New Penguin-ings Decaffeinated Coffee

This coffee is a Medium/Medium Dark roast, so works well in pressure devices such as an espresso maker, AeroPress or moka pot. However, it’ll brew very happily in any device!

If you want to know more, see our brew guides for making coffee.

We source these awesome speciality beans as directly as possible from coffee farmers in Argelia, Colombia. This coffee-growing town is located towards the southwest of the country, in the Department of Cauca. Argelia’s population have witnessed a great amount of unrest in past years. Now, however, they are looking forward to brighter days bolstered by their coffee crops.

The Siruma Coffee exporters are based in Colombia and are currently supporting the farmers in Argelia. Siruma is a female-run coffee exporter and is helping the coffee farming families by supporting a funding project. This important project supports five coffee associations (incorporating around 220 families) through training and education. On average, producers taking part in the training and delivering their coffee to Siruma receive more than the local rate for their fantastic beans.

Eight and blank… Number 80!

Why is the number 80 important? Well, in the world of coffee, it’s the magic number a coffee must score to be certified as a ‘speciality’. Speciality coffees are characterised by their superior quality and complex flavour profile. The cherry picking process is also key as speciality coffee cherries are, well, cherry-picked for being the best. Speciality coffee is picked only when perfectly ripe, unlike commodity coffee, which is stripped rather than hand-picked from the coffee shrub. This means you get a jumble of ripe, over-ripe and bitter-tasting under-ripe beans. Urgh.

To find the quality score of any coffee, the cupping process is used. This process is used to determine if a coffee can be given the title of speciality coffee. The coffee must receive a score of 80 or above to be granted this status. If the score isn’t high enough, we search elsewhere. Want to learn more about cupping? We have a simple to follow coffee cupping guide to tell you all about it.

Roasting is key to achieving uber-delicious coffee. Even the best speciality beans will taste bog-standard if the roast isn’t spot on.

Luckily, we know the secrets behind a great roast, so your coffee beans are in safe hands! Small-batch roasting comes first, as this means we can customise every roast to the specific requirements of the beans. Then there’s our hand-roasting technique: rather than letting a machine take the lead, we use all our senses to time each roast to the second.

What comes next? Ahhh, that would be our regular roasting. We roast our speciality beans multiple times a week to ensure that we always send the freshest coffee beans to your door.

Ordered some coffee from us? We’ll have roasted it only days before. Yum!

These speciality decaf beans are decaffeinated by the sugar cane decaffeination process. Sugar cane is readily available in Colombia and this process decaffeinates your coffee using an organic compound found in the sugar cane crop. The compound is derived from a clever mix of acetic acid (more commonly known as vinegar!) and a natural extract distilled from the sugar cane.

So, how does it work? First off, decaf specialists steam the green beans to open up their pores and  enable the caffeine extraction. The natural sugar cane solution then rinses repeatedly over the beans to dissolve their caffeine. A pure water wash comes next, before the beans are partially dried until 10-12% humidity remains.

This natural decaffeination method gives a pretty dandy decaf. Why? It’s all down to the absence of excess heat and pressure which, if present, would disturb the bean’s cellular structure.

Roast Style: Medium/Medium Dark

Varietal(s): Mixed

Decaffeinated processing method: Sugar cane decaffeination

Altitude: 1700-2000 metres above sea level

Country: Colombia

Certification: Speciality

What does this all mean? Check out our Jargon Buster.

Our speciality coffees taste good, do good, smell good…

Choosing speciality beans from our little Rutland roastery means that you’re getting the very finest, ethically sourced coffee. We keep our supply chain to a minimum to make sure that a higher percentage of the profits go straight to the farmers. What’s more, our roastery is carbon neutral, so you know you are getting top-notch coffee that takes care of the planet.

We’re a jolly bunch of people with a genuine passion for coffee. Just give us a call if you fancy chatting coffee – we’re always on hand to help!

Like a new beginning, but better because there are penguins involved. Awesome.