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The Story:
Brazil is the world's largest producer of
coffee. Much of it is low-grade and high volume, but they
also produce some excellent and complex coffees. Many of
the best espresso blends in world contain mostly Brazilian
coffee.
This coffee is semi-washed, which means the
beans have been washed to remove the skins of the cherries,
but then they were dried with the sticky pulp still attached
to the beans. This method, also called "pulped natural,"
allows the beans to absorb some sweetness from the pulp
- similar to a dry-processed coffee.
The coffee is grown on the Conquista Estate
located near a small town called Encruzilhada in the Bahia
region of Brazil. The farm is owned and managed by Sinay
Neves and is marketed through a nonprofit organization known
as Socially Conscious Coffee.
Funding from coffee sales has provided the
SCC School and Healthcare Center (called the Centro Rural
Educafé in Portuguese) in Encruzilhada. The school
provides elementary education to the children of the coffee
farmers, as well as night classes to the farmers and their
wives. The healthcare center provides both medical and dental
care to these same families, a luxury which most small communities
in northern Brazil have never enjoyed.
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