Colombia
Meters Above Sea Level (masl) - 1750
Usual processing methods - washed
Colombia, along with many South and Central American countries, has become synonymous with coffee. We know that there is plenty of high quality, delicious coffee grown in Colombia but what sets this coffee apart from others is not only how flavoursome it is, but who grows it.
AMACA (Asociación de Mujeres Productoras Agropecuarias del Cauca) is a group of women coffee producers located in El Tambo, Cauca, Colombia. The association was formed in 1999 by 80 local women; today, it has over 140 members, all women smallholder farmers and heads of household.All of AMACA’s members derive their livelihoods and support their families from their coffee.
Membership of AMACA represents three different villages within El Tambo, and the average farm size ranges from 1–3 hectares, at about 5,000 trees per hectare. Each coffee tree produces less than 2.5kg of beans per year so these are smallholders working together to bring their harvest to the world market. Every step of coffee production, on this scale, is done by hand. Cherries ripen at different stages, even on the same branch, so much be picked by hand. They are then sorted and processed, small machinery is used to pulp the fruit from the bean and hull any remaining fruit and silverskin. However, fermentation and drying stages are carefully watched over with beans turned by hand throughout the process to ensure consistency.
This is a washed coffee meaning the fruit is removed from the bean in running water very soon after being picked and sorted. Washing process typically results in a very clean coffee, showcasing the natural flavour of the bean with only a little fermentation.
This coffee is great to work with and is a crowd pleaser. If you're the house barista and you’re looking for something that requires little in the way of daily adjustments for perfect extraction, this is the one for you.
Baristocracy Coffee
COLOMBIA
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Decaf - Colombia
Flavour profiles-
MASL-
Usual processing methods - Ethyl Acetate
Find too much caffeine difficult to deal with or just trying to cut down? This decaf Colombian delivers on flavour, no FOMO when you’re sipping your latte, just minimal caffeine.
Decafination is a process that the speciality coffee industry is constantly working to improve. It’s water intensive and often done in one of only a couple of processing plants in the world. This decaf is different! This coffee is decaffeinated in Colombia so food miles are lower. There are various ways to decaffeinate coffee, this one uses Ethyl Acetate (EA). EA is a naturally occurring byproduct of coffee and, primarily, sugarcane production. The green coffee is immersed in an EA-water solution, the caffeine molecule attaches to the EA and is then washed away.
While this process is far from perfect, it results in a delicious coffee that doesn’t taste like a poorer substitute for the real thing. This coffee is grown by smallholder farmers in the Huila region of Colombia before being collected for decaffination.
Decaffeinating coffee is not a sustainable process. There isn’t a way around that at the moment, although improving decaffeination is a major focus of the coffee industry. One of the biggest issues is that many coffees are taken from their country of origin to be decaffeinated before sale, adding more food miles to the end product. Another is the amount of water required in many mainstream decaffeination processes plus the use, in some cases, of unpleasant chemicals to separate and remove the caffeine molecule.
If you can’t drink regular coffee but are concerned about the sustainability of decaf then consider making your own cold brew. Caffeine needs either time or heat to be fully activated so a short cold brew can result in a much lower level of caffeine. Check out our recipes here, the syrupy version over ice cream is divine!
Baristocracy Coffee
DECAF – COLOMBIA
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