12oz bag of coffee

Notes: Mellow, cinnamon and raisin.

Farm: Various smallholder farmers

Altitude: 1000-1800 ft

Variety: Caturra, Mundo Novo

Process: Washed, methylene chloride decaffeinated*

*If you’re like us, if you see a funky sounding chemical in a product you consume, you get suspicious. No need to fear, MC is simply one of the primary methods of decaffeinating coffee today. Methylene chloride is a solvent that is used to strip the caffeine molecules from our coffee beans when they are still green seeds.

The farm first puts the seeds in hot water to extract caffeine and other solubles from the coffee. They then take the coffee seeds out of the water before they add methylene chloride (MC) to the water. The MC bonds with the caffeine and since it isn’t miscible with water they remove the caffeine and MC from the water quite easily. The coffee is then added back to the water solution so that they can re-absorb the good solubles that give the coffee the taste it has.

The FDA has confirmed this process is safe for use and harmless to humans in consumption of 10 ppm or less. This coffee has been shown to contain a very small fraction of the safe amount.