The coffee is from Senna Katta Mountain farm, Limu Kossa, Jimma. It's the only coffee farm in this remote forest area, and the small clearing made for their processing site is pretty easy to spot on an areal map amidst the surrounding sea of green! This isn't a clear cut coffee farm, but rather, part of a government land grant where plots in agro forest areas were given away to farmers who could be good stewards to the land by maintaining the natural forest habitat. Senna Katta Mountain is owned by wife and husband Yodit, and Solomon. They are both pharmacists who met when opening a clinic in Limu Kossa sometime ago. Yodit's father was an agronomist in Jimma, working for the government, and it was their dream to build a farm in the area. With his help as their advisor, they did just that, stepping in as owners after the original owner was unable to keep up with the land improvements that were required. Senna Katta Mountain is 130 hectares in size, though only 110 hectares are under production. It's considered semi-forest coffee since it's not wild coffee, but still grows beneath the preserved forest canopy overhead. This is a very high elevation zone, the mill at 2300 meters with coffee growing even a little higher. This lot was processed by Swiss Water Decaf in Vancouver, BC, whose patented method uses only water to gently remove 99.9% of the caffeine content, leaving much of the volatile compounds that affect flavor and aroma intact
Decaffeination Process
Using the Swiss Water decaffeination process, the green coffee is hydrated to expand the beans for caffeine extraction. The hydrated green coffee is then introduced to Green Coffee Extract (GCE), a unique solution of concentrated coffee solubles that allows the caffeine to leave the green coffee via osmosis while minimizing the loss of desired flavor compounds. Once the caffeine has been removed the green coffee is re-dried and re-bagged for transport, and the GCE is filtered of its caffeine through proprietary carbon filters and recycled to be used again.
