Containing coffee from rotating members of the Monkaaba group, Guarapo is the decaf we've been waiting for! Caffeine is removed via a gentle process involving steaming coffee seeds, soaking in ethyl acetate and re-steaming to remove the solvent. An ester formed by distilling ethanol (alcohol) and acetic acid (vinegar), ethyl acetate is a scary sounding word for a compound found in both nail polish remover and your favorite whiskey! In this case, it's a readily available byproduct from industrial sugar production in Colombia, and is a solvent that bonds to caffeine while leaving the coffee seeds with all their sugars and aromatic compounds intact. As a result of this process, and the original quality of the Monkaaba coffees, Guarapo is almost absurdly balanced, rich and decadent.

Blends like Guarapo also help our friends at Semilla develop new ways of sharing risk with coffee producers. While most specialty coffee buyers only purchase specific micro-lots, Guarapo and similar projects enable Semilla to work towards buying the entirety of each producer's harvest, even lots of coffee that are less marketable to specialty roasters on their own. With Esnaider and Dider of the Monkaaba group, Semilla has now begun a pre-payment program, based on producers estimated production and cash needs. This program isn't gatekept by cupping scores or deliverables, it's just actually doing the work of supporting producers by taking on a portion of the risk that producers have shouldered alone for generations.