Brazil Yellow Bourbon

The coffee in one line

A classic Brazilian variety, dried whole in its fruit, roasted to a medium level. Sweet and gentle rather than bright: an easy coffee for every day.

A yellow cherry in a red-cherry world

Nearly all coffee cherries turn red when they ripen. Bourbon, one of the two old families that most Arabica coffee descends from, is normally red too. Yellow Bourbon is the exception: its cherries ripen to a golden yellow, the result of a quirk in a single gene that switches off the red pigment.

It is a Brazilian story. A yellow-fruited coffee tree was first recorded in 1871 near Botucatu, in the state of São Paulo. Around 1930, on a farm of red Bourbon trees near Pederneiras, a tree appeared that combined the yellow fruit with Bourbon's quality and yield, probably a natural cross between the two. The Agronomic Institute of Campinas studied it from 1942, selected the best lines, and released them to farmers in the 1950s.

For decades it stayed a curiosity. It yields less than modern Brazilian varieties and catches leaf rust more easily, and the yellow fruit is harder to judge for ripeness at picking. When the specialty coffee movement arrived, people rediscovered why farmers had kept it anyway: in the cup it is unusually sweet and aromatic. Yellow Bourbons now regularly win Brazil's Cup of Excellence competition, and the variety is grown for quality rather than volume.

Where it grows

This lot comes from several farms, which is the usual way Brazilian coffee is sold: an exporter combines lots from neighbouring growers to build a consistent, well-priced coffee. The farms sit between 800 and 1,200 metres, the typical altitude for Brazil, lower than in Colombia or Ethiopia. Lower altitude means a softer, less dense bean, which is part of why Brazilian coffees taste rounder and less sharp.

Yellow Bourbon's heartland is the south of Minas Gerais and the Mogiana region on the border of São Paulo and Minas, rolling hills of red soil where coffee has been grown since the nineteenth century.

Dried in the fruit

After picking, coffee has to be separated from the cherry around it. In the "natural" process used for this lot, nothing is removed first. The whole cherries are spread out on patios in the sun for two to three weeks and turned regularly, until the fruit has shrivelled into a dry husk and the seed inside is at about eleven percent moisture. Only then is the husk milled off.

While the fruit dries, its sugars and acids slowly seep into the seed, which is why naturals taste sweeter and heavier in body than washed coffees. Brazilian naturals in particular tend towards caramel, toffee, nuts and chocolate, with a soft, ripe fruitiness underneath rather than the loud berry flavours of an Ethiopian natural.

How I roasted it

I roast at home, in a small drum roaster, in batches of around 300 grams: one bag at a time.

I stopped at a medium roast, level 3 on my scale of 5. Lighter and the coffee can taste grassy and thin; darker and the caramel turns to burnt sugar and the fruit disappears. Medium keeps the sweetness and the nutty body, with enough brightness to stay interesting.

What to expect in the cup

Caramel and honey first, then something like roasted hazelnut or almond, and a quiet ripe fruitiness in the background that is more dried fig than fresh berry. Acidity is low and soft, the body is full and smooth, and the finish is sweet and clean. Nothing sticks out, which is the point: this is a coffee to drink every morning, not a coffee to think hard about.

Keeping it fresh

Coffee keeps releasing carbon dioxide for days after roasting. In the first three or four days it can taste a little flat or fizzy, so if the bag is very fresh, give it a short rest. The sweet spot is usually from about one to four weeks after the roast date. Keep the bag closed, away from heat and light, and grind right before brewing. Don't put it in the fridge.