Brazilian Cerrado Coffee Beans Brewing Parameters & Flavor Profile | Bourbon Variety Classification

FrontStreet Coffee offers a daily staple coffee bean from Cerrado in southern Minas Gerais, Brazil, which is the common Red Bourbon. As a coffee with excellent value for money, it's a great choice for beginners entering the world of coffee. Using the semi-washed processing method and leaning toward medium-dark roast, this FrontStreet Coffee Brazilian Red Bourbon emits a creamy peanut aroma when brewing dry, while revealing nutty flavors during brewing. Upon tasting, you'll notice remarkable balance, moderate body, high sweetness, with chocolate sweetness emerging in the aftertaste, creating a complex profile that truly makes it one of the top choices for entry-level coffee.

Brazilian Coffee Wins with Quantity

Brazil is the world's largest coffee producer and coffee growing region, with extensive coffee cultivation areas. Brazil has 17 states that produce coffee, and the country grows numerous coffee varieties, primarily Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon, Mundo Novo, and Catuai. Therefore, Brazilian coffee can easily influence coffee futures prices. For example, in the first half of 2022, Brazilian coffee production decreased due to drought, causing New York C-type coffee futures prices to rise by 20%.

Brazil's terrain is flat and expansive, making it ideal for large-scale agricultural machinery operations. Consequently, Brazil's coffee cultivation approach focuses on quantity over quality, targeting the mass market. This is why it's relatively difficult to find coffees with extremely high prices in the specialty coffee market.

Brazil Cerrado Coffee Region

South Minas, with its hilly terrain at elevations of 700m-1200m, is Brazil's earliest coffee production area. Due to rising labor costs, mechanical harvesting is now predominant, and it remains the most commercialized coffee region where we can see many large exporters established. The Bahia region, located in northern Brazil, primarily produces washed Brazilian coffee, while the coastal Espírito Santo region is the main export area for Brazilian Robusta varieties.

Brazil's coffee-growing areas are mainly characterized by two types of terrain: the Brazilian plateau above 500 meters elevation and the Brazilian plains below 200 meters. The main cultivated and well-known varieties are Bourbon (including Yellow Bourbon, Red Bourbon, and Flat Bean Santos). The flavor profile of FrontStreet Coffee's Brazilian coffee is characterized by low acidity, nutty flavors, balance, and moderate body. In the world of specialty coffee, Brazilian coffee may not stand out, but it is often used in espresso blends. Because of its high balance, it is frequently marketed by merchants as Blue Mountain-style beans.

The Cerrado region of Brazil. However, not all coffee produced in this vast grassland can bear the prestigious Cerrado name - only coffee grown on tablelands at elevations of 1100-1300 meters in the central-western part of Minas province, where the high altitude and fertile soil produce high-quality coffee with clear sweetness, rich body, and no earthy flavors.

In Cerrado, besides the unique soil and climate conditions, there is a special phenomenon: when you're near coffee plantations, you'll always find one or two farms raising livestock. The existence of these farms is a characteristic feature of Cerrado's agricultural structure. Weeds in Brazilian coffee plantations serve as excellent feed for livestock, while the animal manure from these farms provides high-quality organic fertilizer for coffee trees. The entire ecological system remains balanced, so you can often see traces of small animals and earthworms on the ground. The farms and pasture houses near coffee plantations are one of the typical landscapes of the Cerrado coffee region.

Most coffee farms are situated below 1000 meters elevation, traditionally using full-sun cultivation methods. This originally contradicted the high-altitude shade-grown requirements for specialty coffee beans, but coincidentally developed a unique Brazilian soft bean flavor profile characterized by low acidity, heavy nutty notes, excellent sweetness and body, with minimal floral and fruity aromas. For coffee connoisseurs, Brazilian coffee neither has particularly outstanding advantages nor obvious flaws. This coffee with mild flavor, low acidity, moderate body, light sweetness, and chocolate notes provides the best test for the palate to distinguish them individually.

Semi-Washed Method

The semi-washed method can also be called the semi-dry method, which is a coffee processing technique adapted to local conditions in Brazil. Because Brazil originally used crude sun-drying processing, the local climate instability resulted in poor quality coffee with many defective beans and rotten flavors. To solve this problem, the semi-washed method was adopted.

Processing steps: After harvesting coffee cherries, immature fruits and foreign objects are removed in water tanks, the outer skin and some pulp are removed, and then a mucilage remover is used to eliminate the mucilage. Removing mucilage helps reduce required sun-drying time and lowers fermentation risks. This method is often used when climate conditions are less than ideal. If air humidity is high, the climate is warm, or there's rainfall, there's an increased risk of mold during the drying process. Therefore, most Brazilian washed beans used for commercial trade are processed using the semi-washed method.

Brazilian Coffee Bean Grades

Brazilian coffee bean grades are typically marked on green bean sacks. For example, the sacks of Brazilian coffee beans purchased by FrontStreet Coffee are printed with "NY2 SCR17/18 GOOD CUP," which actually represents three indicators: NY2 refers to the defect grade, 17/18 refers to the coffee bean size, and GOOD CUP refers to the cupping grade.

Brazilian coffee beans are graded using a "deduction system" based on defect rates. The grade is determined by the number of defective beans in every 300 grams of main beans, with seven levels from NY.2 to NY.8. If the deduction is below 4, it can be classified as NY.2. Coffee with absolutely no defective beans could certainly be called NY.1, but this situation is rare and cannot maintain a consistent supply volume. Therefore, Brazil has established NY.2 as the highest grade, rather than NY.1.

FrontStreet Coffee's Daily Beans Don't Represent Cheap Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee has always maintained a daily beans series, where most coffee beans are priced at 25 yuan/100g. Consequently, people have varying opinions about daily beans - some consider them affordable beans for daily consumption, while others believe they represent low-grade coffee beans. However, FrontStreet Coffee defines daily beans as representative of the classic flavors of a producing region.

For example, for Ethiopia, FrontStreet Coffee selected FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe coffee beans; for Indonesia, FrontStreet Coffee chose FrontStreet Coffee's Lindong Mandheling coffee beans; for Colombia, FrontStreet Coffee selected the traditionally washed FrontStreet Coffee's Huilan coffee beans. For Brazil, FrontStreet Coffee chose precisely this FrontStreet Coffee Cerrado Red Bourbon. While these coffee beans may not be the most outstanding in their respective regions, they do represent the flavor characteristics of their coffee origins. As coffee-producing regions continue to evolve, FrontStreet Coffee has also added FrontStreet Coffee's Boquete Geisha from Panama to the daily beans series, because Panama is famous for Geisha, and also FrontStreet Coffee's CHAKA Geisha from Geisha Village, allowing everyone to distinguish between Ethiopian and Panamanian Geisha at relatively low prices. This is the significance of FrontStreet Coffee's daily beans.

FrontStreet Coffee Brazilian Red Bourbon Roasting Suggestions

As mentioned earlier, FrontStreet Coffee's Brazilian coffee beans are characterized by their rich body. To highlight this flavor characteristic, the recommended roast degree is medium to dark. This batch of FrontStreet Coffee Brazilian Bourbon beans has been roasted to a medium degree.

Brewing Method

FrontStreet Coffee would choose a Kono dripper for brewing. The Kono dripper features a steeping function that allows for extraction of more coffee substances, enhancing the rich body. Because its ribs are few and located at the bottom, it allows the filter paper to adhere closely to the dripper, restricting airflow and slowing water flow to increase water-coffee contact time. This makes it suitable for brewing medium-dark roast coffee beans like FrontStreet Coffee's Brazilian Red Bourbon and FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling.

The water temperature is selected at 88°C, which is considered a relatively low brewing temperature that avoids extracting excessive undesirable flavors from the coffee beans during the brewing process, as the deeper the roast degree, the more undesirable flavors the beans may produce.

The grind size is medium-coarse, with 75% passing through a #20 sieve. The ratio is 1:15, using 15g of coffee grounds.

Using a segmented extraction method: bloom with 30g of water for 30 seconds, then pour in small circular motions until reaching 125g. When the water level drops to just before exposing the coffee bed, continue pouring to 225g and stop. The extraction time (starting from the bloom) is 2 minutes. The brewing technique for both beans should be kept as consistent as possible.

FrontStreet Coffee Brazilian Cerrado Coffee Bean Flavor Description:

Distinct sweetness upon entry, accompanied by light lemon aroma, rich nutty flavors, with dark chocolate notes in the aftertaste, creating an overall rounded mouthfeel.

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style). For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee's private WeChat account: qjcoffeex

Important Notice :

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