Decaf Before Death - Purple Rain Decaf (100g)

Roasted to order and in small batches on Sundays

A decaf built on grape, from El Vergel Estate in Colombia!

Roasted light, this one is grape through and through: think Ribena rather than a subtle note in the background. Grape and green grape lead, backed by a touch of black pepper and caramel, with the honey and grape co-fermentation driving that fruit-forward, almost juice-like character.  

About the coffee

• Producer: Growers from Tolima, Huila and Caldas
• Farm: El Vergel Estate
• Region: Tolima, Huila, Caldas, Colombia
• Variety: Castillo, Caturra & Colombia
• Process: honey + grape co-ferment, EA sugarcane decaf
• Altitude: 1,750 MASL
• Taste notes: Grape, Green Grape, Spices, Caramel

The story behind the coffee

This lot draws on cherries from smallholder farmers across Tolima, Huila and Caldas, transported to El Vergel Estate for processing. El Vergel is run by Forest Coffee, whose agricultural roots go back to 1995; the estate itself started producing coffee in 2010, with its first harvests in 2015.

Forest Coffee was founded in 2019 to close the gap between Colombian growers and international roasters, with an emphasis on processing innovation and fair, transparent pricing. Today that network runs to 250 coffee-growing families across four projects.

Rather than a single-farm lot, this is a blend built for a specific outcome: grape-driven sweetness and body, engineered through fermentation before the caffeine is removed.

The process

Cherries are hand-sorted to keep only ripe fruit and remove leaves and stones. They then go through a 24-hour pre-fermentation in sealed bags, followed by a further 24 hours of in-cherry fermentation.

After depulping, the beans are anaerobically co-fermented with their mucilage for five days, with yeast and grape must added to the mix. It's this stage that pushes the honey process into distinctly fruity territory, building the grape and green grape character that carries through to the cup.

The coffee is then mechanically dried over 10 days for even moisture, and stabilised for a further five days in GrainPro bags.

Sugarcane decaffeination (EA)

Once stabilised, the coffee is decaffeinated using ethyl acetate derived from sugarcane grown in Colombia's Valle del Cauca. The process runs in three stages:

Moistening: the green beans are moistened with water. Extraction: EA is circulated through the beans, bonding with and extracting the caffeine while preserving the flavour compounds built up during fermentation. Steaming: the beans are steamed to clear any remaining EA residue, leaving the coffee decaffeinated but with its complexity intact.

Roasted fresh, in small batches

We roast every coffee to order in small batches on Sundays before dispatching it fresh the following week. This helps each coffee reach you at its best, ready to brew.

Golden Purple Rain is a grape-forward style of decaf, roasted light to keep that Ribena-like juiciness front and centre. If you want proof that decaffeination doesn't have to mean a flatter cup, this is it.