Coffee in Brasil

Brewing Coffee in a Drip Coffee Machine

My friends and family enjoy coffee. Here are the type of coffee brewing machines I use.

They are drip machines that all brew coffee the same way. You put the coffee in the basket and cold water in the tank. The machine brings the coffee to the basket but boils it on the way to the basket. Therefore the coffee is always the same. They all have the feature that lets you pull the pot out safely while it is still brewing. That is great if you can't wait for the machine to finish brewing all the coffee.

Here are three coffee machines I have used. On the right is a Proctor Silex Machine from Canada. The middle machine is a Britania machine from Brasil and on the left is an Arno Machine, also from Brasil.

These three machines all work the same way but they also have some very different characteristics.

Here is a one cup black machine I used in Canada and brought to Brasil. We use it occasionally when we want just one cup of coffee.

Here is where we see the differences in the three big machines. The two on the left let you see how much water is in the tank. The one on the right has a Clock and Timer so you can fill the machine and it turns on at a predetermined time the next morning. I rarely used that feature.

This is the Proctor Silex Machine from Toronto, made in Mexico. I prefer my coffee machines to be white. But black seems to be the most prominent style available now. Of course the colour of the machine makes no difference in the taste of the coffee. This is the second Proctor Silex machine I have had. This one and its predecessor lasted a combined total of 28 years. This one finally died after two years in Brasil.

Notice the pot. It holds 12 Canadian cups or 6 mugs of coffee. The sides of the pot are straight and the pot is calibrated in cups although you cannot see the calibrations in this photo.

The coffee basket pulls out of the top of the machine and it carries a permanent filter or you can use standard paper filters. Some people use both together.

Here you can see the slot the basket slides into. Sometimes it was a little difficult to get it in right.

Water was poured into the tank on the top via this small door. If you were not careful water poured all over the counter.

Here is the top of the pot. Notice the large beak and the wide throat. This made it easy to pour without spilling.

When the Proctor Silex died we bought a new machine in Brasil. It was a Britania, made in China.

It opened easy to get access to the basket and was easy to clean.

We used the permanent filter from the other machin in this basket.

Notice that when the basket was removed you can see the pins that it hinged on.
Some times it was difficult to remove so I would bang on it to make it pop off the pins.

That caused a problem. See the rubber pipe inside. It feeds the water from the tank to the basket. After many bangs it finally popped out itself. We finally managed to get it back so the machine was still usable but we had to be very careful with it.

Notice the pot, it has straight sides like the Proctor Silex and a has large beak and a wide throat for pouring. It also held 6 large mugs of coffee. There are no calibrations on the pot.

The Britannia only lasted 6 or 7 months till we had to get a new machine. It died prematurely.

Then we bought this Arno Machine. It holds slightly less water than the others but it brews well.

This one opens real easy. The lid covers the tank and the basket. We use the old Permanent Filter from the Proctor Silex.

You can easily take the filter out for cleaning.

Or you can remove the entire assembly. Notice the jumbo pin it sits on. It comes off real easy for cleaning.

Here is the water tank. Notice the pipe is plastic and is an integral part of the machine. That is why we bought this machine. Our experience with the hose coming off the Britannia was the main reason we selected this machine.

Notice the small beak on the pot and also no throat. Therefore when we take the pot out to pour coffee into a cup we often spill coffee. This pot holds just 4 large mugs of coffee.

Notice that the sides of the pot slope. This makes it impossible to put under the tap on our water supply so we must fill cups and pour them into the machine. Also there are no calibrations on the pot.

Of course the other straight sided pots wont fit into the coffee machine. Now we have to see how long this machine lasts. After a while you get used to the design errors in the coffee machines.

If it was up to me I would have them redesign the Arno and have it use straight sided pots with a large beak and a wide throat.

You may have your own favourite coffee maker. They come in all kinds of styles, shapes and colours. The main thing is that they brew a great cup of coffee.

Now, sit back and enjoy a nice cup of coffee with me!

I drink two of these larger Canadian mugs for breakfast and two more in the late afternoon. Yes . . . . I love coffee. I used to like Tim Horton's Coffee in Canada, but I have become acclimated to Brasilian Coffee and I discovered recently discovered, upon receiving some Tim Horton's coffee from my friend in Toronto, I now prefer Brasilian coffee.

Photos by Urso Branco

Café Santa Rita - A New Package

Café Santa Rita, Roasted and Ground Coffee. (100% Arábica Coffee) Contains no Gluten

Santa Rita do Quartel has a new package for their coffee. The old one had the photo of the church on the label. The new one, the red package, has an interesting recipe on the back for Coffee Cake with Chocolate and they also have a recipe or your next cup of coffee.

This particular coffee is grown in Águas da Prata and has become my favourite and usual coffee to prepare at home.

On the back of the package it says:

The basic recipe

Use a standard measure of coffee. It is recommended 80g a 100g of coffee for one liter of coffee (5 to 6 tablespoons). The correct measure must be tested until you have found the one that suits your palate.

RECIPE - Coffee Cake with Chocolate

Beat the whites of 2 eggs until white as snow. Mix the egg yolks with 1 teacup of sugar and 1/2 teacup of butter and beat well until the mass is creamy. Add 1 cup of skimmed milk and 2 teacups of wheat flour. Continue beating per 10 minutes. Add 100g of semi-bitter chocolate (the recipe said melt the chocolate - we used powdered chocolate). Aadd 1 coffeecup of coffee and mix well. Later add 1 soup spoon of yeast in the mix and I beat quickly. Remove and add clear in snow, mixing delicately. Pour the mix in a cake mould that has been coated lightly with wheat flour. Bake in an average, prewarmed oven, for 1 hour, or until a stick in the cake comes out.

We baked this cake according to the recipe on the package. It was delicious.

To see the preparation of the cake see our other blog Canadian Brasilian Recipes

This English translation provides the correct details but not the colourful Brasileiro terminology.

Translations - Judy Kennedy

Photos by Urso Branco

Coffee growing along the Highway

Between Águas da Prata and São Roque, along side the Highway toward Poços de Caldas, you can see thousands of coffee trees from various plantations.

These trees are just outside the Águas da Prata town limit.

They grow for miles along the highway.

There are many moumtains and many coffee trees.

There is the Santa Rita Coffee Drying Patio down in the valley.

We could hear the workmen near the second building from the left shovelling the coffee, but they are hard to see.

The coffee trees grow right up to the train tracks. Then there is a service road higher up.

These are young trees just planted last year.

They cover the hillside.

Here they are closeup.

They are across the highway from the Santa Rita do Quartel plantation. See the church that is on the coffee label.

These are more trees across the highway, belonging to the Santa Rita do Quartel plantation.

There is a coffee shop, here, along the highway, that sells Santa Rita do Quartel coffee.

They also sell Santa Rita do Quartel coffe beans and wines.

This is the ground coffee sold in Supermarkets around Águas da Prata. See the little church on the label. This happens to be my personal favourite Brasilian Coffee.

Photos by Urso Branco

The Story of Coffee

Coffea arabica—Brazil

The plant - Coffee seed types

There are two main species of the coffee plant, the older one being Coffea arabica. Coffee is thought to be indigenous to south-western Ethiopia, specifically from Kaffa, from which it may have acquired its name.

For more on this subject visit Wikipedia at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee

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Everywhere you look around Águas da Prata, SP, Brasil, you see coffee trees by the thousands.

The View of this Coffee Plantation from Space - By Google Earth

Brasil is the largest producer of low grade arabica coffee, and a lot of Conilon robusta too. Brazil: there is some in almost every espresso you drink. In fact, some espresso is 90% Brazil. And there is Brazil in most canned coffee and big roasters' blends.

Photos by Urso Branco

Bolsa Oficial de Cafe

SANTOS, Brazil and the Bolsa Oficial de Cafe

Ask anyone in Brazil's biggest port to name the city's most beautiful building, and the answer will almost certainly be the Bolsa Oficial de Cafe -- Brazil's antique coffee exchange.

The Facade of the Brasil Coffee Exchange

Inaugurated in 1922 on the 100th anniversary of Brazilian independence, the bolsa was a testament to the power and wealth of Brazil's coffee barons. Within its interior marble halls, coffee brokers would buy and sell the precious beans, while outside, the building's eclectic architectural style and ornate clock tower made it stand out along the Santos waterfront.

The Entrance to the Bolsa

For the last 45 years, however, the building has gradually fallen into disrepair. These days, with most commodities trading done via computer, there's no longer any need for a physical Bolsa de Cafe. But there is a need to preserve history, and within a few months, Santos municipal authorities plan to inaugurate the bolsa as Brazil's first official coffee museum.

Windows in the Bolsa

Like the structure built to honor it, the Brazilian coffee industry -- braving freezes, droughts, hyperinflation and occasional political chaos -- has seen its share of ups and downs.

More Windows of the Bolsa

Now, as much of the nation struggles with high interest rates, climbing prices and rising unemployment in the aftermath of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's recent currency devaluation, coffee exporters are flying high. The devaluation actually helps them since they buy coffee in the local currency, reales, but sell in dollars.

In addition, coffee prices are expected to rise in the wake of the recent earthquake in Colombia, and the lingering effects of Hurricane Mitch, which last year wiped out coffee production in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The Auction Room

In January 1999, Brazil exported around 1.4 million 60-kilogram sacks of coffee beans -- a record high. Revenues came to $175 million, the highest level in a decade. That happened despite the fact that in January 1998, coffee prices were 65% higher, at $203.25 per sack. But that month, reports the Brazilian Association of Coffee Exporters (FEBEC), only 790,000 sacks were exported due to low yields -- a lingering effect of the 1994 freeze.

The ornate ceiling of the Bolsa Auction Room.

Brazil's total 1998-99 coffee harvest is expected to weigh in at 34.5 million 60-kg bags, a 23% increase over the previous season's harvest of 28 million sacks. However, exports will be worth only $2.1 billion, down 9.1% from the $2.4 billion generated in the 1997-98 season, said Jose Botafogo Goncalves, Brazil's minister of industry and commerce. He predicted that the 1999-2000 harvest would tumble 33% to just over 23 million bags, due to high temperatures and a drought in Espirito Santo and Bahia states.

At the moment, over three million Brazilians are involved in the coffee industry, which accounts for 5% of all exports by volume.

Brazil is the world's largest producer and exporter," said Oswaldo Aranha Neto, a Sao Paulo businessman who has been active in FEBEC for many years. "The tendency is to assume that when you're big, you don't produce quality. But in our case, it's definitely not true. We have exporters that are comparable to any in the world. In fact, the Cerrado region (of western Minas Gerais state) is becoming very famous for production."

Asked why Brazil does so little to promote its coffees around the world, he replied that "until now, there was no reason to invest in promotion, because Brazil didn't have its own labels. However, that is changing, and I think it's time to invest in the future."

One company, Ipanema Agro-Industria S.A. of Alfenas, in the state of Minas Gerais, is doing just that. Already one of the world's largest growers of arabica, the com-pany is expanding its coffee plantations from 14 million to 20 million plants. Ipanema processes its own coffee under the Fazenda de Minas brand.

Meanwhile, Brazil's largest producer of soluble coffee, Cacique, is building a new plant to make "freeze dry" coffee, which sells for 20% more than the common "spray dry" because it cools rather than heats the product -- preserving more of the aroma. Cacique plans to sell 2,200 metric tons a year of this new product to Japanese, European and eventually U.S. customers.
In the state of Bahia, farmers will produce 250,000 60-kg bags of robusta coffee on land previously used to grow cocoa. And that number could rise to a million bags within five years, say industry sources who estimate yields in Bahia at 25 bags per hectare. That compares favorably to Espirito Santo -- Brazil's leading robusta producer -- where yields hover around 15 bags per hectare.

The United States used to be Brazil's top customer for robusta coffee, but with the recent U.S. shift to lower-cost Asian producers, Argentina has replaced it as Brazil's most important robusta buyer.

Further south, in Santa Luzia -- just outside the metropolis of Belo Horizonte -- a little-known coffee company that got its start 30 years ago has in the last few years become Brazil's No. 1 capucchino producer. Cafe Tres Coracoes Ltda. boasts 250 employees and annual sales of around $130 million.

Kleber Delton Malta, national sales manager at Tres Coracoes, says ground coffee constitutes 85% of his business, and capucchino the remaining 15%. "Our company is all over Brazil," he says. "We have 53 distributors throughout the country."

In Portuguese, Tres Coracoes means "three hearts," and was given that name upon its establishment in 1970 by the company's founder, in honor of his three children. Today, says Mr. Delton, Tres Coracoes has 3.4% of Brazil's $3 billion domestic coffee market, buying 70% of its beans from small producers in the surrounding state of Minas Gerais rather than growing its own coffee.

Roughly half of the revenues of Tres Coracoes derive from Brazilian sales, and half from exports. Although the capucchino business is only 15% of what the company does, Tres Coracoes is Brazil's undisputed leader in capucchino, with a 50% share of the market.

"Brazilian people like capucchino strong in a small cup, with more sugar and cinnamon than in the United States, where capucchino is served in a big glass," says Delton Malta. "It's a breakfast drink for Brazilians, though it's frequently drunk after lunch and dinner too."

Being Brazil's capucchino king isn't enough for Tres Coracoes, however. Rodrigo Lapertosa, the company's new product manager, says "we'll soon start to sell powdered milk and a kind of coffee candy, and Cafe do Cerrado, considered the best coffee of Brazil, because the green beans are from the best region of Minas Gerais. Another new product is coffee in little sacks, known as Medida Certa."

Various Coffees produced in Brasil.

Journal of Commerce / February 25, 1999 - By Larry Luxner

Coffee has been Brazil's bonanza for over a century.

There are more than 100 Brazilian planters with individual incomes exceeding $50,000. Most of them spend three lavish months a year in Paris, three decorous months at their massive Baroque mansions in Rio de Janeiro, and the remaining half year supervising their estates. Most of these rich men hail from Sao Paulo, "The State With a Billion Coffee Trees," which produces over half the world's crop. Most of them believe firmly in the efficacy of a combination in restraint of trade to keep prices high. For over two decades they have been perfecting a combination—really a gigantic, cooperative Coffee Trust—which the world has found hard to beat. By systematic hoarding of the Sao Paulo crop in good years and judicious release of these hoardings in bad they have made each and every U. S. coffee-drinker spend about 50¢ more per year for his coffee than he otherwise would.

The U. S. coffee-drinker spends about $2.20 for raw coffee imported, pays a goodly extra sum to have it roasted, ground, tinned.

See: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,752223,00.html

Santos, city and port in southeastern Brazil, in São Paulo State, on the island of São Vicente, near São Paulo. Founded in 1543, Santos became a major port when the railway from the interior was completed in 1867. Population (1996 estimate) 412,243.

http://www.greatestcities.com/South_America/Brazil/Santos_city.html

For more information and photos, old and new, visit these two websites

Histórias e Lendas do Santos
http://www.novomilenio.inf.br/santos/h0084.htm

http://www.arcoweb.com.br/interiores/interiores26.asp

Photos by Elza Bruck, Professional Translator, São Paulo, Brasil

Coffee Drying Patios

Coffee Drying and Coffee Drying Patios in and near Águas da Prata

Before shipment, coffee is dried and a coffee moisture meter is used to measure coffee bean moisture. Coffee must be dried from approximately 60% moisture content to 11-12% moisture content. Coffee is typically dried on large patios made of asphalt or cement and then transferred to mechanical dryers.

The coffee on the drying patios is shifted every 30-40 minutes and is shaped into long rows of no more than 5 cm in height. Next to each row is open ground, which is warmed and dried by the sun. The coffee is then shifted onto the dry portion of the patio, and the section where it was previously is now allowed to dry in the sun. This helps accelerate the coffee drying process and prevents fermentation and moldy beans from developing. This method is widely used in Brazil, but less widely used in Guatemala or Costa Rica where the coffee is more often piled perpendicularly to the old piles.

Drying coffee solely by patio takes 6-7 days for washed coffees, 8-9 days for pulped naturals (semi-washed), and 12-14 days for natural (dry-processed) coffees. This is why coffee beans are typically dried on a patio until they reach a moisture content of 15% and are then transferred to mechanical dryers. Once the coffee reaches a 25% moisture content or less, it can be piled at night and covered with cotton cloths to allow the coffee to breath. If it rains, these piles can also be covered with plastic. Coffee should not be covered with burlap sacks since this will impart a distinct burlap flavor and aroma to the coffee.

Here is what they look like.

Large Coffee Drying Patios on the edge of town.