Brazil Minas Gerais Pulped-Natural Coffee

A pulped-natural coffee from Minas Gerais, Brazil. The skin and pulp come off the cherry but a sticky layer of fruit stays on the bean as it dries, giving a cup of milk chocolate, hazelnut, caramel and dried fruit. Brewed in a French press at 94°C.

Origin & Story

Coffee processing is usually a choice between two extremes. A washed coffee has all the fruit taken off the bean before it dries, and a natural coffee dries inside the whole cherry. Brazil added a third way in between, the pulped natural, called cereja descascada in Portuguese, which means peeled cherry.

The ripe cherries are sorted first. A machine then removes the skin and most of the pulp, but leaves a thin, sticky layer of fruit, the mucilage, clinging to the bean. The coffee dries like that, first on patios in the sun and then in mechanical dryers. It is Brazil's version of what Costa Rica calls honey processing.

The effect is a cup that sits between the other two. It usually has more sweetness and body than a washed coffee, and it is cleaner and less wild than many naturals. Here that means milk chocolate and hazelnut, with caramel and the dark sweetness of dried fruit.

This coffee comes from Minas Gerais, where the harvest runs from about June to September, in the cooler months of the southern winter. Brazilian growers have long dried their coffee in the sun, and the pulped natural fits that tradition: the bean spends its drying days wrapped in its own sweetness.

A French press suits a coffee with this much body, because a metal filter lets the oils through. Use water at 94°C, a medium-coarse grind and 15.6 g of coffee for a 240 ml cup, and let it steep for four minutes.

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