SPIRITUAL ALCHEMY, Decaf

Strawberry, Cacao Nib, Brown Sugar

This lot represents the Bayter family’s progression from early cultivation to process-led refinement. Their agricultural journey began in 1995, with coffee established at El Vergel Estate in 2010 and first varietals harvested by 2015. By 2017, Martha, Shady, and Elías Bayter shifted focus toward innovation, developing new processing approaches to increase value at origin and narrow the gap between producer and roaster.

Forest Coffee was formalised in 2019 as an extension of this direction. Built around processing, education, sustainability, and transparency, it now connects a network of 250 producing families across Colombia, spanning multiple regional projects with a dedicated internal team and international partners. This lot sits within that structure, carrying both the technical precision of El Vergel and the broader intent of long-term producer alignment.

This crop allows for a complete cup without the presence of caffeine. It undergoes an adapted sugarcane decaffeination process, developed and refined within Colombia, where both coffee production and decaffeination expertise intersect.

The process begins with the fermentation of sugarcane molasses to produce ethanol, which is combined with acetic acid to form ethyl acetate (EA). Green coffee is first steamed to open the cellular structure, allowing EA to bond with and extract caffeine. Following extraction, the coffee is re-steamed to remove any remaining EA, then dried, stabilised, and prepared for export.

This method removes a minimum of 97% of caffeine while preserving the structural integrity of the coffee. Residual EA levels remain below 10 ppm, significantly lower than naturally occurring levels found in common fruits. As EA evaporates at 70°C, well below roasting temperatures, no trace remains in the final cup.