Introduction to Brazil Cerrado Coffee NY.2 Grade - Understanding the Highest Grade of Brazilian Cerrado Coffee Beans

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Brazil is the world's largest coffee-producing country, with the Cerrado coffee from the central-west region of Minas Gerais being particularly noteworthy. Brazil's Cerrado coffee beans offer a relatively mild flavor profile, developing gentle aromas after roasting. When blended with many other coffee beans, they can create espresso blends that enhance both flavor and texture while ensuring more stable extraction. Among FrontStreet Coffee's daily brew selection, the Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon coffee beans stand out for their rich, smooth texture and are beloved by many customers for their intense chocolate and nutty flavor characteristics.

Brazil Cerrado Coffee Growing Region

Compared to the high-altitude Colombia, Brazil's coffee growing altitudes are generally lower, with an average cultivation altitude ranging from 600-1200 meters. The local terrain is predominantly characterized by lower-altitude plains, with the Brazilian Plateau comprising the minority. The plain topography is ideal for large-scale coffee tree cultivation and management. During the coffee bean maturation season, most coffee farms employ mechanical harvesting, directly stripping all coffee fruits from the same branch.

Brazil's coffee origins are distributed across 7 states, with Minas Gerais in the southeastern region being the most productive, containing four sub-regions. Among these, the Cerrado region was Brazil's first coffee-producing area to receive Brazilian origin certification, producing almost exclusively high-quality Arabica varieties. Cerrado actually occupies 22% of Brazil's total land area as a vast savanna deep in the Brazilian interior. However, the Cerrado coffee region is not the entire Cerrado savanna, but rather the coffee-growing areas above 1000 meters altitude in the central-west part of Minas Gerais province. This area represents the essence of the Cerrado savanna, with high altitudes and fertile soil that enable the cultivation of specialty coffee beans with clean sweetness, rich body, and high clarity. Cerrado was Brazil's earliest region to commercialize coffee, with many exporters establishing large-scale coffee plantations here.

Brazil's coffee varieties are numerous, with Bourbon and Typica being the most ancient. As both heritage coffee bean varieties, Bourbon differs from Typica in having broader leaves, denser growth, and 30% higher yields. The beans are rounder and shorter, with rich berry acidity, prominent creaminess and aroma, and strong fragrant acidity, but similarly suffer from poor disease resistance. FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Cerrado daily brew coffee is made from Red Bourbon, which turns red when ripe. Additionally, FrontStreet Coffee's menu features another selection - the Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon coffee beans, which produce yellow fruits.

The local harvest season in Brazil coincides with the dry season, making it ideal for drying green coffee beans through natural processing. Traditional natural processing involved spreading everything on the ground, which could easily impart earthy and woody off-flavors to the coffee beans, resulting in inconsistent quality. After 1990, Brazil promoted the pulped natural method (also called semi-washed), which involves removing defects and floating fruits through water channels, mechanically removing skin, pulp, and some mucilage, followed by washing, and finally sun-drying or machine-drying. Compared to the fully washed method, pulped natural processing saves water and labor, significantly improving Brazilian coffee quality and reversing the long-standing negative impression of roughly processed natural Brazilian coffee.

Brazil Green Coffee Bean Grading System

Due to Brazil's large production volume and numerous origins, grading work is quite complicated and unsuitable for a single grading standard. Therefore, Brazilian coffee uses multiple grading methods, with defect bean ratios, screen sizes, and cupping flavors all applied in the Brazilian coffee bean grading process.

1. Grading by Defect Bean Count

Grades are determined by the number of defect beans per 300 grams of green coffee beans using a "point deduction system." Brazil adopts the New York grading standard, abbreviated as NY, which classifies by defect ratio into NY2, NY2/3, NY3, NY3/4... The smaller the number, the lower the defect rate and higher the grade. Batches with 4 points or less of deductions belong to NY2, the highest grade. Since NY.1 indicates absolutely no defect beans, such selected batches cannot be supplied stably, therefore Brazil sets NY.2 as the highest grade.

2. Coffee Bean Screen Size

Size specifications are screened using a mesh with 1/64 inch as the standard, with sizes ranging from 14 to 20 different specifications. The screen size corresponds to the short side of the coffee bean, i.e., its "width." The largest screen size for Brazilian coffee beans is 19, but production is limited, so 17/18 screen is considered the highest grade.

NY.2 SC-17/18 NY.2/3 SC-14/16 NY.3/4 DD Quality NY.4/5 SC-14/16

3. Cupping Flavor and Body

After being classified by defects and size specifications, Brazilian green coffee beans are roasted and graded according to Cup of Excellence cupping scores, divided into two types: body and flavor. Based on body performance characteristics, they are divided into five types: Strictly Soft → very smooth, Soft → smooth, Softish → somewhat smooth, Hardish → harsh, Rioy → iodine-like harshness. Cupping flavor performance grades can be: Fine cup (FC), Fine, Good Cup (GC), Fair Cup, Poor cup, Bad cup. Fine Cup (FC) and Good Cup (GC) are more common.

Combining the above points, FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Cerrado green coffee bean bags are marked "Brazil NY.2 SC – 17/18 FC Cerrado," meaning they originate from Brazil's Cerrado region, have a screen size of 17-18, very smooth body, excellent cupping flavor, and a defect ratio grade of NY.2.

Brazil Cerrado Coffee Flavor

This coffee needs to highlight the nutty, toasted bread, and creamy aromas of Brazilian beans, with low acidity, so FrontStreet Coffee uses a medium-dark roast level. Regardless of which coffee beans are brewed, FrontStreet Coffee believes that freshness always affects the flavor in our cups. To experience the best of Brazilian flavors, FrontStreet Coffee recommends selecting beans roasted within 1.5 months. Since coffee beans need 4-7 days of degassing after high-temperature roasting to gradually enter their optimal flavor window, if this optimal period is exceeded, much of the coffee's aroma will be lost, and many flavors will be difficult to extract. Coffee beans shipped by FrontStreet Coffee are guaranteed to be freshly roasted within 5 days, so they'll be ready to enter their optimal flavor period when you receive them.

FrontStreet Coffee's baristas, considering that these beans are dark roasted with loose internal texture that easily absorbs water and releases excessive bitter compounds, use lower water temperature and relatively coarse grind size to avoid over-extraction. Using a KONO dripper better highlights the body of Brazilian coffee.

Water Temperature: 88°C

Coffee Amount: 15g

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15

Grind Size: 70% pass-through rate on #20 sieve

Three-Pour Method: Use 30g of water to evenly moisten the coffee bed and bloom for 30 seconds. For the second pour, add 95g of water steadily in circular motions from inside to outside. When the water level drops to 2/3 of the coffee bed, begin the third pour of 100g. Maintain a small water flow throughout, and remove the dripper after approximately 2 minutes of dripping completion.

Flavor Description: When FrontStreet Coffee grinds this Cerrado Red Bourbon, rich nutty and toasted bread aromas are evident. Upon contact with water, caramel sweetness begins to emerge. After brewing, the entry presents dominant notes of nuts, cream, and peanuts, with black chocolate aftertaste and lingering finish, featuring a smooth mouthfeel and rich body.

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