São Bento Estate Whole Bean 250 g

Description

Fazenda São Bento sits in the Cerrado Mineiro, a plateau in Minas Gerais where the dry season arrives on time and the cherries ripen together. The lot is a pulped natural — the skin comes off, the mucilage stays on, and the beans dry on the farm’s patios under a canopy they call the estufa — “the greenhouse”, though nothing grows in it.

Roasted medium, it lands where most Brazilians want to be: hazelnut, cocoa, a little baked apple as it cools. It doesn’t turn flat under milk, which is why it has been our house espresso for three seasons — “o café da casa”, as Márcio, who runs the mill, puts it.

Brewing: 18 g in, 36 g out, around 27 seconds. On filter, go a touch coarser than you would for an Ethiopian and drop the water to 92 °C — the sugars are already there, and more heat only pushes them towards ash… Whole bean, 250 g, roast date printed on the back.