We are always on the hunt for decaffeinated coffees that bring that full and amazing ‘coffee flavour profile to the table. Colombian decafs make it really easy to get all the enjoyment out of the flavour without getting a nervous caffeine high or palpitations to the heart. This beautiful lot from the Suaza region in the Department of Huila is a prime example of a ‘No-Way-That’s-Decaf’-Decaf. It has a round and slightly savoury chocolate note that reminded us of chocolate covered pretzles, a spicy sweetness like that of molasses and a nicely balanced acidity with a touch of tartness like you would find in dried cranberries. And once again we would be willing to wager: you wouldn’t be able to pick it out of a line-up with regularly caffeinated coffees – it’s that good!
 
Background Info:
 
We are buying this lot of decaf from Osito coffee, a green coffee company with firm roots in Colombia. Founders Kyle Bellinger and Jose Jadir Losada co-own Finca El Mirador, a coffee farm in the Suaza region of Huila. These guys are a best practice example of how supply chains in coffee can be kept short and real partnerships between coffee growers in origin countries and their customers, coffee roasters in consuming countries, can be built up from the ground based on trust and equity. Osito works with growers at the beginning of each season to achieve a price that is fair and well above commodity market prices for all grades of coffee.

This particular lot is a mixed lot from coffee growers of the Divino Niño group from around Suaza, friends and neighbours of Osito’s coffee farm El Mirador. It’s comprised of washed coffees from the region and is decaffeinated locally to keep an even bigger part of the profit in Colombia.
 
For this particular lot, the coffee cherries are hand-picked, sorted, depulped and fermented in water tanks. After that, the seeds are dried in the sun, milled and transported to the local decaffeination plant. Here they use Ethyl Acetate (EA) for the decaffeination process, a natural type of alcohol solvent sourced from the sugar cane industry in the country.
 
How exactly is the caffeine taken out of the coffee, you ask? The ethyl acetate is used to flush out the caffeine. The process begins with steaming the coffee, increasing its porosity, triggering the chemical breakdown of the bond between the caffeine, salts and chlorogenic acid in the bean. The beans are then submerged in the solvent, until 97% of the caffeine is removed. A final steam serves to remove residual traces of the compound. It all sounds very technical but in fact, this way of getting rid of the caffeine is widely regarded as the least disruptive to the beans and is often referred to as natural process decaf. And the result in the cup speaks for itself – simply delicious.