DAK – Caramello 250g | Brazil

About This Coffee

Caramello is an Acaiá from Jaguara Farm in Minas Gerais, and it is the most straightforwardly comforting coffee in the range. No fermentation tricks, no co-ferments, nothing on the label that needs explaining — just a well-grown Brazilian natural roasted for espresso.

Minas Gerais grows more coffee than any other state in Brazil, and Jaguara sits at around 1040 metres, which is modest by specialty standards. Altitude gets treated as shorthand for quality, but what it actually buys is a slower cherry maturation, and Brazil's better farms reach the same end by other routes — picking selectively, drying carefully, and choosing varieties that suit the ground they are on rather than the ones that win competitions.

Acaiá is one of those choices. It is a Brazilian selection out of the Mundo Novo line, a tall and productive plant known for unusually large beans. It is not a rare variety and nobody pretends otherwise; it is a workhorse that, grown properly, gives exactly the profile Brazil is loved for.

The lot is a natural. Cherries are dried whole, with the pulp left on, so the fruit sugars have the whole drying period to work into the seed. On a Brazilian lot like this that route does not produce the loud, fermented fruit of an Ethiopian or a Colombian co-ferment — it produces body, and it produces sweetness.

In the cup: caramel, hazelnuts and milk chocolate. Rich and rounded, with the caramel running underneath all the way through.

Freshly roasted by DAK Coffee Roasters in Amsterdam and imported to the UK by ROAST EDIT Co.