 0.5% of the population. Please don't quote me on it. But that's my sort of guesstimation. A lot of people. Yeah.
00:26:24
Speaker
But then it still makes a lot of people because you're such a big population if you can get that number up to maybe 2% of the population or something it's like you know we'll be the biggest market in the.
00:26:37
Speaker
on the globe. So there's a
Social Media and Community Engagement
00:26:40
Speaker
huge potential in the Indian market. And it's not that we are not able to go to that level. There is enough disposable income in the country. There's enough population. There's a big enough middle class that aspires towards these kind of premium and good new products. So it is possible. It's just going to take some time and effort from people like us to develop the community.
00:27:07
Speaker
And that's why you guys are very important in this industry so far because it's growing fast and you guys have this role as a pioneer to help the market grow. In business we know that if you see a market demand, there will be a market supply. So we see that the market in India is growing. Do we see there are brands, new businesses jumping to the coffee world and making coffee tools?
00:27:33
Speaker
Okay, so there are now a few people who are coming up with their own sort of versions of brewing equipment which are priced slightly lower than the international brands. There are a few companies that are trying to do that. But then see, for example, I personally have an issue with that because I'm sure Hario has put in a lot of effort in developing their products and I would not want a cheap
00:28:03
Speaker
copy of that product to become more famous than the Hario product itself. So I would actually encourage whenever I meet someone who's doing something like this, I encourage them to develop their own product, put their own R&D in.
00:28:19
Speaker
And since it is domestically manufactured, I'm sure it's going to be priced cheaper than someone like a Hario. Again, this is just my personal opinion that Indian manufacturers should not try and go the China way and have cheap knockoffs of Western products and try to build a market that way. I mean, it's one way of doing things, but
00:28:43
Speaker
I mean, finally, specialty coffee is an industry which is built on ethics and ethics should play a big role in how it grows in a new market like India. Oh, that's interesting. So my question to Aaron is you're a photographer and you take pictures of coffee. So based on your standing, do you see more people are into coffee photos rather than food photos lately?
00:29:11
Speaker
So yeah, they do love coffee photos, especially the ones that we brew because all the brewing equipments and all the actions and the methods that people see in our photos, it's highly uncommon when you brew using a pour over or maybe a siphon or a Chemex.
00:29:33
Speaker
So all this equipment and all the methods, it is visually pleasing and it builds curiosity for the people. What is it?
00:29:45
Speaker
So that is the first question they ask, what is it? What are you making so carefully? And then they start about the equipment and then we tell them this is the equipment. We use coffee for this. So in addition to the club, even the photography and the videos that we take, those are very important for the club to grow because that is one way people see all the things that we do.
00:30:09
Speaker
So yeah, whatever we do, it generates a lot of curiosity among people and that that raises a lot of queries. So the appeal has to be generated visually. And if you prefer, so I mean, the photographs, what you say, instigate curiosity about what the brewing equipment is and what the brew was.
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah, and no doubt whatever equipment we use and the coffee that we brew, all of them are highly aesthetic. So they all look really good and people are naturally attracted towards that.
00:30:50
Speaker
Well, that's true. Everybody loves La TR. They're just beautiful. And La TR is the only one of the form that you can make coffee look very beautiful. I'm wondering, in your events and brewing sections, in your club, what kind of coffee beans do you use? Do you use local or international beans? What is the most popular beans there?
00:31:17
Speaker
Okay, so Indian coffee is quite unique as compared to say an international market, say like Denmark. A Danish roaster will have access to coffee beans from around the world, grown in different countries, different varieties, et cetera. Indian coffee is a little different because our coffee growing regions are located in a similar sort of area, but they each have their own microclimates and, you know, terroirs associated with them.
00:31:46
Speaker
At the same time, the varietals which are grown by Indian growers are very similar. So processing and care is what defines a good coffee in India. So if you have a decent farm, it is located in a good location.
00:32:04
Speaker
ample water supply sunlight etc you have the right things in place then yes if you process it well it will be a good coffee and that's why in India it's not like a homogeneous flavor profile of coffee coffee from one particular coffee estate will taste
00:32:26
Speaker
highly, like hugely different to coffee from the same region from a very different estate. So it could just be a factor of that one estate was facing towards the south, like on a slope which faces towards the south, the other one could be east facing and the coffees will be radically different. And we're talking about
00:32:44
Speaker
like magnitudes of difference in quality. What we try to do is showcase as many coffees as possible and help people find their own tastes and preferences. It is a bit polarizing at times. Sometimes
00:33:03
Speaker
There will be a customer who would say, oh, this coffee is absolutely tasteless. I don't like it. And there will be another set of customers who will say, oh, I just love this coffee. This is the best. So we sort of have this duty to showcase different coffees to people and then let them make up their mind.
00:33:20
Speaker
That's again where Bhopal Brewing Club actually comes in because we are ourselves a coffee roaster. We have our sort of taste language that we follow. There is a certain flavors that we as people prefer like me and my team, we have a preference towards a particular type of coffee. But in the club, we actually order in a lot of coffees from different brands, different roasters, different estates. And that's what helps us showcase all these different coffees from India. And Indian coffees are like
00:33:50
Speaker
They are improving by leaps and bounds in terms of quality. I'm sure within a few years we will produce some of the best coffees in the world as more and more growers move towards specialty coffee. I'm sure there's a big future for Indian coffees going forward.
00:34:13
Speaker
I'm pretty sure about that. You have a big country and you have different climates there. You can definitely plant many high-quality coffee bins in the future and I trust that. So let's go back to the specialty coffee club you guys have there.
00:34:28
Speaker
What normally happens during your brewing section? Let's say you have new members join your club. What is the first thing they need to do? Do you have like a lecture for the beginners so they can quickly get you no coffee or everything happens during the brewing section? Explain everything orally.
00:34:49
Speaker
So at present, we are not making something like an official or a systematic structure. It is just like we casually meet up. We try to brew different methods. Like we try, always try the easier methods so that people might catch up on them. And we also try to showcase the pour over method or AeroPress so that they understand like a brewer could make a lot of difference in the coffee, what they're brewing.
00:35:19
Speaker
till now we have not been offering any courses we do discuss about coffee like what is the variety like this is arabica or there is a robust coffee or if there is another variety which has been going on in india excelsia so we have showed them the beans giving little information we don't want to bombard them with too much of information on day one so that they might run away but
00:35:47
Speaker
Yes, eventually we are trying to impart knowledge and till now we are like it is a casual thing. It is not a systematic course or anything like that. Yes, there are no courses as of now. It's completely unstructured. It's basically a few friends brewing coffee together.
00:36:05
Speaker
So it's like your club has a very casual and friendly welcoming environment for everyone, so nobody's scared. What is this? What is that? Especially the coffee? I didn't see so many photos of girls there, so I asked Neeraj if you guys have more women in the club, or if you have any women at all.
00:36:25
Speaker
Or maybe you guys to see a gender difference there women are not as interested in, especially coffee as men. Men are more into, you know, twos and stuff like that. Well, I would like to disagree. They're like, it is not a gender based thing. Like girls also drink coffee equally. And we have a few sessions where a lot of girls did show up.
00:36:50
Speaker
But we at times we are like a bunch of guys only at times that also happens. I don't think it is a gender based thing. But yes, it could be like sometimes we are at like a far off location in the city. So not many people people would like to travel to that much farther. So at times we don't get any much interest. But when we are in the center of the city, we do have
00:37:18
Speaker
like girls coming equal and I don't think it will gender based thing. They consume coffee equally and they have started brewing. Yeah, I don't think there's any significant difference between interest in coffee when it comes to like different genders and stuff like people are equally interested. Yeah, just maybe a mathematical anomaly that sometimes more guys show up than girls, but yeah.
00:37:44
Speaker
Well, thank you for telling me that. I was just very curious about it. So how many people normally attend to your events and what was the biggest event you ever, uh, organized so far? And, uh, how many people were there last time? I guess the largest participation that we've had was about 20, 25 people. Yeah. So the last time we did, we got, uh, we, we got, uh, less of a crowd. We were just five.
00:38:15
Speaker
But the biggest crowd that we had was around 20. And we're trying to work on that. Up till now, it was like me and Neeraj. We decide on a location, and we decide on a time, and we just tell it to everyone. This is the place and the time we have to be here. But then we realized that we should be more democratic. So we made a WhatsApp group, and now we decided that we will ask
00:38:44
Speaker
opinion of all the members. Where should we do it? What time is suitable for you? I think that way we will get a better crowd, a better reception.
00:38:55
Speaker
And plus, we're trying to keep it interesting, not to do the same thing every time since it's getting hot in our town and in our country. So for the next session, we're trying to focus more on summer drinks and iced coffees and stuff that pairs with coffee.
00:39:17
Speaker
coffee and tonic water, coffee and orange juice, cranberry juice. So whatever people can have during this summer. We think that it might bring more people to us. It's really cool that you guys change topics about it. Also, you just mentioned that in the summertime, you can definitely teach people how to make cold brew. I'm pretty sure people are really into the idea of mixing coffee with other beverages. This is really cool. Great job, guys.
00:39:45
Speaker
I want to say thank you for doing this for your local coffee community. It means a lot. And I can remember when I was a beginner in especially coffee, I was so confused. I had no idea and I had no group or club to join. So by the way, how we can find you if we have some audience here today who are really into clubbing, how can they find you?
00:40:10
Speaker
So we have an Instagram page with Bhopal Brewing Club as the handle.
00:40:18
Speaker
Whatever activity, whatever we plan, we try to post there as post or a story and like we can connect over the Instagram. Right now we just have an Instagram account. So any queries can be sent as a DM to that account or we have a WhatsApp group also, but that is for the local people so that we can discuss our ideas before we plan something in the future.
00:40:49
Speaker
So dear listeners, if you plan to visit India one day or you happen to be in a neighborhood, make sure you visit the Bapau Brewing Club and meet those three gentlemen there. I hope you guys love this episode and please support and subscribe to our podcast. If you want to be our guest on the podcast or share your coffee story, please let us know. You are more than welcome to DM us on Instagram. And thank you for listening.
00:41:16
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to this I'm Not A Barista episode. Subscribe to this podcast and follow us on Instagram at I Am Not A Barista for more empowering vibes and true coffee stories that connect you with coffee lovers around the world.