Decaf

Here at Ozone, we're always on the lookout for tasty and delicious decaf. It can sometimes be a little tricky to get our hands on, but we aim to always have at least 1 decaffeinated coffee available at all times, and the decaffeinated coffee we offer will change throughout the year. If you subscribe to Decaf then you will always receive our current fresh decaffeinated coffee and the specific farm will evolve and update depending on what's available over time.

We were one of the first roasters in the UK to move to Colombian Decaf when the Ethyl Acetate Decaf plant in Colombia started producing amazing quality coffees for the first time. Our Decaf range has been exclusively Colombian for most of the last 10 years - because, in blind tastings, the Ethyl Acetate Decaf coffees just proven more delicious than the CO2 or Swiss Water Decaf options which were available. The downside was that, as Colombia is a producing country, decaffeinating anything other than Colombian coffee was super tricky, so we had to work within those limits.

If you ask us for an all-rounder, good any time of day, crowd pleasing, easy to work with coffee, 9 times out of 10 we’d be talking about a Brazilian coffee. In the past, and there are bonus points on offer here if you can remember this, we previously tried a CO2 Decaf of Cachoeira da Grama and it was really good, so we've always been looking for a way to re-engage our decaf offering with Brazilian coffee.

Last year we got introduced to a Germany company which had started doing the Ethyl Acetate process of Decaf in Bremen. This gave us the opportunity to try what we’d always wanted - EA Decaf on a great Brazilian coffee. We picked one of our most important relationship coffees - Nova Aliança.

From a food miles point of view, the impact is very small. The coffee was all delivered into Germany from Brazil, part of it was decaffeinated, and then it was all then sent on to us in the UK.

Juliana Paulino da Costa Mello is the 5th generation of her family to be involved in coffee production and together with her husband, agronomist Flavio, owns 150 hectares of land in the region. The area used to be one huge farm but was split up, and surrounding farms are all now owned by members of Juliana's family.

Vanessa our Head of Wholesale and Roland our Green Buyer had the pleasure of visiting them last summer. They witnessed first-hand that with careful organising and an understanding of long-term sustainability, the farm plants native trees and fruit trees to promote biodiversity. This attention to detail carries through in the care of their plants, with careful measuring of many variables to assess plant health used to guide pruning, planting and harvesting.

This coffee is a Natural EA (ethyl acetate a.k.a. sugarcane) Decaf coffee. The decaffeination process at this plant uses ethyl acetate derived 100% from sugarcane mixed with water, together removing 99.7% of the caffeine present. The beauty of the Natural EA process is that it helps preserve so much of the original flavour. 

Roasted hazelnuts and sweet, silky marzipan up front give way to a gentle milk chocolate aftertaste. As it cools, dark toffee notes come through too in this well balanced cup.

• Country: Brazil
• Region: Sul de Minas
• Municipality: Monte Santo de Minas
• Farm: Nova Aliança
• Producers: Flavio & Juliana Paulino de Costa
• Varieties: Mundo Novo, Yellow Catuai, Yellow Catucai
• Process: Natural
• Elevation: 1,000 - 1,100 m.a.s.l.
• Farm Size: 110 hectares
• Decaffeination: Sugarcane (EA) Decaffeination

Tasting notes: Hazelnuts, marzipan, milk chocolate.

Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores

• Clean cup: (1–8): 6
  
• Sweetness: (1–8): 6.5
• Acidity: (1–8): 6
• Mouthfeel: (1–8): 6
• Flavour: (1–8): 6
• Aftertaste: (1–8): 6
• Balance: (1–8): 6.5
• Overall: (1–8): 6.5
• Correction: (+36): +36
• Total: (max. 100): 85.5

Roast Information
Medium: a nice steady roast through first and late in the gap, just before second will highlight the sweet flavours.