Source Analysis by Charlie Habegger & Chris Kornman
It’s hard to believe it’s been over two years since the last time we released a decaffeinated Ethiopian offering. One of the first we carried was present on the bar when we opened the doors of The Crown for the first time in 2019, and those who remember it have a special memory for its elegance and grace as an espresso. We loved it so much we featured it in an early signature drink as a riff on the classic Dark ‘n’ Stormy cocktail.
This new Ethiopian decaf coffee comes to us from Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest such political regional state, including more than 110,000 square miles and 35 million people. It touches the borders of both Kenya to the south and South Sudan to the west, and includes Ethiopia’s massive capital city, Addis Ababa, along with 65% of Ethiopia coffee growing territory, as of 2014. There are a number of famous coffee regions included in full or in part in Oromia: Jimma and Illubabor in the west; Harar to the northeast; Arsi, bordering Sidama in the mid-south, which produces many similar terroirs; and the Guji Zone, where Royal also works with a diversity of forward-thinking growers and processors.
The Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (OCFCU) is an umbrella organization established in 1999 by 34 individual cooperatives interested in centralizing resources and gaining leverage in the export market. As of 2020, OCFCU supports more than 400 individual cooperatives--more than 400,000 households, by far the largest unionization of farmers in the country. Premiums from coffee exports are returned directly to farmers, and the union also funds organic farming programs, mill equipment purchases, and food security programs. OCFCU has established a central cupping lab to support quality control and is a founding shareholder in its members’ bank, the Cooperative Bank of Oromia, that provides pre-harvest financing and crop insurance; both resources historically unavailable to rural farmers in Ethiopia. OCFCU has been Fairtrade and Organic certified since 2002 and ever since has been one of the world’s largest suppliers of Fairtrade coffee.
Local cooperatives carry out activities that often go unnoticed but are crucial for small producers, including training producers in best organic practices and investing in basic infrastructure needs like road improvements and establishing local warehouses. SCFCU focuses on establishing a certification process for local cooperatives, creating micro-credit for producers and investing in social programs on a larger scale. Environmental training programs, healthcare initiatives, life insurance, and educational opportunities are just some of the ways OCFCU strives to improve the quality of life for coffee producers and their families.
Royal sourced this coffee prior to decaffeination directly from OCFCU through our Royal Select program selected based on cup profile, physical preparation, and potential to express excellently once decaffeinated. It was then shipped, in this case to Swiss Water in Canada to undergo “Swiss Water Processing.” During the water process, the green coffee is pre-soaked in water to expand the beans for caffeine extraction. The hydrated green coffee is then introduced to a unique solution of concentrated coffee solubles that draw out the caffeine while minimizing the loss of flavor compounds. Once the caffeine has been removed the green coffee is re-dried and re-bagged for transport, and the extract solution is filtered of its caffeine and recycled to be used again.
