New arrival: Brazil Cerrado, the Campos Altos lot has landed
Our Brazil Cerrado is a regular in Quebec roasting drums: the coffee you keep in reserve, the one that never lets you down and keeps the week's espresso running. Good news a brand new lot just landed, this one from Campos Altos (lot 002/4542/0571), with a slightly sweeter profile and a variety worth pausing on: Arara.
Cerrado Mineiro, Brazilian coffee's first denomination of origin
Cerrado Mineiro isn't just a name on a bag. It's an officially demarcated territory, 55 municipalities across the Triângulo Mineiro, Alto Paranaíba and north-west Minas Gerais, more than 210,000 hectares of coffee and in 2013 it became the first Brazilian coffee region to earn a denomination of origin. The same kind of legal protection a French wine appellation carries: if the bag says Cerrado Mineiro, that's genuinely where it came from.
Campos Altos is one of those municipalities, and its name says it all: "high fields". The local climate does half the work : hot, wet summers for flowering, cool, dry winters for harvest and drying. It's precisely that well-defined dry season that lets Brazil sun-dry its coffee without gambling on the weather.
Catuai and Arara: the safe bet and the newcomer
Everyone knows Catuai: the quintessential Brazilian variety, productive, reliable, consistent year after year. Arara is rarer in our bags. It's a natural cross between Yellow Catuaí and Obatã, spotted by chance in a Fundação Procafé trial plot, then evaluated for more than fifteen years before being officially released in 2012. The result: big yellow cherries, remarkable immunity to coffee leaf rust, and above all lovely sweetness in the cup. It's the one bringing the extra fruit to this lot.
In the cup
Round, sweet, without a rough edge, Brazil at its best, and a fully paid-up member of our Chocolatey & nutty family:
- Notes: caramel, milk chocolate, stone fruit
- Process: pulped natural (semi-washed, honey)
- Varieties: Catuai, Arara
- Region: Cerrado Mineiro, Minas Gerais · Altitude: 1,000 to 1,200 m
- Harvest: 2025-2026 · Lot: 002/4542/0571
Our roasting tips
This is the most forgiving coffee in the shop: low acidity, generous body, plenty of sugar. It forgives a lot, which makes it both a great learning bean and a great production bean.
At a medium roast, caramel and milk chocolate step to the front while the stone fruit stays audible in the finish: perfect as an everyday filter. Pushed a little further (medium-dark), it becomes the backbone of a classic espresso : body, crema, sweetness and the ideal base for a house blend you then brighten with something juicier. One caveat: the mucilage left on the bean caramelizes fast, so hold back the power at the end of the roast to avoid scorching.
Discover the Brazil Cerrado - Campos Altos lot available in 5 lb and 15 lb bags (pick the sizes marked 002/4542/0571). Ça va Torquer!