There are days when you want to treat yourself to a cup of good filter coffee without it kicking you into high gear. It is precisely for these moments that the legendary British roaster Square Mile has come up with a decaffeinated coffee from Brazil. These beans offer notes of ripe yellow plums and a body full of creamy dates.
The story of this coffee began in 2022, when Square Mile began focusing on refined decaffeinated coffees, especially for filter and espresso. At that time, they began working with Yuki Minami, a farmer and founder of Brazilian coffee exporter Aequitas. Together, they selected this lot of Catuai from her family farm specifically for decaffeinated coffee. Yuki is a typical representative of a new generation of Brazilian growers who combine a thoughtful approach to mechanical harvesting with soil restoration and high bean quality.
Classic processing is followed by decaffeination using sugarcane (sugar cane decaf). The coffee first undergoes low-pressure steaming to remove the parchment. It is then soaked in hot water to swell and soften the beans. This prepares the coffee for hydrolysis of the caffeine, which is bound to chlorogenic acid salts in the coffee. The coffee beans are washed several times with an ethyl acetate solvent obtained from the fermentation of sugar cane, which binds the caffeine from the coffee. Once this process is complete, the coffee must be cleaned of any remaining ethyl acetate using pressurized steam before being transferred to the final boxes. From there, it is moved to vacuum drying drums, where the beans are dried to a target moisture content of 10-12%.
- Altitude: 1133-1141 m above sea level.
- Producer: Yuki Minami