We do a lot of foraging work on our travels. Sometimes we don’t have to look further than our own backyard. Once in a while someone near our own backyard just happens to come to us. Enter Cher Grosse.

Cher has been operating a business collecting, restoring, and selling vintage coffee machines from her Sacramento home. The business was born out of her love of coffee. She was introduced to us by a long time customer and friend. Her first coffee roasting experience came at age 20 in the David mountains outside Panama City, Panama where she was living at the time. The experience of that first roast on an iron pan over a wood fire would become ingrained into her coffee soul. She has traveled through many of the world’s coffee growing regions over time allowing for her to develop very high roasting skills. Cher wanted more from coffee, so she began the Soulside Coffee Company in Sacramento dedicated to the art of Hand Roasted Single Origin Coffee.

Monsoon Malabar is actually a process. The process of being “ Monsooned.” In the coffee growing region of the Malabar coast of southwestern India, coffee beans are harvested and naturally processed then exposed to the monsoon rain and winds of the region for a period of about three to four months. This causes the beans to swell and lose their original acidity, resulting in a flavor profile with a practically neutral pH balance. The resulting beans can range from a very pale green to almost pale white. Cher sources her Monsoon Malabar from small farms that have been in operation for almost 100 years. This coffee shows flavors of creamy chocolate and spice with low acidity. It is very good for using the French Press system.