Main Coffee Varieties of Brazil & How to Properly Enjoy Brazilian Black Coffee

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

FrontStreet Coffee's Introduction to Brazilian Coffee

"Cafezinho" is Brazilians' favorite small cup of strong black coffee. In Brazil, offering someone a cafezinho is both a custom and an important etiquette of hospitality, much like the Chinese tradition of serving tea. Brazil is the world's largest coffee producer, known as the "Kingdom of Coffee." According to legend, coffee was first discovered by an old Ethiopian shepherd from the Kaffa region. After his flock ate red berries from a bush and showed unusual excitement and activity, he was surprised and tried a few berries himself, becoming incredibly excited and dancing with joy. This is how coffee came into being.

The Catuai Variety

The Catuai variety features small, sturdy plants with green leaf tips and medium to small bean sizes. Between 5 degrees north and south latitude, it's generally grown at altitudes above 1,600 meters. When moved to 5-15 degrees latitude, it's typically planted at altitudes above 1,300 meters. At latitudes above 15 degrees, it's suitable for altitudes around 1,000 meters.

This coffee variety has poor resistance to leaf rust, nematodes, and berry diseases, and its yield isn't particularly high. Beyond its superior flavor, it doesn't seem to have many advantages.

Catuai comes from the Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC) in São Paulo, Brazil. It's a hybrid result of Mundo Novo and Caturra varieties. Because of its compact plant size, it can be planted densely in large-scale cultivation, with a planting density almost twice that of Bourbon coffee. This makes its yield much higher than Bourbon varieties. Additionally, although its disease and pest resistance is not strong, the plant's shape advantages make manual pest and disease management relatively easier.

Catuai means "very good" in Portuguese. Today, people consider Catuai variety coffee to have good (not exceptional) cup quality. It comes in both yellow cherry and red cherry varieties. It was initially created in 1949 by crossing yellow Caturra with Mundo Novo, originally called H-2077.

The variety was officially released in Brazil in 1972, following pedigree selection (selecting individual plants through continuous generations) and has been widely cultivated there since. Today in Brazil, multiple Catuai production lineages are available; some have very high production efficiency. However, Catuai varieties transferred from Brazil to Central American growing regions seem to be less productive. For example, research has found that Catuai introduced and cultivated in Honduras and Costa Rica shows no significant yield advantages compared to Caturra.

Catuai also comes in red fruit and yellow fruit varieties, with the red fruit variety being cleaner than the yellow one. Catuai, Caturra, Mundo Novo, and Bourbon are the four main coffee varieties in Brazil.

FrontStreet Coffee's Mission

In summary: FrontStreet Coffee is a dedicated coffee research house, happy to share coffee knowledge with everyone. We share without reservation to help more friends fall in love with coffee. Every month, we hold three coffee promotion events with significant discounts because FrontStreet Coffee wants to let more friends enjoy the best coffee at the lowest possible price. This has been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for the past six years!

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473