About This Coffee
Diamond is a true jewel of a coffee. Expertly blended to present an impressively consistent cup profile from year to year and sourced from a variety of farms in Minas Gerais, Brazil, this coffee is a great addition to any drip or espresso blends.
The resulting blend is a well-balanced coffee that appeals to a wide range of palates. The result is a profile of a neutral and smooth coffee that will provide a solid base for other flavours in the blend to stand on. Diamond is NY2, which refers to the number of defects allowed in the green beans. Our partners employ strict sorting standards that ensure that few-to-zero defects remain by the time the beans reach our customers.
The NY2 designation assures us that there are no more than 4 visible beans with defects in a 200 gram sample. This small number of defects would be unnoticeable in most cups, ensuring a consistent and delicious flavour. This bean is screen 17/18, which is the second-largest possible bean size. The large, consistent beans are between 6.75 and 7 millimetres. This small variation among beans makes it easier to roast all beans to the same level.
Screen sizing is part of the final milling process in preparation for bagging and export. Milled green coffee is introduced to a large machine composed of multi-tiered tables, each with a ‘screen’, that sit on top of one another. In Brazil, the first screen has wires slightly less than 8 millimetres apart. When green coffee enters the machine, the tables vibrate, and all beans smaller than 8 millimetres fall through the screen to the next screen. This next screen size is slightly smaller than the previous and again, beans are shaken until all the smaller ones fall through. This process is repeated several times until the smallest size, 5.5 millimetres is reached. Beans are separated and graded according to the screen they did not fall through. Using this method, processors can achieve greater consistency in size and make roasting easier.
Finally, “ss” stands for “strictly soft” which means that the cup is stable and clean.
Coffee in Brazil
Just under 40% of all coffee in the world is produced in Brazil - around 3.7 million metric tons annually. With so much coffee produced, it’s no wonder that the country produces a wide range of qualities. Brazil produces everything from natural Robusta, to the neutral and mild Santos screen 17/18, to the distinctive Rio Minas 17/18. In recent years, Brazilian producers have also begun investing more heavily in specialty coffee production. Through our in-country partners in Brazil, including our sister company, we are able to provide a wide range of Brazilian coffees to our clients: from macrolot to microlot.
Today, the most prolific coffee growing regions of Brazil are Espirito Santo, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Bahia. Most Brazilian coffee is grown on large farms that are built and equipped for maximizing production output through mechanical harvesting and processing. The relatively flat landscape across many of Brazil’s coffee regions combined with high minimum wages has led most farms to opt for this type of mechanical harvesting over selective hand-picking.
In the past, mechanization meant that strip-picking was the norm; however, today’s mechanical harvesters are increasingly sensitive, meaning that farms can harvest only fully ripe cherries at each pass, which is good news for specialty-oriented producers.
In many cases and on less level sections of farms, a mixed form of ‘manual mechanized’ harvesting may be used, where ripe coffee is picked using a derriçadeira – a sort of mechanized rake that uses vibration to harvest ripe cherry. A tarp is spanned between coffee trees to capture the cherry as it falls.
With the aid of these newer, more selective technologies, there’s a growing number of farms who are increasingly concerned with – and able to deliver - cup quality.