Some first-hand insights on Brazil coffee processing.
Early on in my coffee career I was tasked with supplying marketing material to the green buyer for a well-known Bay Area roastery who had just purchased a Brazilian coffee lotCoffee can be separated by lot in any number of ways usually by the processor to distinguish one area of the farm, a particular altitude, particular trees, a... from us. I sent him our profile of the farm, attached a single photo from our library, and figured that was that. Fast-forward to a few months later, I wound up seated next to this buyer at an SCASCA is the newly formed global coffee association for Specialty Coffee. The former organization called SCAA was incorporated into the new group. The main commercial coffee group is... event (my first Expo, yay!). It was the first time we’d met face to face, and I was eager to make the in-person connection following our exchange over the BrazilBrazil is a coffee giant . As Frank Sinatra sang, "they grow an awful lot of coffee in Brazil".: Brazil is a coffee giant . As Frank Sinatra... coffee he’d bought. I nervously introduced myself, and as I thrust my hand out to shake his, he leaned in and said, “my grandma could’ve picked a better photo than what you sent me”.
I suppose that was meant to be an insult (to me, and to grandma!), and looking back at the picture I sent, I sort of understand his disappointment (pictured below). The photo captures a receiving tank filled with coffee cherries at a wide mix of ripeness, some clearly past their prime while others bright green, with many leaves and twigs mixed in. While the colorful contrast is quite beautiful IMO, it subverts our expectations of we may think of as “best practices” for post harvest processingThe removal of the cherry and parchment from the coffee seed.: Coffee is either wet-processed (also called washed or wet-milled) or dry-processed (also called wild, natural or natural..., and it’s certainly not the image that comes to mind when you think of “Specialty Coffee”.
Rest assured, the coffee in the photo underwent intensive sortingCoffee is sorted by size, density, and color in its preparation for export.: Sorting refers to several steps performed in the preparation of coffee for export. Coffee is... before we purchased the final green, and was fairly uniform by the time we received it. Had it not, the offer sample would have contained so many physical defects that it would be rejected it on site!
The fact of the matter is, ripeness is not considered when picking coffee in Brazil, overlooked in the service of time and efficiency. Instead, that responsibility happens later in the processing chain. It’s a topsy-turvy way of managing coffee quality, but it’s what happens when labor comes at such a premium that innovation and mechanization are needed to keep coffee profitable. Having just returned from a Brazil buying trip, I’m here to tell you that this is what Specialty CoffeeSpecialty coffee was a term devised to mean higher levels of green coffee quality than average "industrial coffee" or "commercial coffee". At this point, the term is of... production in Brazil looks like, and an important reality that is captured in that photo.
When you visit Brazilian coffee farms during the harvest season, one of the first things you might notice is the mix of cherryEither a flavor in the coffee, or referring to the fruit of the coffee tree, which somewhat resembles a red cherry.: Either a flavor in the coffee, or... ripeness on the trees. From unripe and bright green, to wilted dark purple cherries that have dried on the branches, it’s a sight I’ve never seen anywhere else. Most farmers only harvest their trees 1 or 2 times during the season, so they want to make sure all the coffee has ripened before doing so, even if it means letting much of it go far beyond its peak.
There are probably examples of this in other origins, but it was a first for me. In most other countries we buy from, you see farmers picking their coffee multiple times during the harvest season, discriminately selecting only ripe cherries, and leaving behind the green coffeeGreen coffee refers to the processed seed of the coffee tree fruit. Coffee is a flowering shrub that produces fruit. The seeds of the fruit are processed, roasted,... so that it can continue to ripen. It’s an important first step in quality control, and one that involves a lot of hand labor that is just too expensive in Brazil.
Instead, harvesting is managed by either mechanical harvesters, or what they call “hand machines”. In both cases, the goal is to strip pick all of the coffee cherries in one fell swoop.
Mechanical harvesters come in different sizes, but generally function the same. They sort of look like a giant metal tunnel on wheels. The harvesters are driven over the wide rows of coffee shrubs, “picking” the cherries as they go. Inside the “tunnel” are two large columns that rotate, each with long nylon rods that agitate the coffee shrubs as they pass through, shaking the cherries from the branches. The coffee is then funneled to either side of the harvester, and moved to a collection tank by an auger and conveyor system.
It’s an incredible sight, and when I first saw this in action, I thought the machinery would surely destroy the trees! Not only did they come out the other side relatively unharmed, the harvester left very few, if any, coffee behind. Some even prune the trees as they pass through, leaving behind a row of well kempt coffee shrubs with topiary-like appeal.
One major upside of using mechanical harvesters is that you can scale farm production without having to scale labor. For example, we saw 100 hectare farms in Brazil harvested by 1-2 people driving mechanical harvesters. Contrast this with a 100 hectare farm in NicaraguaNicaraguan coffees from the Segovia, Jinotega, Ocotal and Matagalpa regions are nice balanced cups. They often possess interesting cup character along with body and balance, outperforming many other... that requires 100+ people to pick during the harvest peak.
Cost of labor is the root of both systems. The reality for the Nicaraguan coffee farmer is that they rely on an informal workforce to pick coffee for low wages, generally made up of the local indigenous population and migrant workers. Brazil, on the other hand, has very strict regulations around hiring farm labor that involves contracts assuring monthly salary minimums, and even health insurance. In a word, costs of labor are very high for the Brazilian farmer, pushing them to find savings in a much more technified system.
Our recent video post of a mechanical harvester in action brought lots of interest and comments. One person asked if we might expect to see this in other coffee countries soon. As it’s getting tougher to find people willing to pick coffee, it’s a question worth asking. For big driving mechanical harvesters like these, I think the answer is ‘no’, simply because of their size. For one, it requires a lot of room between the rows of coffee to accommodate them (roughly 9′). You literally have to plant your farm around them. Also, these machines can’t be driven on steep terrain. It wouldn’t work in steep growing regions of GuatemalaGuatemalan coffee is considered a top quality coffee producer in Central America. Due to our proximity to Guatemala, some of the nicest coffees from this origin come to... or ColombiaColombian coffee is highly marketed and widely available in the US. They have been largely successful at equating the name Colombian Coffee with "Good" Coffee. This is half-true...., for example, or even parts of Brazil, as we saw on our trip.
Another widely used harvester in Brazil is the vibrating “hand harvester”. These consist of a long pole that has something like an inverted rake on the end, but with fewer finger-like tines. Those tines vibrate, and as workers run the rakes over the long coffee branches, they agitate the cherries to the ground where they are collected. The process is much faster than strip picking by hand, and while requires more people to perform than the driving harvesters, a large estateA "coffee estate" is used to imply a farm that has its own processing facility, a wet-mill. In Spanish this is called an Hacienda. A Finca (farm) does... can still be picked by just a few people. These hand-held machines are ideal for smaller farms, or those that are not planted with the larger machines in mind.
Before I get too caught up in the complexities of processing coffee in Brazil (Tom has a more in depth, and insightful piece on the subject HERE), I want to circle back to our August trip. There’s a lot more to see than just harvesting coffee, after all.
All of our travel was in the state of Minas Geraís, which alone accounts for more than half of Brazil coffee exports. There’s relatively good altitude in the Minas region, with the eastern side of the state cut through by the Espinhaço mountain range that stretches as far North as neighboring coffee-growing state of Bahía. You find concentrations of coffee farms along this stretch, and it’s just West of here where most of our visits were focused.
The first half of our trip followed a loop from São Sebastião do Paraíso, through Serra da Canastra region, up to Patrocínio and back. Along this route we had the opportunity to visit with farmers whose coffees we’ve purchased for several years, but whom we’ve never met (like Jose Gomes, Amarildo Jose Borges, and Luis Otavio Turati).
The topography is more “rolling hills” than steep terrrain, and every farm we stopped at used the driving type mechanical harvesters. Most of the farms employed some kind of irrigation infrastucture too, some with very impressive water collection and filtration systems.
The latter half of our trip was spent in, and around, Santa Rita do Sapucaí region, where we’ve been buying coffee for the last few years. Most recently, we’ve been working with a local exporter in Santa Rita, called Agrorigem, run by local 3rd generation coffee farmer named Daniele Alkmin.
Dani got her start in coffee by helping her father, Carlos Henrique, at their farm, Santa Rita de Cassia. It was only in the last couple of years that she decided to add “coffee exporter” to her repertoire. Her enthusiasm for the coffees and farmers from her town is immediately apparent when you meet her, and she’s made it her mission to not only export her own coffee, but also to act as a sort of representative of the coffees from Santa Rita.
It’s no wonder Dani was elected president of “Mulheres Empreendedoras do Cafe”, a local women’s coffee association that includes all parts of the chain, not just farmers. This year we were fortunate to buy coffee from several association members, including Dani, and she took us to visit a few of their farms during our trip.
Coffee farms in Santa Rita lie in stark contrast to the farms we’d visited earlier in our trip. They look a lot more like your typical Central American farm, planted on steeper hillsides, the rows of trees much closer together. Because of this, they have to be harvested using the hand machines, which means a higher cost of production than those harvested by the larger harvesters. While most farms were still 100+ hectaresWe use this metric term often to discuss the size of coffee farms. 1 Hectare = 10000 Square Meters = 2.471 acres: We use this metric term often..., we saw a lot of small producer farmers too, in particular around the Carmo de Minas region (only an hour from Santa Rita). And by “small”, I mean 1 hectare small!
One such farm was run by a woman named Marta Vanilda Teixeira, and her husband Evandro. They manage their 1 hectare farm like any other small producers we work with; on their own, and without any outside labor to pick coffee during the harvest season. Last year they produced 67 bags, 30 of which were Specialty, which we bought. It was one of the best coffees in last year’s shipment, and we were lucky enough to buy their total Specialty output again this year (24 bags).
So circling back to my story in at the lead: Could this person’s grandma have picked a better photo than what I sent? Perhaps he was right. While I still stand by the image being an accurate image of Brazilian Specialty coffee, there’s definitely more aesthetically pleasing imagery in the coffee lands of Brazil, which I saw first hand. —Dan
Here’s a small selection of photos from our August trip highlighting some of the beautiful places and faces we visited. Click to enlarge and read the captions.
