Product Details

Alto San Juan SW Decaf

Cup profile and tasting notes

Rich and buttery mouthfeel, caramel, milk chocolate, super sweet with slightly floral undertone in the finish

Certification Swisswater Decaf
Coffee Alto San Juan SW Decaf
Farm Alto San Juan Coop
Variety Catuai / Caturra
Process Washed
Owner Alto San Juan Coop
City/Town Alto San Juan
Region Tarrazu
Country Costa Rica

Reviews

Average rating

from 2 reviews
Showing 2 of 2 reviews
S
Much more mellow in flavour than the ninety nine - and a touch too acidic for my personal tastes, but still a nice coffee
Dave
Lovely decaf coffee. Very drinkable.
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Delivery

Delivery

Our Delivery Policy

Where do we deliver?

We would deliver to Mars if we could – to reach the whole of the universe with good coffee, but it is not that simple – so for now we deliver to:

UK: Channel Islands, Isle of Man, British Forces Post Office.

Europe: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.

How long will it take?

We do not work at weekends so the term working day means Monday to Friday. If you place an order on the weekend it will not be sent out until Monday.

All orders placed before 13:00hrs 'normally' go out the same day. We do not guarantee orders go out the same day as ordered.

Royal Mail - You can order up to 2kg (7 x 250g bags) using Royal Mail first or second class - orders over 2kg will be sent using Interlink Next Day

UK Mail Next Day  - using this service you can order up to 10kg (38 x 250g bags) will ensure your order gets to you the next working day once the order is despatched from the roastery.

If you use this service you maybe required to sign for the delivery unless you elect to take responsibility for loss if left in a safe place. You will receive an email update from UKMail with a one hour delivery window and using the consignment number you track your order.

How do we keep you updated as to the status of your order.

Once you have placed your order you will receive 2 status updates - they will be:
Order confirmation – this means we have received your order and the coffee is yet to be roasted.
Shipped confirmation – this means your order has left our roastery by your chosen method.

Do we meet our delivery deadlines?

We try our best to meet the delivery deadline quoted, but on the odd occasion a parcel can be delayed due to reasons that are out of our control.

Why don't we offer free postage?

Nothing is free in life. We know you all love free postage and sometimes we do offer it as part of a promotion, but it is our policy to charge for postage. We have considered offering free postage but the costs would have to be absorbed elsewhere by you the customer. We don’t hide our postage costs.

Missing, Damaged or Incorrect Orders

We try very hard to ensure you receive your order in pristine condition. If you do not receive all your products or in the unlikely event that a product arrives damaged, please contact us via the email address within the 'contact us' section of the website.

Please note: Royal Mail does not class an international shipment as lost or missing for 28 working days unfortunately we can not take any action until this time has passed.  During that time we recommend that you ask your local sorting office / post office if they've tried to deliver (even if they haven't left a card) and ask your neighbours if your order has been left with them.  You should also check that the delivery address you gave us is correct, this can be found on your shipping confirmation email.  If your delivery still hasn't arrived after 14 working days and you have performed the above steps then please email us.

Change of Mind, Address and Cancellations

You can cancel your purchase at any time either before or up to 7 working days* following the day you receive the goods by emailing us at the address shown in the 'contact us' section of the website.

Your product must be complete and in 'as new' condition e.g. if you have opened the postal packet to examine the product you must have done so without damaging or marking the product or packaging. It must not have been used and it must  have the heat seal still in place. It should be returned with the original postal packet and packing note you received with it.

Please note that orders that have been ground to order (e.g - not whole roasted beans) may be exempt from our usual returns policy, as these represent a customised special order item. Any 'Free Gifts' received with the product must also be returned. Coffee Real will not refund the cost of postage incurred in returning a item.

If you follow the steps above you will receive a full refund of the product price and any delivery charge paid.

We cannot cancel your purchase when:

The seal has been broken on any products, or the goods were a special order to your specification.

To qualify for a refund or exchange the product must be:

In otherwise "as new" condition; and complete with any free gifts offered with it and, if possible, the original box and packaging.
This promise does not cover faults caused by accident, neglect, misuse or normal wear and tear.

If you have a coffee subscription with us please note that if you change your address and/or product profile in your account settings after the purchase date this will not update your current order, only future orders and thus you will need to notify us by email of any changes you wish to make.

Additional Information

Wonderfully moreish, quaffable decaf coffee– without a doubt.

This coffee comes from small growers at around Alto San Juan small coop located in a region that is well known for some of the most interesting coffees, as well as some of the most renowned coffees to come out of Costa Rica.

I can remember this coffee on the cupping table at the dry mill and for me it was wow! I can remember looking up from the table at the guys from the dry mill after tasting it and they were all smiling; they already knew it was something quite special.

Costa Rica produces some wonderful coffees at a local level like this and by that I mean small individual processed lots of which this is a supreme example of a select lot. Larger bulk lots of coffee where everything is thrown in together can be (is) very mono in taste, not a lot of complexity, call it classic if you wish.

The coffee coop of Alto San Juan of course pick by hand in the traditional way using baskets and this is done only when the cherries reach a perfect stage of ripeness. This not only makes for a perfect tasting coffee, but also ups the agronomic yield and avoids processing green beans.

Washed lots such as this one are pulped, fermented, washed and then immediately transferred to the patios for drying. The coffee is then kept in resting bins for a minimum of 60 days before the final dry milling and is then defect sorted by hand and graded immediately prior to export.

The coop also takes its environmental sustainability seriously and abides by all the environmental protection laws. Its native forests are set aside as protected reserves and are often visited by tourists, school children and ecologists. The farm also regularly plants new trees, particularly around its water sources, in order to maintain the local ecosystem.

Decaffeination Process Swiss Water

The Swiss Water Method of Decaffeination was introduced by The Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Company of Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada in 1988

This method is different in that it does not directly or indirectly add chemicals to extract the caffeine. Rather, it relies entirely on two concepts - solubility and osmosis - to decaffeinate coffee beans.

The process begins by immersing a batch of green coffee beans in very hot water in order to dissolve and extract the caffeine. The water is then drawn off and passed through an activated charcoal filter.

The porosity of this filter is sized to only capture larger caffeine molecules, while allowing smaller oil and flavour molecules to pass through it. However, this extraction process will also extract desirable oils and other solids from the beans, resulting in beans with no caffeine and no flavour in one tank, and caffeine-free but with flavour water in another tank.

The Swiss Water process method attempts to overcome this difficulty by first discarding the flavourless caffeine-free beans, and then reusing the flavour-rich water to remove the caffeine from a fresh batch of coffee beans.Water saturated in this way is referred to as green coffee extract or GCE. It is created using a separate batch of green coffee beans, which are immersed in water and then discarded. In a pre-loading tank, water, cane sugar and formic acid are mixed and heated and used to preload carbon filter columns.

The GCE is then filtered over the columns to extract caffeine from it. A fresh batch of green coffee beans is then immersed in the GCE to remove caffeine but retain other components.The other components can be retained because the water is already saturated with flavour ingredients, therefore, the flavours in this fresh bath cannot dissolve - only caffeine moves from the coffee beans to the water.

This results in decaffeination without a massive loss of flavour. The process of filtering the GCE to remove caffeine and immersing the beans is repeated until the beans are 99.9% caffeine free by mass, meeting the required standard.This process takes 8 to 10 hours