Casa Espresso: Colombia, La Plata, Decaffeinated

We continue to use Sugarcane decaffeinated coffees from Colombia through our partner Cafe Imports, who use a great program dedicated to bringing the highest-quality, non-chemical-processed decaf coffees to market. Our Origin Select Decaf offerings are single-origin blends of coffees selected by cup quality grown by multiple smallholder producers. Our Colombian E.A. (ethyl acetate) decafs are cupped as regular green samples and specifically identified for decaffeination, which happens in-country in Colombia before the coffee goes to export. This allows us to maintain both the integrity of the quality of the coffees we choose to decaf, but also to extend our intentional and responsible sourcing to our decaf offerings as well as our “regular.”

Huila is naturally blessed with optimal coffee growing geography, the key to great quality coffees from the La Plata region (such as this lot) are the growers themselves. Coffee farming within the region is overwhelmingly small-scale with approximately 80% of producers from the region farming coffee on less than 3 hectares of land. These small farms are tended by individual families with labour only very rarely being contracted out, which leads to more thorough and intensive management practices and great pride in the final product – which is, itself, an extension of the family.

All coffee was harvested at full ripeness and processed traditionally as washed coffee. On average, cherries were depulped and the coffee was fermented dry for an average duration of 20 hours, washed 4 times, then placed in a parabolic dryer for an average period of 6-7 days. Once milled, the coffee underwent the Sugarcane E.A. decaffeination process