Which Brazilian Coffee Varieties Shape the Country's Flavor?

Brazil grows Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon, Mundo Novo and Yellow Catuai, and its beans are generally low in acidity with nutty notes and a full body. That mild, balanced profile is why Brazilian coffee suits a wide range of drinkers and why the country leads world production.

Brazil also pioneered the pulped natural process, which raises bean cleanliness compared with fully natural drying. Growing areas sit mostly on the Brazilian Plateau above 200 meters or the plains below it, where abundant sun allows drying with the fruit still partly attached. A 15g dose at a 1:15 ratio and 88°C works well for pour-over.

Brazil, as the world's largest coffee producer, is known for its coffee beans with low acidity, nutty flavors, and full-bodied mouthfeel. This article will guide you through a systematic understanding of Brazil's main cultivated varieties—Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon, Mundo Novo, and Yellow Catuai—analyze how Brazil's original pulped natural processing method enhances bean cleanliness, and delve into the terroir characteristics of core producing regions such as Minas Gerais and São Paulo. Front Street Coffee will also use the Queen's Farm Yellow Bourbon as an example to share a three-pour hand-brewing recipe with 15g of coffee, a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, and 88°C water temperature, helping you brew out the sugarcane sweetness and rounded mouthfeel of Brazilian beans.

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Front Street's Brazilian coffee has low acidity, along with the coffee's own bittersweet taste. It is smooth and gentle on the palate, with a faint grassy aroma in the aftertaste. In Front Street's view, this flavor profile of Brazilian coffee is actually the most basic expression of coffee, without any particularly outstanding personality. However, it is precisely this mass-market style that has given Brazilian coffee a broad market space, because it can cater to the taste preferences of most consumers—and this is also an important reason why Brazil's coffee production is so massive.

Brazilian coffee has another unique feature: it pioneered the pulped natural processing method. After reviewing the materials, Front Street learned that Brazil's coffee tree cultivation terrain is mainly divided into two types: one is the Brazilian Plateau above 200 meters in elevation, and the other is the Brazilian Plain below 200 meters. Because the overall elevation is low and sunlight is abundant, coffee trees are usually directly exposed to the air for sun-drying. Front Street believes that this sun-drying method played a key role in shaping the unique flavor of Brazilian coffee.

Brazil did not adopt the pulped natural method from the beginning. In the early days, because Brazil had a wide variety of coffee varieties, it mainly classified coffee by the state name of origin and shipping port. However, the scattered distribution of producing regions and large quality differences made Brazil's grading system more complex than that of other countries. Initially, Brazil basically used natural processing. As we know, Brazil's climate is relatively dry, so using natural processing was reasonable in itself, but natural processing is relatively rough and can easily give Brazilian beans a musty wood flavor. On rainy days, it also carries the risk of coffee beans becoming moldy, making it rather passive. Therefore, Brazil created a processing method called pulped natural, which greatly shortened the sun-drying time. Now, let's follow Front Street to get a rough understanding of the basic process of the pulped natural method.

First, the skin and pulp of the coffee cherries are removed. Fully ripe pulp is easy to remove, while the skin of unripe green cherries is difficult to handle, so a second screening is carried out to standardize the ripeness of the coffee fruit. Pulped natural processing can control the degree of fermentation of the mucilage-coated beans after pulping and demucilaging. Traditional methods, by contrast, cannot show the degree of mucilage fermentation. The pulped natural method does not have the "tank fermentation, clean water rinsing" process of washed processing. Without the fermentation step, the flavor of the coffee beans is completely different. Compared with natural processing, Front Street favors this processing method more; coffee beans selected and processed in this way can greatly improve cleanliness and ripeness. For example, the Brazil Queen's Farm that Front Street carries uses this pulped natural processing method. Front Street has also cupped Brazilian coffee beans from different producing regions and consistently found that Brazilian coffee beans have lower acidity, a heavier nutty flavor, and a full-bodied mouthfeel.

Here we will briefly introduce a few of Front Street's Brazilian beans.

1. Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) Brazil Red Fruit Coffee Beans Origin: Cerrado Variety: Red Bourbon Altitude: 700-1200 meters Processing method: Semi-washed Flavor: High sweetness, clean, smooth, low acidity, with tropical fruit aromas.

2. Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) Queen's Farm Yellow Bourbon Coffee Beans Region: Mogiana, São Paulo State Altitude: 1400-1950 meters Variety: Yellow Bourbon Processing method: After hand-picking, pulped natural processing is carried out. Flavor description: The taste has obvious sweetness, with a faint lemon aroma, a rich nutty flavor, and a pronounced dark chocolate note in the finish; the overall impression is fairly rounded.

How should Brazilian coffee beans be brewed to taste good? Front Street will use this Queen's Farm Yellow Bourbon coffee bean as a demonstration; it is one of the more popular coffee beans on Front Street's bean list. Front Street uses a medium roast for this coffee bean to highlight the coffee's sugarcane sweetness. If you want to taste better coffee flavor, Front Street recommends brewing with freshly roasted coffee beans. Generally, the flavor is best around the 7th day after fresh roasting. Friends who often buy Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) beans know that the coffee beans Front Street sends out are all roasted within 5 days, so with logistics time added, this basically ensures that the coffee reaches customers in the best condition.

As we know, Brazil was historically a Portuguese colony for a long time, so in order to meet the needs of Western Europe, it long cultivated a single crop—coffee. Therefore, coffee can be seen as Brazil's pillar industry. Before this, the Brazilian government attached great importance to the coffee industry and maintained strict monitoring of Brazilian coffee. This intervention also included price protection measures, which was to avoid overproduction of coffee. After the opening of the free market, Brazilian associations adopted a policy opposite to the previous one toward coffee-producing regions: even though they pursued a non-intervention policy, they allowed producers and exporters to negotiate directly.

Brazilian coffee was introduced from French Guiana in 1729. The varieties grown in Brazil include both Arabica and Robusta coffee. Brazilian coffee beans are favored for their excellent quality, rich aroma, and full-bodied mouthfeel. Brazil currently mainly cultivates Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon, Mundo Novo, and Catuai. Yellow Catuai comes from a cross between Mundo Novo and Caturra, and was first developed by Brazil's agricultural research institute. Like Red Catuai, Yellow Catuai has extremely high disease resistance and is suitable for planting in high-altitude areas. Both varieties have a delicate, clean acidity.

These other varieties are often mentioned in other Front Street articles, but Mundo Novo may be less familiar. In fact, Mundo Novo is a natural hybrid of Bourbon and Typica. It was first discovered in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1943 and was first planted in Mundo Novo municipality, which is now Urupês.

Brazil's coffee bean production is very high. Its main coffee-growing regions include Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Bahia, and Espirito Santo. These four places account for 90 percent of Brazil's national production. Mogiana comes from São Paulo, while Cerrado and South Minas in Minas Gerais are located at high altitudes, so the coffee from these two areas is mostly specialty coffee. The coffee bean production of these regions determines the total output of Brazilian coffee beans. Next, Front Street will briefly introduce the following three major coffee-producing regions.

South Minas: A large part of why it can become a specialty coffee-producing region is due to its terrain and climate. Its altitude is above 1100 meters, and its landforms are varied. The dry and wet seasons are distinct, the temperature difference between day and night is large, and the microclimates are diverse, so it is very suitable for cultivating Bourbon and Yellow Bourbon varieties.

Fazenda Sertãozinho is located in the South Minas region. This farm uses only organic matter to provide plant nutrition in order to maintain the vitality of the land itself. The coffee from Fazenda Sertãozinho is completely different from that of general large Brazilian farms. It does not use machines to replace human labor, from the harvesting to the processing of the coffee cherries. It is entirely done by hand.

As for the Cerrado region, what is most famous is that there is a Cerrado savanna there, and coffee trees are planted on the savanna. The coffee produced there is called Cerrado coffee. But not just any coffee produced on the Cerrado savanna can be called Cerrado coffee. According to what Front Street has learned, only coffee from areas at an altitude of 1100-1300 meters is qualified. Front Street believes that the coffee from this producing region has a full body and no earthy or musty taste.

Brazil's century-old coffee estate, Fazenda Baixa Verde, is located in the Cerrado producing region. It is a coffee-producing region in Brazil that has obtained origin status, making its status similar to that of a famous wine-producing region. Fazenda Baixa Verde has excellent volcanic soil, a balanced dry and wet season climate, high-altitude terrain, and abundant rainfall and sunshine.

Mogiana is relatively close to southern Minas. The quality of coffee beans in this area is also very good. Front Street believes that in addition to terrain and climate, it may also be related to the business model they adopt. That is, they use both the traditional large-farm management model and a small-scale modern operating model. High-tech cultivation equipment makes the coffee beans in this region relatively high in sweetness, with a clear sweetness similar to sugarcane.

The renowned Brazil Queen's Farm is located in this producing region. Queen's Farm has a relatively high elevation and its environmental protection is very good. It mainly uses machinery for harvesting, but the Brazilian Queen coffee cherries are completely hand-picked, and low-yield, high-quality Bourbon is cultivated. As a representative estate embodying the essence of Brazil's high-quality coffee, the quality of Brazil Queen's Farm coffee beans has received unanimous praise.

For hand-brewing parameters, Front Street recommends using 15g of coffee powder, a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, a medium-coarse grind with a 75% pass rate on a No. 20 sieve, and a water temperature of 88°C.

The brewing technique uses three-stage pouring. In the first stage, pour 30ml and bloom for 80 seconds. In the second stage, pour 100ml in a small circular motion. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, pour 95ml in the third stage. The extraction time is 2 minutes.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.