Decaf Coffee - all the things you never knew you didn't know:
We only source organic, fair-trade certified decaffeinated coffee. This is esential when drinking decaf, because the standard method is chemical process of caffeine extraction which just intensifies the chemicals when you brew a cup - yuck! Not on our watch. Learn more about how organic coffee is decaffeinated here.
A more in depth dive into our decaf coffees here at 44 North. We rotate seasonally between 3 decaf offerings throughout the year due to seasonal availability and making sure we source coffee that was grown within the last harvest year: Decaf Peru (winter-spring), Decaf Honduras (spring-summer), and new this year is a Decaf Mexico (fall-winter). The Decaf Peru and Decaf Honduras are what we consider a medium/dark roasted coffee and the newest Decaf Mexico is a true medium roasted coffee with lots of nuance and flavor. If you liked the Decaf Guatemala we carried for a number of years, you will likely enjoy this Decaf Mexico. It has earthy molasses notes, with spiced roasted nuts and a medium body.
The feedback we have received to date is that y'all prefer a medium roasted decaf. There are a few diehard dark roasted fans out there, but we are not dark roast coffee roasters. Decaf is a tricky coffee to roast because it has already been "processed" because of the decaffeination process, which happens via osmosis and the caffeine molecules stick to over 1,000 other flavor molecules, so in order to remove caffeine, flavor is also sacrificed. Decaf coffee burns easily as well as loses flavor quickly during the roasting process especially the darker roasted it is. We all really enjoy this Decaf Mexico because of the nuance of flavor, most decafs are quite flat in our experience. That is the trick of decaf coffee roasting, enough to develop the beans and get some flavor, but not too far and only taste roasting, charred notes.
For years we took great pride in offering 2 decaf options year-round, many roasters don't even offer one. Decaf is often overlooked, but we know there is a loyal and growing decaf consumer base. So the fact we could offer variety really made our dedicated decaf drinkers feel taken care of. Our medium roasted Decaf Guatemala far out sold our seasonal rotation of Decaf Peru and Decaf Honduras. And sadly due to cost and lack of popularity in the US, the Decaf Guatemala we were getting is no longer available to us. We have been actively trying to find an alternate decaf option. And now a little backstory, during COVID, decaffeination plants got significantly backed up (there are only 5 (!) in the whole world, a new is currently being built in Brail) and between shipping delays, layoffs, shutdowns, etc. they were really behind in decaffeinating all the world's coffee. It took them up through just last year to finally catch up, which means there has been a global decaf shortage for the past few years. This has had a cascading effect in even being able to sourcing decaf coffee. It has become harder to get a hold of and much more expensive. Decaf coffee is expensive because of how many hands it passes through before the consumer gets it and the decaffeination process is expensive too.
We have tried sourcing a number of decaf options in the past 2 years and everything we've sampled was sub-par, not organically certified, and very expensive. So we are pleasantly surprised that this Decaf Mexico became available, because it is quite delicious, we think, organic and fair-trade certified, and we can source it through the farmers we get our regular Mexican coffee from at Triunfo Verde and Cooperative Coffees.
Oddly enough decaf consumption is on the rise globally and the green bean market is not quite poised to meet that demand at this time.
The decaf saga continues. And now you know it IS a saga.