The western slopes of the Nevado del Ruiz are home to Villamaría, an extinct volcano that sits in the centre of the Colombian Coffee Axis. While its rough terrain proves a challenging environment for humans, its high altitude, fertile soil and tropical climate make for perfect coffee growing conditions.

Producer Juan Felipe Aristizábal is part of a community of smallholder farmers from Villamaría, Chinchiná and Manizales that operate a wet mill. Juan is renowned in the region for his attention to detail, ensuring that all of the coffee he processes is of the highest standard. The cherries are carefully hand-sorted and bathed in water to remove any overripe and underdeveloped cherries and then left to dry on patios for 30 days. When the parchment is ready, it undergoes the decaffeination process at Descafecol in Manizales, a local and unique Colombian decaf company. They then apply a combined process of spring water and naturally created Ethyl Acetate (EA).

The EA-water decaffeination process from Descafecol works in three steps:

During the pre-treatment phase, the parchment is heated with low-pressure steam to remove the cuticle attached to the bean. The coffee is then moistened with hot water to swell and soften the beans to begin the hydrolysis of caffeine that is bound to chlorogenic acid salts within the beans.
The coffee is then taken to extractors, where the extraction phase occurs. Caffeine removal is done by successive washing of the beans with recirculation of solvent (natural ethyl acetate) in the extractors. This procedure must be done several times to remove a minimum of 97% of the caffeine initially present in the coffee beans. Once the caffeine ex- traction is finished, the coffee beans have to be stripped of the solvent, for which a low pressure saturated steam streams through the coffee bed in the extractor to remove all remaining traces of EA.
In the post-processing, the beans are sent to a vacuum drying equipment which removes the water applied in the first stage and bring the beans back to a 10-12% moisture rate.

Colombia Juan Aristizabal - EA Decaf 

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Colombia Juan Aristizabal - EA Decaf

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Colombia Juan Aristizabal - EA Decaf

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