Lourdes Fatima is the matriarch of a coffee-growing family that includes her two sons, Tiago and Carlo, and daughter-in-law. Tiago lives and works with her on their farm, Sitio Sao Pedro, and just across the road her other son Carlos and his wife Rosmiere live on their farm, Sitio Vargem Grande.

The younger generation is very interested in fermentation and has been training and experimenting to add value to their coffee. Tiago has been doing a lot of small experiments with cherry fermentation at different temperatures, before drying the cherries.

Mechanical and manual picking methods are used, depending on the harvest, and ripening of the cherries. In cases where they want to increase the cup quality or to create a special lot, they will use selective picking.

For this lot they have selectively picked the cherry, meaning they have only picked the ripe fruits. This is pretty unusual in Brazil as it increases the costs of production dramatically.

The cherries are then fermented whole for 72 hours in tanks. The team measure Brix and PH and keep a close eye on the temperature. For this lot, the temperature did not go above 38 degrees, Brix measured from cherry was 12, and the final PH was 4.

This coffee has, as a matter of fact, subtle anaerobic characteristics and it’s very sweet.

They then dry the coffee in the drying box.

In the cup:

Really well balanced. Cocoa nibs, sweet ripe fruits, red fruit finish. Smooth and syrupy.

Minimum resting period: 10 days from the roast date for espresso roast.