About This Coffee
Since Carlos Henrique Santana Máximo inherited Fazenda Acalanto and his other farm, Fazenda Gavião, from his father in 2017, he’s been focused on innovative specialty production. With help from his wife and her family, who are all coffee producers, he transitioned the farm to focus on specialty lots, including new and exceptional coffee varieties like the Arara in this lot.
Arara is a newer variety from Brazil that’s prized for its high scoring cup combined with resilience and productivity. The varieties is a cross between Yellow Catuai and Obatã, itself a Timor hybrid.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Due to their large size, most Brazilian farms are built and equipped for 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, this 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 derricadeira – 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.
After harvest, cherry is typically laid to dry in thin layers on patios. Under direct sunlight, cherry is carefully monitored and turned frequently.
About Arara
Arara is a newer variety from Brazil that’s prized for its high-scoring cup profile combined with resilience and productivity. The variety is a cross between Yellow Catuai and Obatã, which is itself a Timor hybrid. It grows as a yellow fruit with large-sized beans. The variety has high resistance to Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR), good productivity, high quality potential and compact trees that make it easier to harvest. Since its release, competitions have seen this coffee top out at low 90s cup scores.
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.