Colombia Decaf Sugarcane

How EA Decaffeination works 

1. Sugars from sugarcane are fermented to form ethyl alcohol. 

2. Ethyl alcohol is mixed with acid to derive the ethyl acetate compound. 

3. The EA process begins with steaming the green beans at low pressure to remove silver skins. 

4. The beans are thereafter moistened with hot water to swell and soften the beans to catalyse the hydrolysis of the caffein which is bonded to chlorogenic acid inside the coffee. 

5. The EA process gently extracts the caffein from coffee beans, avoiding the use of excessive heat that could damage the beans structure. 

6. Then, the coffee passes to an extractor, where caffein is removed by repeatedly washing with the natural solvent ethyl ectate. This process happen several times to complete the extraction stage, removing more than 97% of caffein. 

7. Once caffein extraction is complete, a flow of low pressure steam is passed over coffee to strip residual ethyl ectate, which evaporates at 70'c once coffee beans are roasted. 

8. The coffees now decaffeinated and free from ethly acetate, is vacuum dried until the moisture content is brought back to 10-12%.