Colombia Excelso SWD is made up from a collection of Rainforest certified farms across the Andes mountain range in Colombia. The land stretches from the Amazon Rainforest to the highlands of the Andes mountains; such a wide area leads to two key harvest times in the country, making fresh coffee available from Colombia all year round!
 
The cherries are harvested at their ripest, then soaked in water to sort and remove under ripe cherries before passing them through a pulping machine. The cherries are then fermented in tanks for around 8-14 hours before being laid out on drying patios or ‘Guardiolas’. These processes are mostly carried out on the farms where the coffee is grown on, the processed coffee is then taken to a dry mill for grading, tasting and blending. Coffee beans within the sizes of 15-16 are graded as ‘Excelso’, then packaged in parchment ready for export to the Swiss Water Decaffeination centre in Vancouver, Canada.
 
Swiss water processing is a decaffeination process where the caffeine is gently removed using 100% chemical free methods. The coffee beans are soaked in fresh water & a decaffeinated green coffee extract, where over time the caffeine in the coffee beans is slowly transferred into green coffee solution whilst still maintaining the individual flavour profiles of the Colombian coffee. The coffee extract is then processed through activated charcoal to remove the transferred caffeine, ready to be reused again!