Brazil Pulped Natural

Pulped natural, called cereja descascado in Portuguese, sits between washed and natural processing. As Cafe Imports describes it, the fruit’s skin is removed within about 24 hours of harvest, but the mucilage stays on the seed while it dries on patios, typically 10-15 days, down to roughly 11% moisture. The method was developed in Brazil to shorten drying compared with a full natural, which lowers the risk of the over-fermented, spoiled lots a slow-drying cherry can produce. Perfect Daily Grind notes that in Brazil the lot usually behaves like a yellow honey, and that the amount of mucilage left is what separates one honey grade from another.

The three Coffee Review lots behind this page’s scores, all cupped for the May 2018 Brazil report, show a consistent shape: Flavor 9 across the board, Body 8 to 9, and Acidity/Structure at a steady 8, described as “roundly sweet-tart” rather than sharp. The notes cluster around cocoa and roasted cashew, with Auto Coffee’s Fazenda Recreio Bourbon adding blackberry, pear, and lavender and Corvus’s Ouro de Minas leaning lemon zest, cedar, and carnation.

That is the distinct appeal: a Brazil that keeps the chocolate-and-nut sweetness the origin is known for, with a soft, satiny to syrupy body, but with more floral and fruit detail than a plain washed lot usually offers. It is also a small sample from one tasting month, and a pulped natural from a different farm, variety, or roast will land somewhere else on that range.