This coffee is part of our custom decaf program where we hand select coffees from our own stock to be decaffeinated using Swiss Water processing. It's tough to know exactly how a decaf will turn out, but by picking coffees that already have a great profile as a regular coffee, you have a better chance at achieving a similarly delicious profile as the end result. Plus, we send samples off beforehand in order to get an idea of how the coffee will cup after the decaf process. This particular lot is a Java that we received toward the end of last year. It's a wet-processed coffee that we regularly sell as "Pitaloka" and the decaf version remains fairly true to it's caffeinated counterpart. A few years back there were importers and brokers who sent good coffees for decaf, when the market was low. But the added cost of the decaf toll charge on top of record prices has made the big guys shy to do this. Most decafs sold in the trade are nothing we would consider buying as a non-decaf for our offer sheet. But our Swiss Water Process decafs we can be proud of.

El Profundo is a name we came up with while cupping this coffee; we think it competes side-by-side with the non-decaf version of the blend, and were really impressed with the cup! The sweetness in the coffee is profound. We chose two different Ethiopian coffees as blend components for El Profundo to lend the sweetness and aromatic components that these coffees offer. From Shakiso region we included the Suke Quto coffee, and from the Western Ethiopia region of Agaro, we included Duromina Cooperative coffee. To this we added one of our direct trade Colombia coffees from the Narino district of Taminango. All these lots are wet-processed coffees, with a clean, sweet flavor profile. This coffee is part of our custom decaf program where we create blends from high-quality coffees and send them to the Swiss Water Decaf plant ourselves. While you cannot know for sure how a decaf will turn out, picking our own lots allows us to at least know a coffees cup quality prior to being subjected to the decaffeinating process. A few years back there were importers and brokers who sent good coffees for decaf, when the market was low. But the added cost of the decaf toll charge on top of record prices has made the big guys shy to do this. Most decafs sold in the trade are nothing we would consider buying as a non-decaf for our offer sheet. Do decaf drinkers deserve worse quality than the rest? That's why we have started sending our own coffees whenever possible, ones we have proudly offered on our site.

This is from a lot of from the highlands of Popayan in the Colombian Department of Cauca. It has no special pedigree, but ended up being a really, really nice cup quality when we evaluated the arrival sample. This was sent for Water Process decaffeination in Mexico and is one of the brighter, more floral arrivals we have had from this source. In recent years we have been buying some remarkable coffees from Cauca, so while we did not source this lot direct, it makes sense that the cup would be so nice as a decaf. What we have here is a verified solid coffee in non-decaf form, that retained good sweetness and balance through the decaf process. (While there is often the strong possibility of a coffee going "flat" at the decaf plant, losing all its origin character, it always helps to start with a great coffee). Traditionally, brokers bought decaf from the plant, coffee supplied from lower grade "stocklots" by the decaffeinator themselves. The results were never very impressive. Now we are able to designate high quality lots, and get these kinds of results.