Brazilian Coffee Varieties, Characteristics, and Brewing Recommendations

Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style).

Brazil: A Coffee Powerhouse

Brazil is a major coffee-producing country. Large numbers of European immigrants migrated to the vast and resource-rich Brazil in search of suitable locations for coffee cultivation. Today, Brazil boasts numerous coffee plantations. The coffee produced is not only exported worldwide but Brazilians have also cultivated the habit of drinking a cup of coffee daily since childhood.

Economic Significance and Coffee Regions

Without a doubt, the coffee industry is one of Brazil's most important economic sectors. Brazil is also one of the world's foremost coffee producers, having secured a place in the specialty coffee market in recent years. Coffee varieties produced in regions such as Paraná, Espirito Santos, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Bahia include Bourbon, Typica, Caturra, and Mundo Novo.

Brazilian Coffee in Blends

Nearly all espresso blends contain Brazilian coffee, with some consisting of up to 90% Brazilian coffee. Brazilian coffee also appears in many well-known commercial coffee brands and canned coffees, demonstrating its crucial role in the coffee industry. Although Brazilian coffee is widely distributed in the commercial coffee market, this doesn't mean it cannot enter the specialty market. Dark city roast and Vietnamese-style roast Brazilian coffee is quite delicious. Furthermore, high-quality natural and honey-processed Brazilian coffee often serves as a staple in espresso blends, producing more crema, rich flavor, a hint of sweetness, making it an excellent supporting coffee in blends.

Flavor Profile and Processing Methods

Brazilian coffee is also a frequent component in coffee blends, serving as the backbone of a cup. Most Brazilian coffee offers a gentle, mellow flavor reminiscent of roasted hazelnuts and cream, with low acidity and a subtle yet profound aftertaste, featuring a smooth texture. Japanese people particularly enjoy dark roasted Brazilian coffee, so Japanese instant or canned coffees typically feature the characteristic "Brazilian flavor."

Brazilian coffee is wild, sweet, and low in acidity, with bitterness in its sweetness and chocolate-roasted notes. However, its green beans are not dense, and the growing altitude is not as high as typical Central American coffee beans, so extremely dark roasting can bring out some bitter flavors. Additionally, three different processing methods give Brazilian coffee varied flavors: natural processing produces rich, full-bodied flavor with chocolate notes and some fruit aromas, possibly with some earthy notes; honey processing, when the outer skin is removed while the inner skin and pulp remain, results in coffee flavors similar to fully natural processing but with cleaner taste; semi-washed processing uses pulp removers to screen out the skin and some or all of the pulp, so semi-washed coffee has characteristics of both honey processing and washed processing - clean, balanced, lighter body, less chocolate flavor, and brighter acidity.

Industry Reputation and Evolution

Coffee experts generally don't rate Brazilian coffee beans highly, considering them too monotonous, lacking sufficient bitterness, acidity, and aroma, sometimes not even including Brazil in specialty coffee producing regions. This is because most Brazilian coffee plantations are below 1200 meters altitude, lack shade from large trees, and use rough harvesting methods where unripe and ripe cherries are picked together, not meeting specialty coffee standards. The sun-grown planting method allows coffee cherries to grow faster, resulting in incomplete flavor development and a woody taste that cannot be considered elegant. Furthermore, in the past 20+ years, Brazil has attempted to expand market share by replacing manual picking with mechanization to increase production, which affected quality and destroyed应有的 flavors, because only fully ripe red cherries combined with careful processing methods can showcase specialty coffee flavors. The Brazilian Coffee Association has vigorously promoted reforms in recent years to survive in the fierce international market. Among these, green beans from Brazilian specialty coffee farm Fazenda Rainha were recently acquired at a high price by the renowned Norwegian roaster and green bean import company Soberg & Hansen, causing quite a stir in the global coffee community, as Brazilian coffee beans had never commanded such high prices before, helping to shake off the bad reputation that Brazil cannot produce good coffee!

Brazilian Coffee Processing Methods

80% of Brazilian coffee is dry-processed, with the remaining 20% being semi-dry processed and washed. Each processing method produces different flavor characteristics, but high-quality coffees tend to favor semi-dry processing. However, dry processing still maintains deep-rooted popularity.

FrontStreet Coffee's Brewing Recommendations for Brazilian Coffee

V60/1:15/88°C/Time: 1 minute 50 seconds

Flavor: Chocolate, creamy peanuts, genmaicha (brown rice tea)

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse selection of beans, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans, also providing online shop services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473