Green Coffee Offerings : South America: Brazil |
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View Our Current Brazilian Coffees |
Upcoming Crop Comments"The best Brazil is an 87 point coffee." That's an opinion we have formed on the cupping table lately. I just can't see how CoE juries get 92 or 94 points here. That said, we are sourcing from Carmo de Minas area, which has some better altitudes and real sweetness in the cup. Coming in early 2012 |
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| Brazil is a coffee giant . As Frank Sinatra sang, "They grow an awful lot of coffee in Brazil". It's the largest producer of low grade arabica coffee, and a lot of Conilon robusta too. Brazil: there is some in almost every espresso you drink. In fact, some espresso is 90% Brazil. And there is Brazil in most canned coffee and big roasters' blends. |  |
But things are changing in Brazil. There's the big push on behalf of Brazilian coffee growing associations to re-create the image of Brazilian as exquisite and distinctive Specialty-level coffee. And some of it is true Specialty coffee, but the majority is still common, low-grade, low-grown arabica. There just isn't the extreme distinction from cup to cup that distinguishes one regional coffee from another. Attention to good farming and processing techniques has helped, but the coffee is grown at lower altitudes than most Specialty coffee, in non-volcanic soils, in non-forested areas that are sometimes originally grassland (a reason why the "shade-grown issue" really doesn't apply much to Brazil ---the coffee farming areas had little shade to begin with.) |   |
Am I saying Brazilian coffee is bad --heck no! I love these high-quality Brazilian coffees, and you should try it as a Full City or even Vienna roast: it's great! And nothing touches a really good Dry-processed or Pulped-Natural Brazil as a base in Espresso blends. They produce more crema and body, adding sweetness and providing a great backdrop for the feature coffees. Brazil can be nutty, sweet, low-acid, and develop exceptional bittersweet and chocolate roast tastes. The caveat is, Brazils are not dense coffee seeds: they are grown at lower altitudes than Central American coffees. Hence the very dark roasts of Brazils pick up ashy, bittering flavors. For espresso, you can roast Brazils lighter, separately, or keep the entire blend at a Vienna roast or lighter: Northern Italian Espresso re: Illy's "Normale." Note that there are 3 methods of processing Brazil coffees of interest to us; Natural Dry- Process, Pulped Natural, and Semi-Washed. They produce different types of cups. The Natural has great body, chocolate, possibly fruity notes ... and it risks being earthier and more rustic in the cup. The Pulped Natural is when the coffee cherry skin is removed and the parchment, with a lot of the mucilage attached, is sun dried on patio or raised drying bed. This coffee cups like the fully Naturals but is a bit cleaner in the cup. The Semi-Washed uses a demucilage machine to remove the skin and some or all of the mucilage. So the Semi-Washed ranges in character from being identical to Pulped Natural to being similar to a Wet-processed coffee (clean cup, uniform, less body, less chocolate, a bit brighter). I like good Naturals- they have more intensity, produce more crema, but I have to cup them rigorously to watch for defective cup character. On the other end of things, really clean Semi-Washed, where a lot of the mucilage is removed, do not have Brazil character to me. Yes, these coffees score higher in the numbers, and they are now totally dominating the Cup of Excellence competition. But if you want a cleaner, brighter cup, the standard is set in other origins, not Brazil. Go buy a good Central American coffee. I want "origin character" from a coffee. I want intensity. I don't believe in a generic, universal "excellent" coffee to which all coffee origins should be compared. It's a bias I have, but for me it keeps coffees distinct, and preserves the uniqueness of the cup, and repects the coffee culture expressing itself through origin flavors. |  Sul
de Minas region - not a barren flatland |
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Most quality Brazil I have found comes from the Sul de Minas, Mogiana, Cerrado and Matas de Minas regions, more specifically, from micro-climates within those regions. Cerrado region is, apparently, not a name many Brazilians recognize ... at last not those I have spoken with. Cerrado is a savana-like area, dry and flat, in Minas Gerais state. They produce a lot of coffee, and there are some unblended single farm lots that are good. Two microregions in Cerrado are of special interest: Chapadao de Ferro and Serra de Salita. People ask me about Santos coffee - Santos is a port, not a producing region. Coffee labeled Santos is pooled from market-grade lots and the lowest common denominator expresses itself as the primary cup character. Also, there is a lot of confusion online, perpetrated by coffee merchants (mostly innocent and unknowing) between region names, farms names, and cooperative names. For example, Monte Carmelo is a town in Cerrado, not a farm, and Cooxupe is a massive cooperative. The coffee you are actually getting in a bag of this is as unknown as buying Colombian Excelso. Sometimes, it used to be a decent cup ... but no more. It's a but random, since it does not rely on any solid, trackable relationship to a farm. In fact, a quick survey of green coffee sellers online reveals to me that not a single one currently offers a farm-specific coffee (well, except us ... all ours are from single farms). I am sorry of this sounds a little self-righteous, but the distinction here is very real, and expresses itself in very different levels of ongoing cup quality. | View my travelogues of Brazil Cerrado Cupping Competition 2004 and 2005 and trips through the Sul de Minas, Mogiana, and Matas de Minas coffee growing regions. You might also be intersted to read the our backissue newsletter Tiny Joy Jan-Feb '03: Brazil-O-Rama: excellent choices in Brazilian Coffee. Some notes about Brazil and espresso blends: As many people know, Brazil is a traditional "base" coffee for espresso blends in the Italian style, and they can be excellent as unblended, straight espresso too. The trick is that Brazils prefer a lower initial roast temperature and can turn quite ashy tasting when roasted too dark. My personal preference is that Brazils for espresso are rested quite a while after roasting - in fact I had a straight pulped natural I roasted to a light Vienna for espresso, and I kept testing the cup because 2 days after roasting it was too lively, nippy - almost like a baking soda effect on your tongue. After 18 days it became one of the deepest. heavy bodied espresso I ever had! I am not saying coffee should be rested that long after roasting (especially other methods like French Press, Drip etc, which fade after as little as 7 days!), but if you don't have a good initial experience with a Brazil espresso, don't toss it - try it after a week, or even two. As far as the type of Brazil, Illy is said to use 100% pulped natural and semi-washed. I much prefer a really good Natural dry-process - more crema, more chocolate, more body, and some fruit note. -Tom |
 Coffee all day, and even "Coffee Night" - a nightclub in smalltown Minas Gerais |
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Our Unroasted Brazilian Coffee Offerings
Please refer to our Reference Page for definitions of terms and cupping numbers used below. Check out the Sweet Maria's Coffee Home Roasting Forum for more conversation about home roasting this and other coffees.
| $5.75 | $10.93 | $25.01 | $47.73 | $88.55 |
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Okay, there is no Fazenda No-Name-O, obviously. This standard non-estate lot of Cerrado was the best thing on the cupping table, beating out the dry-process Fazenda Aurea we often have. That's the benefit of blind cupping, selecting on cup quality and not on the name of the source. I found it to work really well as espresso base coffee, which is one thing we look to our Brazils to do. Not every good Brazil coffee comes with the pedigree of being a single farm lot, and sometimes when we say "single farm" in Brazil we are talking the equivalent of 20 or 30 farms in Central America! They can be massive. Anyway, we thought we would have fun and make up a name for a simple, functional, un-fancy coffee. If there really was a Fazenda No-Name-O I would be impressed though!
This is balanced and mild coffee. The dry fragrance in lighter roasts is distinctly nutty, malty, slightly fruited, whereas Full City is more chocolate-infused. Wet aromatics are similar, with a slightly minerally and savory note, and the muddled and indefinite quality that, while hard to describe exactly, hints at a softer, lower-grown coffee, as most all Brazils truly are. The cup has the right taste for this coffee; basic, very slight acidity, creamy body, roasted peanut and hazelnut, a little peanut skin drying quality in the aftertaste. There is a slight fruit note, banana skins and a touch of sweet tobacco. You need to pick through many lots to find a good one, and I think this qualifies as one of the best from the farm. It's a simple coffee, straightforward. But I felt this lot was clean, had great body, a clean flavor profile, uniform roast and cup character, and more sweetness than anything else on the table (including some fancier and much more expensive coffees). There you have it.
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2005-2006 | 2004 -2003 | 2001-2002 | Pre-2000 Tom's Sample Cupping Log | Moisture Content Readings This page is authored
by Thompson Owen and Sweet Maria's Coffee, Inc. and is not to be
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