Coffee Knowledge Natural Decaf Coffee Laurina

There are always some people who can't accept caffeine for various reasons, but like the aroma and taste of coffee. Therefore, in the past, we used manual treatment (such as Swiss water treatment) to remove caffeine from coffee beans as much as possible. The level of artificially processed decaf coffee has been improving, but there will always be people who think that its flavor will be worse than it was before caffeine was removed.

Scientists have also been trying to find ways to make the coffee fruit on the tree naturally decaf. In 1989, a team led by Mr. Andrea Illy, the third-generation head of Illy, a famous Italian coffee roaster, bought a batch of 185000 coffee saplings that an American company planned to throw away. In these seedlings, they found some natural varieties of bourbon species. The coffee fruit of this variety contains much less caffeine than ordinary Arabica coffee. The Illy team selected 15 sturdy "mother trees" from these seedlings for breeding and reproduction. El Salvador introduced this variety for experimental cultivation in 2000 and is now extended to other coffee-producing countries such as Costa Rica and Colombia. This breed is today's Laurina.

At the same time as the Illy team cultivated this variety, Japanese coffee company UCC and French scientists are also collaborating on the breeding of natural low-caffeine coffee. They selected a bourbon variety almost the same as Laurina in Madagascar and named it Bourbon Pointu.

In recent years, in Brazil and many other countries, there are also small companies or individuals trying to cultivate natural low-caffeine coffee varieties.

At an auction early this morning, a batch of 23-pound Laurina coffee and raw beans from Colombia sold for more than $100 a pound. It is believed that this price will stimulate a group of coffee farmers' interest in growing natural decaf coffee.