Brazil Café Condado SWP Decaf

Cupping Notes:

Region: Minas Gerais
Farm: Café Condado
Variety: Bourbon, Catuaí
Altitude: 1100-1500+ masl
Processing: Honey and Dry Process then SWP Decaf

Farm Description:

This coffee comes to us from the region of Minas Gerais, in the Mantiqueira micro region, an area that boasts over 2000 smaller farms. It started off as a non-decaf coffee that cupped well, so we peeled off a few pallets specifically to send off for decaffeination. Most of our decafs are processed by Swiss Water Process in Canada, whose patented process uses only water to remove 99.9% of the caffeine content and leaving much of the volatile compounds intact. A bit about the three farms that went into this decaf: At around 30+ hectares each, the farm sizes aren't "small" when comparing with the small holder farms we buy from in Colombia for example. But they're small for Brazil, home to massive estates with fully mechanized harvesting operations. They still manually pick coffee as opposed to using machinery, allowing for better separation of ripe and underripe cherry. This is due in part to steep, hilly terrain, rather than the flat farm land that is easy to harvest mechanically. This also means good altitude for the region, the range being 1100 to 1500 meters above sea level. One of the farms is called Café Condado, who are also helping us with sourcing coffee in the region.

Description from Cafe Imports.