Single Origin Decaf — Honduras

Our second mellow yellow cab is off the rank! Introducing our new Swiss Water Decaf Single Origin from Honduras. If you can’t tolerate caffeine but love coffee, or are just taking a break for a bit, we highly recommend giving this Single a shot. Follow this link to find it online or read on below to find out a bit more about it.

A little more about Honduran coffee and cooperative, CAFICO Cafés Finos Corquín
Honduras started commercialising coffee in the 19th century and while there were numerous coffee plantations at the time, they were small. A lack of infrastructure also meant that export was virtually impossible and until this improved Honduran coffee was mostly sold domestically. For example coffee production is estimated to have been around 20,000 quintals (one quintal is about 100kg) in1894 and only 10 per cent was able to be exported. 

Today Honduras is the 7th largest coffee exporter in the world with some 4,100,000+ 60kgs sacks leaving the country per annum. 95% of all Honduran coffee farmers are small-scale and 70% farm on fewer than 2 hectares. It is estimated that more than 110,000 Honduran families rely on coffee for livelihood. Sadly small-scale farmers typically have very little sway when it comes to demanding a fair price for their product — it's in a market like this that the Fairtrade cooperative model really makes a difference.

Cafés Finos Corquín (CAFICO), where the beans in this release come from, have been steadily converting conventional coffee farms in the mountains of Corquín to meet the requirements of the Fairtrade model since their inception in 2009. Banding together as a cooperative and reducing the links in the coffee chain has given their 750 members greater price stability and has allowed them to reinvest in their year on year. Their commitment to obtaining a fair price and implementing good agricultural practices that focus on a long-term viability is starting to finally pay off as they are slowly, but surely, capturing the attention of the global specialty coffee community.  

A little more on the decaffeination process and the roast itself
We strictly source our decaf beans through the good people at Swiss Water Vancouver. Swiss Water is a 100% chemical-free process where beans are submerged in pure water to draw out the caffeine before they are redried and sent on to roasters, like us, around the world. Swiss Water decaffeinates in small batches which gives them the opportunity to work with small harvests of specialty beans ensuring that once decaffeinated, they will still taste every bit as delicious as they did before Swiss Water got a hold of it. Their methods produce 99.9% caffeine-free coffee. 

Sam, our Head Roaster, roasted these Swiss Water CAFICO beans to a light-medium profile (with a 22% DTR - Development Time Ratio) to increase the body and mouthfeel all while retaining the sweet orange acidity of the beans. The result? A well-balanced coffee with sweet orange and nutella like flavours, full buttery body and long silky after taste - all that.. in a decaf.