Decaf: Just say no
Does anyone not sell decaf espresso? How about no decaf at all?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jay Caragay on
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I have heard of shops trying this approach, only to bend to pressure and add decaf. I would be very interested to hear more if you decide to go that route.
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Permalink Reply by olivier dutil on
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Why? ...Decaf espresso when you have a proper decaf espresso blend , can taste almost as good as the regular espresso.
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Permalink Reply by Jared Rutledge on
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our decaf is a sumatra that royal NY water processes, and it's decent. i have trouble keeping it fresh but lately i've been freezing it so it's never more than ~4 days off roast. i would piss off a lot of people if i didn't carry decaf.
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Permalink Reply by Dennis McQuoid on
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Why? Regarding espresso, I'm concerned with freshness, for one. Another concern, I'll be focused on a custom Hawaiian blend. The coffees are typically mild to begin with so loosing some flavor to the process may be unacceptable. Also, the cost for me would be extreme as there are no decaf facilities in Hawaii. Buying in small batches, and sending them to the mainland for process would difficult. For regular coffee, there are a few good Hawaiian SO's where I can buy that have decaf.
olivier dutil said:Why? ...Decaf espresso when you have a proper decaf espresso blend , can taste almost as good as the regular espresso.
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Permalink Reply by Joona Suominen on
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No decaf at our shop allthough we've been rigorously trying to source Daterra's Opus green beans.
Wakefield had some organic certified decaf-coffee at their stand on the caffé culture which could be worth a try.
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Permalink Reply by John P on
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We have considered eliminating decaf when our current supply runs out. We roast about one pound of decaf for every 150+ pounds of regular. And we probably throw away one-third of that pound. It doesn't hurt us too much to keep it, but it certainly doesn't help us. It's been a waste of time and effort to do it for a couple of years now. It's annoying. The number of people getting decaf is so small but the supply we have will last awhile. We will revisit it then.
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Permalink Reply by Brady on
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Dennis McQuoid said:Why? Regarding espresso, I'm concerned with freshness, for one. Another concern, I'll be focused on a custom Hawaiian blend. The coffees are typically mild to begin with so loosing some flavor to the process may be unacceptable. Also, the cost for me would be extreme as there are no decaf facilities in Hawaii. Buying in small batches, and sending them to the mainland for process would difficult. For regular coffee, there are a few good Hawaiian SO's where I can buy that have decaf.
How do the Hawaiian SO decafs fare as espresso?
We totally solved our freshness issue by getting rid of the decaf "espresso blend" that we'd been using and putting our house organic decaf in the hopper. This coffee has been a Peru for the last several months, and it happens to work very well as a SO espresso.
I like this approach a lot. We brew plenty of decaf as drip, so freshness is never an issue. Plus we can drop the drip during low-volume times and serve an americano with it that people really seem to enjoy. (For whatever reason, some people are afraid of americanos made with espresso, but are happy to try "our favorite Peru decaf made just for you using our espresso machine".)
Experiment with your SO decaf coffees in the hopper. If you don't find something that works, you can explain your valid reasons for not having decaf espresso.
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Brady said:
How do the Hawaiian SO decafs fare as espresso?
There are a few places that sell Hawaiian SO espresso. I'm not sure how "they" define SO - whether from a single farm, or region, or even varietal. I would not call a blend of coffees from our different islands as SO just because it all grew in Hawaii. Nor would I call a Kona blended with a Ka'u an SO even though they are both grown on the Big Island.
I haven't had a good Hawaiian SO espresso. But, if you get the right blend of Hawaiian coffees of various varietals matched with proper roasting, you can get a very good espresso. Case in point, Pete Licata won the 2010 Western region competition with a Hawaiian blend espresso.
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I am decidedly in the FREEZE? YES! camp.
After many years of testing and field use of freezing coffees between myself and some other coffee professionals I know, I have found very little degradation of frozen coffees in their roasted whole bean form. Collectively between us, I think we have a total of 15 years freezing experience.
It's very easy to think that freezing water in the bean will crystalize to the point in will damage the structure. We have not found this to be true because roasted coffee simply does not have enough water content (2-3%) to damage the bean. Compare this to freezing string beans or a tomato and you'll easily see what freezing damage will do to a product.
What freezing accomplishes for the operator is a suspension of aging. If you freeze your coffee on Day 4 out of the roaster, you start from Day 4 when you thaw the coffee. This means you can store roasted coffee almost indefinitely at nearly any point of its aging cycle, hold it and then serve from that moment forward.
Some people have stated that the thawing of the coffee "speeds up" the aging process. However, I have not found that to be true - partly because our coffees don't last more than a few days and for us to see any truly notable change would require holding the coffee longer than our production needs demand.
The problem with decaf is the extreme damage the process does to the structure of the bean that increases its rate of staling, combined with the relatively low demand means that you'll invariably find yourself with stale decaf while still having a stock of it on hand. Freezing allows you to manage and maximize your product without sacrificing the quality of the coffee.
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Permalink Reply by Anthony Rue on
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For what it's worth, we eliminated decaf espresso a year and a half ago. We were not selling enough to keep it fresh. Since we eliminated it, we've been able to use the second grinder for SO espresso and we're focusing on offering the best brewed decaf we can. It's not been a problem at all for us.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Randall on
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some people love the experience of drinking coffee and espresso beverages, but can not handle caffeine. Is it right to deprive these people of the right to a good cup of coffee? If it is more expensive, just charge more. If anyone gets upset you can simply explain your reasoning. No one complains about paying more for a cup of Kona when you explain to them the practical reasons that it is so expensive.
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Dennis McQuoid said:
Brady said:How do the Hawaiian SO decafs fare as espresso?
There are a few places that sell Hawaiian SO espresso. I'm not sure how "they" define SO - whether from a single farm, or region, or even varietal. I would not call a blend of coffees from our different islands as SO just because it all grew in Hawaii. Nor would I call a Kona blended with a Ka'u an SO even though they are both grown on the Big Island.
I haven't had a good Hawaiian SO espresso. But, if you get the right blend of Hawaiian coffees of various varietals matched with proper roasting, you can get a very good espresso. Case in point, Pete Licata won the 2010 Western region competition with a Hawaiian blend espresso.
OK... looks like I wasn't quite clear enough. When I asked about SO decafs, I was referring to the part where you said:
Dennis McQuoid said:...For regular coffee, there are a few good Hawaiian SO's where I can buy that have decaf.
All I was asking here was if you'd tried buying any of these Hawaiian decafs that you said you can get and pulling shots with them?
Though results you get from a coffee pulled as an espresso tend to be best when the roaster had espresso in mind, sometimes you get lucky. Experiment a bit... your results might surprise you.
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