Hacea Coffee Championship: Redefining Decaf Roasting
Key points:
• Roasters today know to make quality decaf a part of their roasting vocabulary, and decaf is appearing more and more in competition environments
• Hacea’s annual Roasting Championship takes place every summer, and is pushing the craft even further with a challenge open to professionals and home roasters alike
• This year’s roasting challenge was to create the perfect half-caf blend
• The 2026 winner, Joseph Trichilo of Coffeed in Ontario, is among professional coffee roasters rethinking their approach to decaf
• Swiss Water was proud to sponsor a bag of its Emerald Micro Lots decaffeinated green coffee as one of the contest prizes
Redefining Roasting
Coffee roasters today know that to be on top of their decaf game—appreciating all the complexity, seasonality, and all-day-drinkability of decaffeinated coffee—is key. We’re thrilled to see roasters push their decaf thinking to new levels, and even more excited to see this thinking celebrated widely.
This summer, our friends and partners at Hacea Coffee Source brought decaf to the center stage as part of their annual Hacea Roasting Championship. This contest, now in its third year, invites roasters of all levels—from home to pro—to show off their skills using green coffee from Hacea. Entries are limited to 100 roasters, whose work is then evaluated by a team of coffee professionals who determine that year’s champ.
A New Type of Challenge
But the folks at Hacea had a little something special up their sleeve this year—the coffee assigned for the roasting contest was their beautiful Rwanda Nyamasheke Muhororo Natural, which we have also offered as a Swiss Water® Emerald Micro Lots decaf. But for the competitors, the bar was raised—roast the perfect half-caf!
“We were really excited to partner with Swiss Water in this competition,” said Hacea’s Emily Smith. “We have been beyond thrilled with the ongoing quality of the Swiss Water Emerald Micro Lots Series. These coffees have revolutionized how our roasting clients bring specialty coffee to their customers.”
For the contest, Hacea sent each registered entrant equal portions of the Rwandan coffee, one conventional and one decaf, and asked them to return the samples for the judges to blend and taste as the perfect half-caf.
Smith said this idea fit perfectly with the goals of Hacea’s competition, meant to inspire and elevate the craft of roasting.
“With each of our competitions, our goal is always for competitors to finish feeling more confident in their roasting skills than when they started. A core part of our values at Hacea Coffee Source are to make great coffee available to roasters of all sizes, from large professional roasters to new hobby roasters. We carry that same value through to our competitions.”
“Rarely do we, as roasters, have the opportunity to roast a coffee in its conventional lot and the decaffeinated lot. We thought that this could provide a great learning opportunity for roasters to experience how the decaffeination process impacts how the coffee roasts,” continued Smith.
This Year’s Champion
This year’s winner, announced July 17th, was an experienced roaster, Joseph Trichilo of Oakville, Ontario coffee shop Coffeed. The second-, third-, and fourth-place roasters were all home/hobby roasters—part of the magic of this truly inclusive contest. Trichilo will receive a bag of Swiss Water® Emerald Micro Lots decaf green coffee among his prizes Hacea, Fellow, and Roast Magazine.
“The Rwandan coffee was actually the first Rwandan decaf I had ever roasted, and I was genuinely surprised by how much it contributed to the final blend,” said Trichilo. “In many ways, I think it was the decaf that allowed the post-roast blend to really shine. That was an unexpected takeaway for me and another moment that reinforced just how far high-quality decaf has come.
“The unique challenge in this competition was that it was a 50/50 post-roast blend. My focus wasn't just on making each coffee taste great individually, but making sure they worked together as a single, complete expression. Ideally, the blend should be greater than the sum of its parts, and I felt that was exactly what happened here,” he continued.
At Swiss Water, we’re always excited to see decaf—and talented roasters—get their time in the sun, and we’re indebted to Hacea not only for this incredible opportunity to showcase all that decaf can be, but for sourcing such a beautiful coffee from the Muhororo washing station in Rwanda.
If you’re a coffee drinker who’d like to try Rwanda Muhororo Nyamasheke, we currently offer True Love Coffee Co.’s roast of this beautiful decaf in coffee store. And while we don’t have that coffee as a half-caf, we’ve got some delicious ones on hand as well. Cheers!