Source Analysis by Chris Kornman & Mayra Orellana-Powell
Smallholders in Colombia benefit from one of the world's highest profile farmer support organizations, the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia (FNC). While there are undoubtedly drawbacks (bureaucratic bloat, lack of understanding of high end specialty), the FNC guarantees that all coffee grown in the country can be purchased, and that farmers have access to education, infrastructure, seedlings, and more.
The remarkable result is that disparate producers, separated by hundreds of miles, are able to harvest and process coffee with remarkable homogeneity. This coffee was sourced from a wide array of smallholders in the network of our export partner, Expocafe, and sampled to us prior to decaffeination.
Royal exclusively decaffeinates coffee by two processes: Water and Ethyl Acetate (aka “Sugarcane”) process. This coffee was sent from the port of Buenaventura to Veracruz, where it began its next steps at Descamex, whose proprietary decaffeination method is called Mountain Water Process.
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.
