Castillo Decaf
DANIEL BERMUDEZ / SUGAR CANE DECAF / COLOMBIA / DOUBLE AEROBIC WASHED
Creamy Giotto sweetness settles in first, soft and comforting, before easing into the warm, caramel depth of dried date. A faint hint of canned mango adds a mild, syrupy brightness — never loud, just a small lift in the background. Thanks to the sugarcane decaf process, the cup stays naturally sweet, clean, and wonderfully smooth. A calm, delicate cup with just enough nuance to make it quietly memorable.
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What this coffee feels like
That one last moment on the street, the club lights glowing, the air already buzzing, but instead of downing an energy drink or giving up on taste entirely, you’re holding a decaf that actually tastes good. Smooth, sweet, clean. No compromise. No crash. Just… coffee. And then suddenly, the night flips into something surreal. The sky opens, not with rain, not with confetti, but with Giottos.
They fall like tiny comets through the flash-lit darkness, bouncing off car roofs and jackets, until one of them drops straight into your cup. A perfect hit.
Your quiet, elegant decaf transforms instantly into this creamy, nutty, caramel dream, as if the universe itself decided to season it for you.
A weird little blessing in the chaos outside the club.
A moment so strange and perfect, it almost feels staged.
But it’s just you, a decaf, and a Giotto meteor shower.
And honestly?
It tastes incredible.
This coffee's story
Daniel Bermúdez represents a new generation of Colombian producers who approach coffee with a scientific and experimental mindset. Together with his family, he operates Finca El Paraíso, a farm that has gained international recognition for innovative processing methods rather than traditional profiles.
Rather than focusing primarily on terroir expression through classic washed processes, Daniel became known for developing precise and repeatable fermentation protocols. His approach integrates controlled temperature, pH monitoring, oxygen management, and carefully defined fermentation times. This allows him to design flavor profiles with a level of consistency that was historically difficult to achieve in coffee production.
One of his most notable contributions is the refinement of double fermentation and thermal shock techniques. In these processes, coffee cherries or pulped beans undergo multiple fermentation stages, sometimes followed by rapid temperature changes using hot and cold water. These steps alter cellular structure, stabilize aromatic compounds, and significantly intensify fruit expression, sweetness, and mouthfeel.
Coffees from El Paraíso often present highly expressive profiles, featuring tropical fruit, florals, creamy sweetness, and vibrant acidity. Because of this clarity and intensity, his coffees are frequently used in barista competitions, including World Barista Championship routines.
Despite the experimental nature of his work, Daniel emphasizes control rather than chaos. His goal is not fermentation for its own sake, but precision and reproducibility. Every variable is measured and adjusted to ensure that each lot performs consistently from batch to batch.
Daniel Bermúdez’s work reflects a broader shift in specialty coffee toward process-driven flavor design. While this style can be polarizing, his influence is significant. He has expanded the boundaries of fermentation in coffee and helped redefine what is possible when processing is treated as a craft in itself.
Processing
For that profile the process begins with the harvest of ripe coffee cherries at the point that contains the greatest amount of sugars and precursors of aromas and flavors. Then the coffee cherries are disinfected with ozone, and they are transferred to the cherry fermentation tanks, in which an anaerobic fermentation process is carried out for 48 hours submerged in water with Saccharomyces cerevisiae culture medium (culturing) Then the coffee is pulped, and a culture medium with yeasts is added to produce the precursors of aromas and characteristic flavors of the profile and it is carried out leachated recirculation and then a thermal shock wash process is carried out to fix a greater amount of precursors and seal the coffee for a good drying process.
Dried in a dehumidifier to remove humidity, preserving the soft notes of the coffee and avoiding the over-oxidation of the coffee seed and stopping the metabolic processes to avoid overfermentation Stabilization and storage in a cool place
Sent to Decaf planta DESCAFECOL
Decaffeination
This natural decaffeination process begins with green coffee arriving at the facility, where it is stored and organized into individual silos that define future production batches. The beans are first steamed to remove the silver skin and prepare them for further treatment. They are then moistened to open their pores, allowing the next stages to work effectively.
Decaffeination happens in extraction tanks, where the coffee is submerged in natural ethyl acetate derived from sugar cane. This solvent circulates through the beans, selectively binding to and removing the caffeine while leaving most flavor compounds intact. After extraction, the coffee is steamed again to eliminate any remaining ethyl acetate.
Once decaffeinated, the beans undergo a controlled drying phase to restore moisture to precise target levels. They are then cooled in silos until they reach room temperature, stabilizing the coffee for storage and transport. To protect the beans and ensure a uniform appearance, they are lightly polished with a wax of vegetable origin.
Finally, the finished coffee is transferred to silos for packaging, ready to be shipped as naturally decaffeinated green coffee.