Swiss Water Decaf

About the Coffee

This coffee comes from Peru and is decaffeinated using the Swiss Water Process (SWP), a method developed in Switzerland and first introduced commercially by Coffex in 1979. It was the first commercial decaffeination method that did not rely on chemical solvents, and it remains one of the most widely used approaches in specialty coffee today.

The process works like this: unroasted green coffee beans are soaked in caffeine-free green coffee extract. The caffeine moves out of the beans and into the solution, while the flavor compounds stay locked in the beans. The caffeine-saturated extract is then filtered through activated charcoal, which pulls out the caffeine, leaving the extract ready to be reused on the next batch. The beans are dried back to their original moisture level and re-bagged. The result is coffee that is 99.9% caffeine-free, with no solvents involved at any stage. Because no chemical agents touch the beans, the flavor profile tends to stay closer to what you'd expect from the unprocessed green coffee.

In contrast, most conventional decaffeination methods use a volatile solvent like methylene chloride or ethyl acetate to bind to and extract caffeine from the beans. Those solvents are effective, but the Swiss Water Process skips them entirely. The trade-off is cost: solvent-free processing is generally more expensive, which is reflected in the price of the finished coffee.

About Eclipse

Eclipse Coffee Roasters was founded in 2014 in Canmore, Alberta. Their approach from the start has been to roast each coffee to order, so what arrives at your door is as fresh as possible. They carry around 10 to 15 different coffees at any one time, roasted to bring out what's naturally in each bean rather than pushing a house style.

On sourcing, Eclipse runs each coffee through an independent screening process to check that it was grown in both an environmentally and socially responsible way. For farms that meet their standards, they pay above market price, with the intention of supporting the farm's continued development and the surrounding community.