DECAF DE CAÑA - COLOMBIA

Sugarcane Decaf from Huila, Colombia. 

We love our Decaf and so do many of you too. Regularly coming out top on the cupping table and surprising first timers by its complex flavour and ease of brewing. 

With so many of us coffee lovers looking for ways to consume a little less caffeine in the day and still enjoy a  delicious brew, having a reliable coffee on hand that's satisfying yet without the caffeine is a really good thing. 

So how it is done?

For a complete explanation of the process I'm going to hand you over to our import partner Cafe Imports who have broken it down for us. 

"This naturally occurring ester (present in bananas and also as a by-product of fermented sugars) can be isolated and used as a solvent to bond with and remove caffeine from green coffee. First, the coffee is sorted and steamed for 30 minutes under low pressure in order to open the coffee seeds’ pores and prepare them for decaffeination. The coffee is placed in a solution of both water and ethyl acetate, where the E.A. will begin to bond with the salts of chlorogenic acids inside the seeds. The tank will be drained and re-filled over the course of eight hours until caffeine is no longer detected. The seeds are steamed once more to remove the ethyl acetate traces, though E.A. is only harmful to humans in very high quantities (400 parts per million or more). The coffee is then dried and polished for export. This decaffeination process removes a minimum of 97% of all caffeine originally present within green coffee. The residual amount of Ethyl Acetate equates to a maximum of 10 ppm (a ripe banana naturally contains about 200 ppm). Ethyl Acetate has an evaporation point of 70°C. As coffee is roasted at a temperature well above this, roasted coffee will present no trace of E.A. "

SO there we have it. We would also add that this process keeps a lot of the flavour compounds of the coffee intact which is another reason why it's a big favourite here. 

Decaf de Caña
Region: Huila
Country: Colombia
Altitude : 1400 - 2000 m
Variety: Castillo, Caturra, Colombia 
Process: Washed EA Decaf
Notes: Chocolate, Orange, Malted biscuits 
Importer: Cafe Imports