How Are Brazilian Green Coffee Beans Graded: Understanding the Brazilian Coffee Classification System

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FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Brazilian Coffee Grading

The management methods of coffee bean origins vary, with some composed of small and large farms, while others are dominated by professional entrepreneurs. Even coffee from the same region can have different qualities and flavors. To indicate the quality of coffee and facilitate trade, "coffee grading" was established.

Brazil is another special case. As the world's largest coffee-producing country, Brazil's large production volume and numerous growing areas make grading quite complicated, making it unsuitable to adopt a single grading standard. Therefore, Brazil simultaneously uses multiple grading methods, with defect bean ratio, sieve size, and cupping tests all applied in the Brazilian coffee bean grading process.

This is the earliest grading method, still used in many regions of Brazil. The identification method involves randomly selecting a 300-gram sample and placing it on black paper, as black paper best avoids glare. Then professional graders carefully examine the sample to identify defective beans and accumulate different scores based on the types of defects. For example, one black bean counts as 1 point, one small stone counts as 1 point, one large stone counts as 5 points, five broken beans count as 1 point, five insect-damaged beans count as 1 point, two sour beans count as 1 point, one large dried husk counts as 1 point, two medium dried husks count as 1 point, three small dried husks count as 1 point, five unshelled beans count as 1 point, three shell beans count as 1 point, and so on. After identification, the accumulated defect points determine the grade as NY2~NY8, with no NY1.

Cupping testing is one of the characteristics of Brazilian coffee grading.

So-called cupping testing involves evaluating the aroma and taste of coffee beans after they are roasted, ground, and steeped in hot water (around 90 degrees Celsius). It is mainly divided into 6 levels: Strictly Soft (extremely mild), Soft (mild), Softish (slightly mild), Hard (harsh), Rio (faint iodine taste), and Rioy (strong iodine taste).

The first three levels can be collectively called "mild," with balanced sweet and sour flavors and a mild taste. The latter three have slightly inferior taste quality, with the last two being the worst. The iodine taste appears because the soil near Rio de Janeiro has a strong iodine flavor, which gets absorbed when coffee cherries fall to the ground during harvesting.

In Brief

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