Step out of a car at Octavio's processing plant and you're instantly hit with the smell: toasty, warm, nutty, like a peach pit drying in the Georgia sun. It's the smell of drying coffee beans—also, of course, the seeds of a fruit. But how they go from soft cherries to green, dry beans is quite an involved process. More
If this online media thing doesn't work out, I'm moving to Brazil as a coffee harvester. At least, that's what went through my head after a morning stripping cherries from the coffee trees of the Nossa Senhora Aparecida farm outside Pedregulho, Brazil. It's hard labor, if not back-breaking; an hour in the fields certainly left this reasonably fit author in a sweat. But the elegance with which expert pickers fill sacks of Skittle-rainbowed coffee beans makes their work seem at least as much art as chore. (The verdant postcard views and piercing 70-degree winter sun certainly wouldn't hurt, either.) More
This cute commercial out of Brazil for Do Bem boxed fruit drinks imagines a sampler made from various breakfast items assembled on a cafeteria tray. Video, after the jump.... More
BoingBoingTV debuted a series this week where they send their coffee correspondent and barista champion Kyle Granville far and wide to track down the best beans. In this inaugural episode, he visits the Fazenda Conquista plantation in Minas Gerais, Brazil, one of the largest coffee plants in the country. With the help of super-cool agro-gadgets, the coffee beans grow, but the most interesting part of all: the cherry-like fruit that encases the bean. Did most coffee drinkers know about this edible guy? It turns bright red when beans are ready to pick. Watch the informative video, after the jump.... More
Reporters often put their lives at risk, but how often does harm's way involve grapes? A Brazilian correspondent was filming a segment on national grape varietals in Rio Grande do Sul when suddenly, an evil vine attacked. Actually he got electrocuted. That was no vine—it was a wire! Following the shock, his news anchor colleague did a great job on her feet jumping to sports coverage. While this is a very serious matter, and we probably shouldn't laugh, it's like Steinbeck wrote Grapes of Wrath for this very headline opportunity. Watch the video after the jump.... More
"Cariocan food comes in three vastly different varieties. First there's the churrascaria, a pricey all-you-can-eat meat engorgement program. Then there's the option of 'fine dining' but this consists in the main of incredibly pricey and uniformly disappointing stabs at haute cuisine. Then there are buteco. Dingy, tucked into a tiny storefront, a simple counter with stools atop of which fat Brazilian men are perched, butecos frequently serve the best and cheapest food you'll find. Invariably fried and seafood heavy, you won't lose too many pounds eating at these places but what you lose in life expectancy, you more than make up with cultural authenticity." Gridskipper put together a guide to Rio's ten best butecos, each one with their own speciality.... More
