Decaffeinated coffee has a bad wrap. But understandably so. If one peers into the supply chain and consumer habits, it’s easy to see why: it is expensive to harvest coffee, put it through the wet mill, the dry mill, grading, sorting, transport, export, import – and many other industries dedicated to getting a dried, clean, roasted specialty tropical fruit to consumers. Add 25-30% to the cost for the end decaffeinated product. So, many roasters choose the cheapest beans (low quality) because it brings down the price and modulates the margin for a minority consumer.
So decaf is expensive, and it probably takes a 10% market share max of specialty coffee. What’s the incentive to improve the quality? Not much.
We disagree.
All of our coffee is specialty, no matter what. We decided years ago to pursue, select and source from farms of our choosing beans to decaffeinate. We went to the farms, cupped hundreds of coffees and chose a specific blend from 3 farms in Jerico, Colombia to go for decaffeination.
From there, it moved to Manizales and was processed using a naturally derived ethyl from sugar cane, grown in a nearby state. After months of trials and testing, the results were pleasantly surprising: the sweet sugar cane note (think raw sugar) passed on to the already clean, bright coffee we had chosen.
There is more info on our offering page for Decaf Colombia or read our full sourcing report.