boasts fruited aroma, maple sweetness, notes of canned peach and nectarine, and rounded mouthfeel.
Top-tier decaf that shows its origin characteristics. The sweetness and fruited cup flavors set this decaf apart from some of the others. I think it is at it’s zenith in terms of sweetness, and has maximum “origin character”.
The smells are very much “Ethiopian” in character, fruited aromatics, with a maple syrup note underneath. The cup does not read ‘decaf’ to me. Even though the original green coffee was dry processed, the fruit forward natural flavors are toned down by decaffeination, and the resulting cup tasted a lot like a milder wet process Sidama. The fruit notes have aspects of peach and nectarine canned in a sugary syrup, not so much aromatic, but with good fruit flavor. Body is very nice and does a good job carrying those flavors into the aftertaste.
This water process decaf coffee started out as a dry process, non-decaf from the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (“OCFCU”). The Oromia Union are an umbrella, farmer-led cooperative organization currently supporting 400+ Ethiopian cooperatives by offering agronomical support, access to the international market, micro financing loans, and a lot more. This lot is a blend of coffee from hundreds of small holder farmers in the southern Ethiopian region of Sidama. It was initially processed as a full natural (“dry process”), dried with the whole cherry intact, before being sent off for decaffeination. Dry processing tends to produce a fruit-forward cup, which even after being toned down by decaffeination, yields a fruited decaf. This decaf was processed by a plant in Mexico who use only clean water to extract 99.9% of the caffeine from the coffee while leaving much of the volatile compounds affecting flavor and aroma behind.
- Origin: Ethiopia
- Region: Sidama, Guji Zone
- Producer: Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (“OCFCU”)
- Altitude: 1600m
- Cultivar: Heirloom Cultivars
- Grade: Grade 1
- Processing: Dry Process then SWP Decaf
- Drying: Raised Bed Sun-Dried