Nightwatchman Decaf

Selected smallholders around Popayán, in Cauca. Small plots at serious altitude, which is a hard way to farm and a very good way to grow coffee.

We buy through ManCoCo, who have the relationships on the ground in Colombia and who ran the project below alongside the Apuna Foundation and Cortolima. It means the coffee is traceable back past the exporter, and it means the money reaches the people we say it reaches.

Decaf beans are more brittle than caffeinated ones and they give up their flavour faster, so the usual advice needs one tweak: go slightly coarser than you think, and don't go looking for a longer extraction.

Espresso: 18g in, 36g out, 25–30 seconds. Slightly quicker than the No Fuss. If it tastes thin and papery, you've over-extracted it. Coarsen up.

Cafetiere: 60g per litre, water off the boil, four minutes, slow press. The most forgiving way to brew it.

AeroPress: 15g, 220g water at 90°C. Stir once, ninety seconds, gentle press.

Filter or pourover: 60g per litre, keep it under three minutes.

Nine o'clock at night, this is the one. All the ritual, none of the lying awake.

In Colombia we help fund work with the Amucaflome Women's Association in Ortega, Tolima, a coffee-growing women's association, delivered by the Apuna Foundation with ManCoCo and Cortolima.

Most rural kitchens still run on open wood stoves. That means smoke indoors, more firewood to carry, and more time at the fire, and it's women and children who breathe most of it.

What the project has done so far:

21 eco-efficient stoves installed. They burn less wood and vent smoke outside the house. Colombian studies put the firewood saving between 29% and 55%, and cooking time down by around 22%.

100 forest trees per family, planted as firewood banks so nobody has to cut into natural forest to cook dinner. Plus training on what those trees do for shade, biodiversity and the coffee itself.

Quality and processing kits: a Mediverde and a Fermaestro each, so growers can grade their green coffee and monitor fermentation properly, and get paid accordingly.
Gender training with 27 members of the association, on how work gets shared at home and on the farm. The brief was explicit: increase women's participation without increasing their workload.

Less smoke in the kitchen, less pressure on the forest, better tools on the farm. That'll do.

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