Everything we get asked.

Bilona ghee starts from curd, not cream. Milk is set into curd overnight, hand-churned in a wooden bilona until butter separates, and only then cooked down. Commodity ghee skips straight to cream via a centrifuge. The bilona route takes about 21 litres of milk per litre of ghee against 10–12 for the cream method, and produces a distinctly more lactic, more aromatic result.

No — grain is a sign of slow, undisturbed cooling, and it is traditionally prized. Our Kankrej Danedar is made specifically for it. In warmer months grain can soften or disappear entirely and the ghee may go liquid. Both states are normal and neither affects quality.

No. Ghee has almost no water content, which is exactly why it keeps. Store it at room temperature away from direct sunlight and always use a dry spoon — moisture is the only real enemy. A2 White Butter is the exception: it must stay refrigerated and used within 21 days.

Clarification removes the milk solids that carry lactose and casein, and our batches test below 0.1% residual milk solids. Most people with lactose intolerance tolerate it comfortably. If you have a diagnosed dairy allergy rather than an intolerance, speak to your doctor first — we would rather you asked.

Every batch goes to an NABL-accredited lab for an 11-marker adulterant panel including the Baudouin test for vegetable fat, Bomer value for animal body fat, and screens for starch and coal-tar dye. Enter your batch code on the traceability page to pull up the report for your specific jar.

White tea 75–80°C. Green tea 80°C. Oolong 90°C. Darjeeling 88–90°C. Assam and Nilgiri black 95–98°C. Herbal infusions can take a full boil. Above 85°C, green and white leaf will scorch and turn bitter — this is the single most common home brewing error.

2.5 to 3 g per 200 ml for most black tea. Bulky leaf such as Darjeeling or silver needle needs the higher end because it takes up more volume for the same weight. A kitchen scale for the first week will recalibrate your spoon permanently.

Yes, and you should. Whole leaf gives two to four steeps. Add roughly a minute to each subsequent steep. Silver needle and Darjeeling improve noticeably on the second. Broken leaf and CTC give everything on the first steep and nothing after.

Sealed tin, room temperature, away from light and away from anything aromatic. Tea absorbs the smell of whatever is near it — keep it well away from the masala dabba. Do not refrigerate. Buy no more than three months at a time.

Because a best-before on coffee is close to meaningless. Roasted coffee is at its best from about day 5 to day 45 after roasting — it needs a few days to degas and then slowly loses aromatics. A best-before eighteen months out tells you nothing useful. A roast date tells you everything.

Whole bean, if you own a grinder. Ground coffee loses most of its aromatics within fifteen minutes of grinding. If you do not own a grinder, choose your brew method at checkout and we will grind to match — dabara filter, espresso, moka, pour-over, press or cold brew.

No. Coffee is porous and hygroscopic; freezing invites condensation and it will pick up freezer smells. Buy smaller quantities more often and keep the tin closed at room temperature.

Not in a South Indian filter blend. Roasted chicory root provides the body, colour and bittersweet edge that define filter decoction — remove it and you have a different drink. What matters is disclosure. Ours is exactly 80:20 and stated on the label.

Metros 2–4 working days, rest of India 4–7, North-East and remote pin codes 5–9. Orders placed before 2 p.m. despatch the same working day. Every order gets a tracking link by SMS and WhatsApp within 24 hours of despatch.

Free across India on orders above ₹1,499. Below that it is a flat ₹79. Cold-chain items such as A2 White Butter carry a ₹149 packing surcharge regardless of order value, because they ship in insulated boxes with gel packs.

Yes, to 34 countries via DHL. International orders are quoted individually because dairy import rules vary considerably by destination. Write to us with your address and we will come back within one working day with a quote and any paperwork required.

COD is available on orders up to ₹3,000 across most serviceable pin codes, with a ₹49 handling fee. Prepaid orders skip the fee and despatch a day faster.

Tell us within 14 days and we will refund you in full, including what you paid for shipping. You do not need to return the product — sending food back across the country helps nobody. We will ask what went wrong, because that is genuinely useful to us, but a refund does not depend on your answer.

Photograph it before you open anything else and send it to us on WhatsApp. Replacement despatches the same working day. Glass breaks in transit sometimes despite our packing, and that is entirely our problem, not yours.

Choose a 30, 45 or 60-day cycle on the product page and save 10% on every delivery, permanently. The cycle travels with the item, so a monthly jar of ghee and a two-monthly tin of coffee can sit in the same basket. Skip a delivery, change the date, swap the product or cancel outright — no phone call, no retention script, no notice period.

Yes. Choose the gift option at checkout, and we will send the recipient a card with the first delivery and email them before each subsequent one. Prices never appear on gift invoices.

Only what an order needs: your name, delivery address, phone number and email. Payment happens on our payment partner’s page — card and UPI credentials never touch our servers and we never see them. If you have subscribed to The Friday Note we keep your email for that too, separately, and you can pull it back out in one tap.

We do not sell your data, and we never will. It is shared only with the couriers who have to deliver to you, the payment gateway that has to charge you, and the email service that sends what you asked for. Nobody else, and never for advertising.

Your cart, wishlist, recently viewed items and light or dark preference are stored in your own browser, on your own device — clear your site data and every trace of them is gone. We use one privacy-respecting analytics tool that counts pages, not people, and we do not run third-party advertising pixels.

Order records stay seven years because tax law requires it. Everything else — marketing consent, browsing history, saved addresses — goes when you ask. Write to hello@theoldmillgoods.com from the address on the account and we will confirm within 72 hours, in plain language, with no retention pitch.

The Old Mill Goods, of The Old Mill, Kannerimukku Road, Kotagiri, The Nilgiris 643217 — FSSAI licence 10021064001729, GSTIN 33AAKCT2916Q1ZP. Placing an order means you accept these terms and confirm you are 18 or over. Indian law applies, and the courts of The Nilgiris have jurisdiction.

When we despatch it. Until then an order is an offer we can decline — occasionally we must, if a batch fails its lab panel, if a pin code is not serviceable, or if a price was published in error. In every one of those cases you are refunded in full within five working days and told why.

Prices are in Indian rupees and include GST. Weights are net of packaging. Stock counts and delivery estimates are our best information at the time you read them, not guarantees — harvests, roast schedules and couriers all move. If something you paid for cannot ship, you are refunded, not substituted.

Our foods are foods, not medicine, and nothing on this site is a diagnosis, a treatment or a health claim. Follow the storage instructions on the label. Where liability cannot be excluded by law it is capped at what you paid for the order in question. Nothing here affects your statutory consumer rights, which stand regardless of what this page says.

The words, photographs, film and the mill seal itself belong to us — please ask before republishing them. Reviews and photographs you send us stay yours; posting them gives us permission to show them on the site and our channels, with credit, and to stop whenever you ask.