Colombia - Villamaría Natural Decaf [25/26 New Crop]

Returning for its third run with us, our original inaugural decaf - and one of the team favourites - we've got a HOT off the presses drop from the Villamaría smallholders - Big Colombia natty vibes enhanced with the E.A Decaf tropicality, super sweet and rich.

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Espresso/Immersion

Best Rested: 2+ Weeks

Filter: 65g/L, 90°C when fresh; 88°C when rested

Espresso: 18g/40g/28-32s

We're tasting: Really rich chocolatey aromatics almost like fresh brownies, with some tropical sweetness. In the cup it's syrupy and rich, chocolate forward with a slightly boozy + malty note overall that reminds us of Guinness cake, with dried papaya, pineapple and glacé cherry in the finish.
In Milk: Bakewell tart


Please note - due to the nature of the physiochemical changes undergone during the decaffeination, this coffee will visually appear to be a darker roast than its actual “perceived” roast degree

Traceability

The Story

We've worked with Raw Material for several years now, their "maximum impact coffee" philosophy aligns with our sourcing program intentions. They operate as a Community Interest Company, returning 100% of profits to producers whilst building processing infrastructure and providing training that serves entire communities..

These producers sell cherries to the station for onwards processing, including using value-addition steps such as anoxic protocols, allowing Raw Material to create large volumes of these coffees with consistent quality, and returning a higher premium to the producers involved in the project. It's this production at scale that allows Raw Material to create the volumes required for decaffeination, as there is a minimum size of 60 bags of raw coffee for the process to occur.

After processing and drying, the coffee is milled and travels to Descafecol in Manizales for in-country decaffeination using ethyl acetate derived as a natural by-product of sugarcane fermentation. The EA process steams coffee to open cellular pores in the green coffee before extraction over 8 hours using the ethyl acetate to selectively remove caffeine, preserving over 95% of original volatile compounds whilst achieving 97-98% caffeine removal. Descafecol currently operates at approximately 75% capacity, creating significant bottlenecks as speciality decaf demand increases, which is why we've seen (and have purchased) increasingly large amounts of coffee decaffeinated using the same process in Germany. We've booked out 6 months of supply from the producers at Villamaría over 2 lots, continuing our purchasing relationship.