Decaf Coffee Beans | Colombia | Sparkling Water Decaffeination Process Coffee

This coffee comes from the biggest farm in Colombia based around the beautiful area of Salgar in Antioquia. The Green Coffee Company was established in 2017 with the mission to change the dynamic of Colombian production using innovation, expertise and quality to bring consistent coffees to clients around the world.

The farm now spans 4,000 hectares. The company has invested heavily in technology, and has two centralised wet mills. These wet mills are some of the most advanced in Latin America with the use of cherry colour sorters and the use of electronic tracking throughout the process. This advanced wet mill system has helped them reduce the volume of water needed to produce coffee by over 21 million litres.
 

There is also a strong focus on the environment and social conditions that are part of the philosophy of the supply chain. On the farms they are working actively to protect the watershed by planting over 26,000 non coffee trees on the land. They actively manage 55% of this land as well as having 153 hectares of designated reserved forest. They have also planted in this time over 2 million coffee trees of Castillo and Colombia on land that was formerly used for cattle farming. In the nursery, they have completely eliminate the use of plastics used for seedlings by implementing the Ellepot system where a machine fills biodegradable, cellulose bags with a mix of peat perlite and coconut bark that is the ideal development environment for germinated seeds. This improves upon the manual method in several ways which also helps to improve the time to germination for seedlings as well as reducing the mortality from 23% to 15% so more make it to be planted in the field.

The farms have over 400 permanent employees who also have access to secured regular work as well as having a pension program for the workers. They also have an equal opportunity program with 27% of the employees being female and with the aim to create more leadership roles for women at the farms. They have also an initiative supporting single mothers into employment in the local community.
 

The coffee cherries are received at the wet mills. They are then floated in small tanks to remove debris and floaters. After this, the cherries are colour sorted using MultiScan technology before being pulped, fermented and then dried.

From here the parchment is bagged and moved to the drymill facilities where the lots are created and tagged. The coffee is then milled and and ready for decaffenation.
 

The Sparkling Water Decaffeination Process:

 

First discovered in 1967 by a scientist called Kurt Zosel at the Max Planck Institute for Coal research, as he was looking at new ways of separating mixtures of substances.  In 1988, a German decaffeination company called CR3 developed this process for decaffeination, whereby natural carbon dioxide is combined with water to create 'sub-critical' conditions which creates a highly solvent substance for caffeine in coffee.  It is a gentle, natural and organically cetified process and the good caffeine selectivity of the  carbon dioxide guarantees a high retention level of other coffee component, which contribute to taste and aroma.

 

How it is done:

 

The green beans are soaked/cleaned in water, this allows the the pores to open up as the beans expand and caffeine molecules become mobile.

 

Pressured Carbon Dioxide is introduced, this combined with the present water creates sparkling water.  The CO2 acts like a magnet to the caffeine molecules, extracting it from the beans.

 

The water is then drained into an evaporator which precipitates the caffeine rich carbon dioxide out of the water.

 

This cycle is repeated until the caffeine level is low enough to be classified as decaf.

 

The decaffeinated coffee is then gently dried until it reaches its original moisture content.