Roasted for Espresso & Filter | Raspberry, Chocolate, Nougat
A7 information cards which you can use on retail shelves, at POS, on grinders and to display alongside brewed coffee. Please add to your cart the amount you wish to receive with your order.
Expect a creamy, balanced espresso with sweet fruit notes of currants & prunes. The finish is like dark chocolate & roasted almonds.
This year we have finally been able to select our own bespoke lot for decaffeination. Paying close attention to all the coffees we buy means we have always treated our decaf purchases with the same care and rigour as all lots we buy, but we have finally reached the volumes whereby we can purchase an entire lot to be decaffeinated in Colombia (the plant in Manizales processes 70 sacks to create 58 bags of decaffeinated green coffee).
The Producers
We are currently featuring coffee from 8 farmers who contribute to the La Magdalena community. A select few of the farmers who have contributed significant chunks of coffee to this lot include Nicomedes Benavides, Nito Arbey Molina Navia and Edgar Yony Melo Gomez, the latter two having cup of excellence awards amongst their accolades. The members grow their coffee in the municipality of San Agustín in Huila, which is one of our all-time favourite regions of Colombia, in the veredas (wards) of La Argentina, La Llanada, La Muralla and Naranjos. Dotted on their various coffee farms are shade trees including Cachingo, Guamo (Ice-cream Bean), Carbonero and various citrus and avocado trees. The farms range from just 1 up to 5 hectares in size, and are planted out with a combination of Caturra, Castillo and Variedad Colombia, spanning from around 1,700 all the way up to 2,100 metres above sea level.
The Decaffeination Process
Having tasted various options in their regular and subsequent decaffeinated state we have been able to secure a coffee that has a sweet, clean cup profile and has best maintained its character and integrity after the decaffeination process.
For the last eight years we’ve solely purchased decaffeinated coffees that have undergone the Sugar Cane Ethyl Acetate process. Not only does this method provide a secondary income to the producing country, but the green coffee only needs to be transported once rather than twice. Obviously more eco-friendly and less costly, it has a huge impact on cup quality too. The conditions in which coffee is transported are rarely conducive to preserving quality, and so avoiding this process from happening twice is always beneficial for the cup. The coffee, having been shipped only once unlike most decaf options that arrive into the UK via Mexico, Canada or Germany, tastes all the fresher for it.
The actual solvent doing the work of decaffeinating the green coffee at Descafecol is derived from fermenting and making an alcohol from sugar cane. This is combined with spring water and is used to wash the caffeine out of the steamed green coffee until less than 0.1% of the original caffeine content remains.
The Exporter
Typically, Caravela operate an 80/20 model, working with a vast majority of smallholders and a minority of farmers with large coffee estates. In their latest impact report 87% of their producing partners had farms of less than 5 hectares in size. More than half of the producers they worked with were visited by their PECA team, and in Colombia alone they are working with 1,746 producers across 52 communities.
As regards their PECA program, they have said the below:
“Coffee growers are the heart of our business model, without them we could not maintain and sustain this value chain. They are responsible for producing the best coffees that delight us every day. The Coffee Growers Education Program (PECA) has developed a symbiotic relationship between coffee growers and Caravela since we’re always learning from each other. For many years, we have accumulated experiences throughout experimentation and work that provides tools to empower and educates coffee growers, resulting in consistent high-quality coffees.”