Atunkaa Decaf

The coffee beans came to us from Siruma. A Colombian company founded five years ago to work with underdeveloped farming communities in Cauca, Caldas and Tolima. The company’s name comes from the indigenous Wayuunaiki language and means ‘sky and sky’.

Atunkaa decaffeinated sugarcane coffee represents Siruma’s commitment to transparency and fair pricing for farmers. It comes from the Association for Peace in Central Cauca (ACC) in Piendamó, Cauca province. ACC was founded by a local farmer who wanted to add value to the Castillo coffee variety and ensure a stable income so that neighbours could avoid illegal crops.

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The conventional natural process was followed by a decaffeination process.

The Sugar Cane Decaf Process:

The coffee first undergoes steaming at low pressure to remove the parchment. It is then placed in hot water to swell and soften the beans. This then prepares the coffee to hydrolyse the caffeine, which is bound to the chlorogenic acid salts in the coffee.

The extract (naturally derived from the fermentation of the sugar cane and not from chemical synthesis) is then infused into the pre-prepared coffee which is washed several times with a natural ethyl acetate solvent to reduce the caffeine to the correct level. Once this process is complete the coffee must be cleaned of any remaining ethyl acetate using pressurised steam before moving to the final boxes. From here the coffee is moved to vacuum drying drums where the water previously used to wet the beans is removed and the coffee is dried to 10 to 12%.