Today we visited Monte Alegre Coffee with 2200 hectares of coffee plantation, containing 8 million coffee plants they are one of the largest single coffee producers in Brazil. Above you can see one of the manual coffee pickers clearing leaves and twigs from his picked coffee cherries before adding them to his sack - to do this he literally tosses the berries with this large circular mesh - and then catches them perfectly again. The farm utilises Mechanical picking where the land topography allows, but some areas are just too hilly or uneven to use the machines - and instead workers are employed to hand pick the coffee from the trees.
Each worker is paid a set minimum wage, this then increases based on the volume of crop they pick during the day. Here one of the pickers is having his volume measured and recorded by a foreman, before it then goes into the large sack which will be emptied into a trailer later for transport to processing.
Processing is a very slick operation, utilising the natural land slope the picked coffee cherries are tipped into the silos, and then will be processed through equipment downslope progressing eventually to the bottom where there are drying machines and storage silos.
Here the cherries have been sorted already, but they will be sorted again - the dark cherries that have dried on the tree will be processed one way, the red ones a different way - the yellow and light green another way again.
Here the drying coffee beans laid out on the drying patios are being turned by a modified motorcycle - the coffee needs regular turning so it dries evenly and does not over ferment.
After seeing the processing plant, we went to the quality control labs and cupped some of the coffee's. With cupping you detect all the flavours the coffee has - you do not drink the coffee - you slurp it off the spoon into your mouth making a ssshhh noise as you try and cover you palette to detect the subtle flavours.
Finally we were taken back to the family home to share a meal with them and watch the sun set, this historic building can be seen back in 1917 when the family took over the plantation on Monte Alegre about us and today it still plays an important part of the business.
A fabulous sunset to end the day, because it is winter in Brazil the sun set's very early at around 5.30pm
Today we spent more time indoors cupping coffee and having a presentation on the process Monte Allegre use. Then we were driven around the coffee plantation and processing facility - because they are so large it is not possible to walk.
Height167 cm |  | Weight75 kg |  | Body Fat% |  |
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