DCAF - Brazil | Poços de Caldas (Swiss Water Process)

This coffee comes from four farms in the Poços de Caldas microregion in Sul de Minas, two in Campestre and two in Caldas nearby. These farms are all run by women - Juliana Bernandes, Dulce Franco, Ciomara de Carvalho and Luciane de Fátima - and are the beneficiaries of the Donas Do programme run by SMC, a coffee exporter which we visited in May based in the city of Guaxupé.

The Donas Do project aims to promote and support women in leadership positions on farms in Brazil. For years, the Brazilian component of our Sam and Henry blends were made up of coffee contributed to this project and in more recent years this component was made up of coffee from a number of women-led farms in Campestre. It's great to be once again supporting this programme and community with our decaf and we are also thrilled with the traceability and quality of this particular coffee.

SMC took us to visit another farm benefiting from the Donas Do project, Fazenda Monte Alto, and there we met Julia, who comes from a family with a tradition of strong female contributions to farming practice. Her mother Marina had been the catalyst for improvements to the farm's sustainability practices and rebuilt coffee growing areas of the farm to create tree corridors to help wildlife travel between areas of forest.

The Swiss Water Process of decaffeination first involves the production of Green Coffee Extract (GCE) which is created using a batch of coffee beans soaked in water. After the water removes the caffeine as well as other flavour compounds, the beans are disposed of and this liquid is filtered to remove the caffeine. This is done with carbon filters: once these pull out all the caffeine, the GCE can be used once again to remove caffeine from the beans.

Because of the flavour compounds already in this liquid, the beans will retain these compounds while releasing their caffeine as soluble compounds will continually move from bean to liquid until they reach a point of equilibrium. The process normally takes about 10 hours and is constantly monitored until the beans are 99.9% caffeine-free.

decaf | decaf coffee