Brazilian Cerrado Natural Coffee

A naturally processed coffee from the Cerrado Mineiro, a high plateau region in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Dried in its fruit under the dry-season sun, it tastes of milk chocolate, almond and brown sugar, with a little dried-cherry sweetness. Brewed as batch drip coffee at 93°C.

Origin & Story

Brazil grows about a third of the world's coffee and has been the largest producer for roughly 150 years. According to the usual story, the first seeds came in 1727, carried from French Guiana by an officer named Francisco de Melo Palheta. Today about half of the country's coffee is grown in a single state, Minas Gerais.

The Cerrado Mineiro lies in the north-west of that state. Cerrado is the name of Brazil's tropical savanna, and here the land is a plateau, roughly 800 to 1,300 meters up and fairly flat. The year has two clear halves, a hot, wet summer and a dry, sunny winter. In 2005 the region became the first in Brazil to win legal protection for the name of its coffee.

That dry winter is when the coffee is picked, roughly from June to September, and it is why natural processing works so well here. The ripe cherries are dried whole, on patios or raised beds, in steady sunshine, so the fruit's sugars move into the bean without the damp weather that can spoil a natural in other places.

The result is a soft, sweet cup: milk chocolate and almond first, then brown sugar and a hint of dried cherry. It stays friendly however you brew it, in a batch brewer, a moka pot or an espresso machine.

For a batch brewer or drip machine, use water at 93°C, a medium grind and 18 g of coffee to 300 g of water, with the brew finishing in about three minutes.

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