Story
The Santa Maria pocket of Huila is a region with an intense, often traumatic history. It was severely isolated during the decades-long unrest between the Colombian government and guerrilla forces — too remote for Colombian authorities to access, thus severely limiting the coffee growing community’s market access or interaction with the National Coffee Federation. The impacts of this isolation were widespread, but an odd and unintended outcome of the situation was an exceptionally long-sustained lineage of classical coffee varieties, never transitioning to higher-yielding hybrids. This means that these farms, which range in elevation from 1,700 to 2,200 meters, are among very few in Huila that continue to be planted almost exclusively with Caturra, Typica, and Bourbon. Although there are plenty of entirely-positive reasons for hybrid varieties and they can certainly taste spectacular, these “big three” old-timers are known for sweetness and clarity, attributes that still shine through the decaffeination process.
Over the past several years, the “Sugarcane” decaffeination process has cultivated substantial affection throughout specialty coffee. The overwhelming majority of examples come from Colombia, a country that produces a significant amount of sugarcane, providing an ample supply of Ethyl Acetate (EA), an organic and naturally occurring byproduct of the fermentation of sugarcane. To decaffeinate the coffee, lots will be immersed in steam to expand and expose the beans’ cell walls before washing them with EA, which naturally binds to caffeine molecules and can then be filtered out before the coffee is re-washed and dried to retain the majority of what made it otherwise delicious. We’ve carried several EA-Decafs over the years, finding them to be cleaner, sweeter cups than we have tasted through any other process. In this one, we taste red apple, chestnut, and molasses.
