Like our main house coffee at Yellow Wood, we obtain our decaffeinated coffee from Easy Jose who roast our coffee locally at their Lenton Roastery in Nottingham.

Easy Jose obtains their unroasted beans directly from indigenous communities from Pichanaki in the highlands of central Peru. Their decaf blend includes bean varieties such as Caturra, Catuai and Pache which are all shade grown 1600 meters above sea level. They are naturally fertilised with Cascara and decaffeinated using the Swiss Water Process.

For this beutiful decaf blend, up to 300 smallholder farmers from the indigenous Shora & Mayni communities contribute their crops which are collectively patio dried before being sent for decaffeination.

The Swiss Water Process is a patented decaffeination method that uses only water to remove 99.9% of a coffee’s caffeine content. Heat and time are employed, but clean water is the only added ingredient.

Firstly, green coffee is soaked in pure water which is then gently heated so that the coffee beans swell, and become porous. The caffeine molecules move out of the swelled coffee and into what's called the Green Coffee Extract 'GCE' solution through osmosis, while the volatile compounds that affect things like flavor and aroma are left in place. The process is repeated until the coffee is 99.9% caffeine free.

Compared to most other decaf methods, the Swiss Water Process is the most transparent in terms of retaining the original flavor of the coffee’s cup profile.

The Swiss Water Process uses no chemicals whatsoever, whereas many other decaffeination methods traditionally employ the use chemical solvents like methylene chloride (“MC” decaf) and ethyl acetate (“EA” decaf). The Swiss Process decaf method has the least impact on original flavor.

While the Swiss Water Process uses lots of water, at least 85% of the water is returned directly to the source as clean, community supply water. The remaining 15%, the GCE concentrate, containing the caffeine is passed through a series of charcoal filters. This traps the caffeine, leaving clean water that is ready for re-use.