"A bright clean nutty flavoured Colombian decaff. Good body with a smooth finish."
A BIT ABOUT THE COFFEE AND THE FARMERS
This coffee is the very same coffee as our caffeine ridden Colombian - but it has been sent away on arrival to be decaff'ed. Note that the decaffeinating process is not organic compliant - so although the coffee is organically grown, it cannot be described as organic. The decaff process is described in more detail below.
Founded in 1993, COSURCA is composed of 1,400 members in 15 cooperatives in Cauca, a mountainous province of southwestern Colombia. Coffee is grown at elevations of 1400m to 1900m.
Farmers in the area work under constant threat and disruption from armed extremist groups and drug running gangs. Fairtrade has given COSURCA a financial stability which has enabled the farmers to maintain a strong enough organization to resist these threats.
The Decaffeination Process
Coffee is decaffeinated using a variety of processes, all of which are harmless to health. Almost all methods of decaffeinating coffee consist of soaking the beans in water to dissolve the caffeine, extracting the caffeine with either a solvent or activated carbon, and then re-soaking the beans in the decaffeinated water to reabsorb the flavour compounds that were lost in the initial extraction. The solvent used by our producers for this decaf' is methylene chloride. The solvent never comes into contact with the coffee bean itself, but only with the water solution containing the caffeine that was previously extracted from the bean. Therefore the process is relatively benign.
ALL methods of decaffeination are based on equilibrium principles and solvent/solute properties. As such, neither all of the caffeine is removed from the coffee, nor are all of the flavour compounds returned or left in the coffee. The chemical composition of decaffeinated coffee is altered, and therefore the flavour and aroma are changed.
If you would prefer a decaf' coffee where no chemical solvent is used at any stage in the process, try our Fairtrade Organic Swiss Water Process Decaffeinated Indonesian.