I have been purchasing coffee from Fazenda Cetec through our importing partners Minasul for a few years now, I can still remember the first time I cupped the very first sample of this lot all those years back and how it just blew my mind!
The work and love that Marcio and Heitor put into their coffees is incredible and really shows in the cup.
Marcio & Heitor quickly made a name for themselves at Fazenda Cetec with their sugar cane anaerobic fermentation process. A result of multiple years of experimenting and tracking each variable to its correspondent consequence. This year, with a new in-house developed software to monitor each fermentation along with larger tanks for repeatability, they prepared a single 600kg lot of the sugar cane anaerobic process. The trees harvested for this lot were IPR-103s and the cherries were immediately submerged in sugar cane juice in a large 5,000-litre fermentation tank. After 24hrs the cherries went through a pre-drying stage on raised beds for the next 20 days at a max temperature of 30 degrees C. Drying was then finalized in static box dryers, where hot air is blown through the bottom of the steel box, not overpassing the max temperature of 30 degrees C. After drying is complete, the lot is set aside for resting for another 30 days still in the hull.
Fazenda CETEC is a quirky-named and high-quality-focused coffee farm in the heart of Brazil's main coffee production state, Minas Gerias. CETEC stands for 'Center of Technology of the City of Lavras' which stands as a legacy to a technical school Heitor started with his late brother Izonel Junior a decade ago. The brothers turned to coffee farming at the same time and decided to apply a technical innovative approach to coffee processing to mirror the school. This way of farming has reaped benefits and CETEC has a reputation for accessible, full-flavoured, high-quality coffee.
Careful process control and innovation have set the foundations for the flavour profile of this micro-lot. To build ripe fruit like flavours after harvesting the brothers reduced the available oxygen in the pile of harvested coffee and held it in this condition for three days, monitoring pH carefully. Drying then took place in a drying system designed on CETEC where the fruit can dry in a more controlled and gentler environment.
