What is ant processing? Santo Antnio Coffee House

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On the farm, pests that affect crops by ants, crickets and beetles still exist. A Brazilian coffee farmer decided to turn to organic agriculture when ants appeared and began to invade his coffee cherries.

But then an interesting thing happened: the farmer began to notice the discarded coffee beans left after the ants ate the flesh, and he began to collect the coffee beans left by the ants. The unexpected thing is that the coffee beans taste really good.

As Sprudge writer Rafael Tonon reports, the inland state of S ã o Paulo Santo Ant? Jo?o Neto of nio Manor chose to abandon the monoculture of coffee production and the use of chemical pesticides, changing the practice that the farm has adopted for decades. For ecological reasons, Neto is doing this to achieve his farm's goal of rebalancing the natural environment damaged by a single coffee growing system.

The re-emerging ants climb the coffee tree, nibble down the coffee cherries and bring them back to their territory. After stealing the pulp, the ant will leave the seed on the tree. Neto began to collect the fruits and contacted his friend, Katsuhiko Hasegawa Hasegawa, the boss of Caf é Paulista in Tokyo, to try it together to see what the coffee tasted like.

After seeing Neto for the second time, Hasegawa roasted the coffee beans. He found it, as Neto put it, "with a distinctive but pleasant acidity". Other people who have tasted the coffee said: "this taste is similar to other coffee with jasmine flavor", and the participation of ants brings a "sweeter taste" to the coffee.

But even after a successful attempt, it is hard to expect this unique coffee to appear in the cafe soon. The best harvest of Ant treatment coffee is no more than 60 pounds, and with the change of planting mode, the land used by Neto for coffee production has been reduced from 230ha to 40ha.

Neto currently only produces coffee samples, and he hopes to sell micro-batches of coffee to people who are interested.

Even though Neto's coffee has not been commercially successful, Santo Ant?nio Manor proves that nature and coffee cultivation can more or less coexist peacefully. Continue to pay attention to the special treatment of coffee production, "ant processing coffee", as well as the rise of the 2018 "lactic acid treatment Gesha", to discover more unknown coffee world.

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