A Rare cupping with Pre and Post Decaf Coffees

James Harper, creator of the documentary coffee podcast Filter Stories, recently travelled to Mexico to record an upcoming decaffeination series in collaboration with Lucia Solis of the Making Coffee podcast. During the trip he visited Descamex, one of the world’s leading water process decaffeination plants. While there, he gained unusual access to a set of samples that almost never leave a factory environment: the exact same coffees tasted both before and after decaffeination.

Those coffees have now been brought back to Berlin.

This one off tasting recreates that experience for the local coffee community. Participants will cup a diverse range of origins, including Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Sumatra and Ethiopia, spanning multiple quality levels. The session will explore how water based decaffeination influences flavour, where it softens or reshapes the cup, and where it unexpectedly improves it.