DECAF

Hints of: Milk Chocolate, Roasted Popcorn, Black Cherries
Grown in: Brazil
Best suited for: Espresso

GETTING TO KNOW OUR DECAF

Often frowned upon, decaffeinated coffee can be delicious when done well. And that's exactly our mindset when we source and roast our seasonal selection of decaf coffees. We believe they should be treated with the same respect as our other coffees, and we're on a mission to bring you the cream of the crop.

Happy Capybara Decaf is a regional blend from Minas Gerais. Minas Gerais is the fourth-largest state in Brazil, but when it comes to Arabica cultivation, the region is the most important in the country. It produces about 74% of Brazil’s total coffee volume.

We sourced this coffee from our good friends at Volcafe, who work closely with hundreds of farmers throughout Minas Gerais, each sending samples to the lab in Patrocínio, where they employ five quality analysts who are responsible for selecting, evaluating, and carefully curating regional blends - in this case, our Happy Capybara regional decaf.

Once purchased, the coffee makes its way to the warehouse in Varginha, where it is sorted by screen size, screened for defects, and eventually prepared for export. In Bremen, the coffee undergoes the Water - Ethyl Acetate process, commonly referred to as the “Sugarcane” or “EA” process, where a naturally occurring substance (Ethyl-Acetate), commonly sourced from sugarcane, is extracted and used as a solvent to bind to caffeine.

The process starts by soaking the green coffee in water and then steaming it for about 30 minutes to open the pores and expand the coffee cells. This makes caffeine extraction possible. The green beans are then soaked and washed in an ethyl acetate solution, which attracts and removes the caffeine. Once the coffee is saturated, the tank is emptied and a fresh solution is poured in, which is done for another eight hours. The coffee then undergoes steaming, which removes the EA. After drying, cooling, and polishing the beans, a final quality control determines whether the coffee is ready for roasting.

Fabio, who works in Volcafe’s Brazil office, created the Happy Capybara logo:
“In all my works I put a little bit of myself... for me, happiness has to do with the simple things in our lives, like a cup of coffee in the morning on a rainy day, and of course, good music... those little pleasures of life, you know? The capybara’s face is very happy, exactly the expression we make when we realise that these little moments make our lives so happy.”

This coffee is best brewed as espresso, with classic aroma notes of milk chocolate and toasted sweet popcorn. Followed by black cherry and dark chocolate notes as espresso on its own, as a flat white, or any other milk-based drink, you can expect continued notes of almonds and milk chocolate, with some very light citrusy notes.