Hot Drinks and Soft Drinks
Coffee is the great national drink, served strong, hot and sweet in small cups and drunk quickly. However, coffee is often a great disappointment in Brazil: most of the good stuff goes for export, and it often comes so stiff with sugar that it's almost undrinkable. By far the best coffee is found in Sao Paulo and points south. You are never far from a cafezinho (as these small cups of coffee are known; cafe refers to coffee in its raw state). Coffee is sold from flasks in the street, in lanchonetes and bars, and in restaurants, where it comes free after the meal. The best way to start your day is with cafe com leite, hot milk with coffee added to taste. Decaffeinated coffee is almost impossible to find in restaurants, and even difficult in delicatessens. Tea ( cha) is surprisingly good. Try cha mate , a strong green tea with a noticeable caffeine hit, or one of the wide variety of herbal teas, most notably that made from guarana. One highly recommended way to take tea is using the chimarrao , very common in southern Brazil: a gourd filled with cha mate and boiling water, sucked through a silver straw. It needs some practice to avoid burning your lips, but once you get used to it is a wonderfully refreshing way to take tea. The great variety of fruit in Brazil is put to excellent use in sucos : fruit is popped into a liquidizer with sugar and crushed ice to make a deliciously refreshing drink. Made with milk rather than water it becomes a vitamina . Most lanchonetes and bars sell sucos and vitaminas, but for the full variety you should visit a specialist casa de sucos , which are found in most town centres. Widely available, and the best option to quench a thirst, are suco de maracuja, passion fruit, and suco de limao, lime. In the North and Northeast, try graviola, bacuri and cupuacu. Sugar will always to be added to a suco unless you ask for it sem acucar; some, notably maracuja and limao, are undrinkable without. Soft drinks are the regular products of corporate capitalism and all the usual brands are available. Outshining them all, though, is a local variety, guarana , a fizzy and very sweet drink made out of Amazonian berries. An energy-loaded powder is made from the same berries and sold in health stores in the developed world - basically, the effect is like a smooth release of caffeine without the jitters.
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