About the Coffee Grupo San Augustin Los Cauchos is a producer group based in Cauca, Colombia, in the same mountainous region where the Magdalena River begins. The area sits near the archaeological park El Alto de Los Idolos, built around burial sites left behind by a pre-Columbian civilization that disappeared around 1,000 B.C. long before Spanish colonizers arrived. The farmers here initially came together to share knowledge and make it easier to sell their coffees collectively, and quality has been the group's focus ever since. The group grows Caturra and Typica varieties and processes this coffee as a washed, oxygen sugarcane decaf. Sugarcane decaffeination (also called ethyl acetate decaf) uses a compound derived from fermented sugarcane to remove caffeine without stripping the coffee of its character. Importantly, this decaffeination happens at origin in Colombia, which keeps the coffee fresher and cuts down on the carbon footprint that comes with shipping green coffee halfway around the world just to process it. The group has also been actively working to standardize their farming practices, upgrade their drying infrastructure, and raise the overall consistency of what they produce. Traffic sources this coffee with a clear set of criteria for decaf: the green coffee has to be worth buying in the first place, the decaffeination has to happen at origin, and the finished cup has to outperform every other decaf they have tried. This is the highest price Traffic has ever paid for a decaf. They hold it because it delivers. About Traffic Traffic Coffee was founded by Greg Lancot and Jessie Lewin in Montreal, Quebec. Both had always gravitated toward creative work, and when they moved into coffee roasting they brought that same approach with them. They wanted to push back against the idea that coffee is just a caffeine delivery system and show that it could also be fun and worth paying attention to. Traffic roasts in small batches, which lets them stay close to the farmers they buy from and maintain consistent quality across their lineup. Their sourcing philosophy has two lanes: either they let the varietal do the talking, or they lean into more experimental processing methods. The result is a range that covers a lot of ground, from clean and straightforward to funky and fermented. The Minute Papillon sits in its own category entirely, a decaf built to the same standard as everything else in their catalog. "Traffic's breadth of coffee is remarkable - from dark roasts reminiscent of your grandmother's kitchen, to wild co-ferments with tasting notes we admittedly have to look up. The packaging and the coffee inside is meant to captivate you, and I hope you feel the same when you try this coffee." - Dean, Director of Coffee
