About This Coffee
Mair Sebastião Hieda grew up on a coffee farm in Paraná. After an intense frost when Mair was 17 damaged the trees and caused money issues that led to his father selling the farm. Mair left college, where he was studying agronomy and got a job as a real estate broker. He met and married his wife, a banker, in Curitiba. She is also the daughter of a coffee producer. They lived and worked in Curitiba for 30 years but, when his mother in law died in 2013, the pair decided to move to Minas Gerais and take of her family’s farm.
It had been over 30 years since Mair had worked on a coffee farm, but it felt like coming home. However, there were a lot of new knowledge and techniques that Mair wanted to learn about specialty coffee so he began taking courses and getting help from Associação dos Produtores do Alto da Serra (APAS). He continues advancing his learning whenever he can and his hard work is evident in the superb taste of his coffee. This Pulped Natural lot is fruity and sweet with stone fruits and cream.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Unusually for Brazil, coffee is selectively hand harvested. Ripe, red cherry is laid in thin layers on patios to sun dry. Cherry is raked frequently to ensure even drying. It takes up to 17 days for cherry to dry.
About APAS
The Associação dos Produtores do Alto da Serra (APAS) was founded in 2006, to help producers organize in a collective way. Working together helps producers improve coffee quality, increase profitability and provide a better quality of life. In 2013, with help from SEBRAE and EMATER, the association achieved its Fairtrade certification, making it possible to reach many of their goals. In 2019, they started Alto da Serra Producers' Cooperative (APASCOFFEE) with the intention of streamlining the marketing process and exporting with an emphasis on specialty and certified coffee.
Topazio
Topázio (also Topacio) was bred in Brazil the 1960s by the Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC). The variety is a cross between Mundo Novo and Red Catuaí. That offspring is then crossed again with Catuaí. The resulting plant is short with high reproductive capacity and a long lifecycle. Its cherry is yellow with good uniformity.
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.