Brazilian Sítio Maranhão
Brazilian Sítio Maranhão
Some coffees have a very short shelf life, whereas Maranhao, just seems to change a little during the season. Oddly, the popularity of Maranhao increases as that “very-non-standard” Brazilian red-fruity acidity subsides and is replaced by more of that very popular soft cocoa and chocolate.
It is always a privilege to recommend a friend’s coffee, with no exaggeration. You will not meet harder working more passionate (people) coffee growers. They are simply devoted to growing beautiful coffee.
Now my job. To introduce this delicious single-farm coffee to you, which I am completely involved and biased about!
Top Trumps
Farm: Brazilian Sítio Maranhão
Farmer/family: Jose & Claiton Delgado,
Region: Caldas, Minas Gerais, South Minas
Process: Pulped Natural
Varietals: Red Catucai and Yellow Catucia
Roast: One Roast
Altitude: 1100-1200 Meters above sea level.
Cup Potential 🍜
|Aromatics: Chocolate, malty and a promise of Fruit| Body: Creamy (buttery)| Acidity: Curranty|
Aromatically, you just know this is going to be chocolatey. From the off this old favourite is chocolate fronted, with a promise of red fruit. This is gentle on the palate. Dark chocolate and cocoa dominate, with a sweet white fruity finish. On cooling the fruit is shy, but very much “there”, amongst the cocoa and chocolate. As the coffee nears ambient, little red fruity tannins remain as a reminder of what new crop juiciness lies ahead.
60g of coffee per litre is a great place to start.
Espresso Recipe for this roast:
Depending on the milk you use and your cup sizes, you may wish to ignore the following! This is my go-to recipe for Brazilian Sítio Maranhão.
Base Brew temp: 93-94C
Dose: 16-18g
Milk-based drinks: 19g coffee in 32g (ish) in about 28+ seconds
Espresso: 16-18g of coffee 40-50g espresso liquid 30+ seconds
This is where the juice is. I am struggling to find fault in this.
9oz milk-based drink: This is like drinking maltesers.
6oz milk-based drink. This is just a lovely balanced, delicious chocolatey number with a little fruit in there.
When brewing this super-fresh, you might want to make the shots a little shorter in liquid volume.
Farm Stuff
Sitio Maranhao is a small farm, not far from the entrance to Pocos de Caldas, in Minas Gerais. The move to specialty coffee has been over recent years and is painstaking work. The coffee harvest is only part of the years’ work. As soon as the harvest is complete there is a whole host of other things to attend to, but at least the workload reduces a little. Between Claiton and Jose, they are ingenious and very resourceful, making systems where they re-use motors for different parts of the coffee processing.
All of the pickings are selective, meaning that every bean that you buy has been picked by a member of the Delgado family when it is ripe. There can be 4 or 5 passes (pickings) across the harvest, none of the automated machine scale here. On top of this, I doubt a harvester could even make it up the steep, steep slopes.
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