Ovenbird is a small Glasgow specialty roaster with two decafs in their range, and both go through the Mountain Water process. The Peru G1 is Fair Trade Organic, single origin, and roasted medium. The Decaf Moonlight is a Mexican blend. Their first ever decaf, Coffee With No Name, has quietly dropped off the menu.
If you are looking for solvent free specialty decaf from a roaster who treats it as a product rather than an afterthought, Ovenbird is worth knowing about. If you want supermarket pricing, this is not your shop.
This is what they make, how it is processed, what to expect when you brew it, and where Ovenbird sits in the small population of UK specialty decaf roasters.
What Ovenbird makes in decaf
Two products are currently live on ovenbird.co.uk:
| Product | Origin | Method | Tasting notes | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decaf Peru G1 Mountain Water | Peru highlands, 1,200 to 1,600m | Mountain Water | Nougat, caramel, raspberry | £24 / 500g |
| Decaf Moonlight | Mexico (Chiapas / Veracruz) | Mountain Water | Chocolate, sugar cane, vanilla | £23 / 500g |
Both are sold in 500g and 1kg formats. That is unusual for a small specialty roaster, where 250g bags are the default. The 500g floor signals confidence that you will get through the bag before the roast date stops doing you favours.
A third product, Coffee With No Name, was Ovenbird’s first decaf and the one the directory still associates with the brand. It is no longer in the range. We come back to it below.
The interesting structural choice is that both current decafs use the same process. Mountain Water on a Peruvian single origin and Mountain Water on a Mexican blend. That kind of consistency suggests Ovenbird picked Descamex deliberately and stuck with the choice.
The Mountain Water process
Mountain Water is the close cousin of Swiss Water. Both are solvent free. Both use Green Coffee Extract, which is water already saturated with green coffee’s flavour compounds but stripped of caffeine. Both leave the bean’s flavour chemistry alone and pull only the caffeine out. The mechanism is the same. The geography is different.
Mountain Water is run by Descamex in Veracruz, Mexico. The plant has been operating since 1981, which makes it older than the Swiss Water facility in British Columbia. Caffeine removal exceeds 97%, per Descamex’s published specification.
For a roaster choosing between the two, the practical difference is geography and shipping logistics, not cup quality. Specialty roasters who have used both tend to rate them as equivalent in the cup. Ovenbird have settled on Mountain Water for their entire decaf range, which is consistent with how seriously they treat the rest of the production chain.
If you want the longer explanation of the GCE mechanism and how it compares to CO2 and ethyl acetate, the Swiss Water Process explainer covers it. The chemistry is the same in Veracruz.
The Peru G1 itself
Peru G1 is the top specialty grade in Peru’s coffee grading system. This lot comes from smallholder farmers working between 1,200 and 1,600 metres, fully washed before decaffeination, then run through Mountain Water and roasted medium in Glasgow. The bean varieties are Typica with supporting Bourbon, Caturra, Pache and Catimor, which is a representative spread for Peruvian smallholder lots.
The certifications matter. Fair Trade and Organic on the same coffee gives you third party verification of both the price paid to the farmer and the agricultural standards on the farm. Most Fair Trade organic decafs in the UK use Swiss Water. Ovenbird’s choice of Mountain Water on this combination is uncommon.
Tasting notes from the roaster are nougat, caramel and raspberry. Plausible profile for a washed Peruvian at that altitude. The brewing parameters published on the product page are the kind of detail you only see from a roaster who expects you to brew it carefully:
- Espresso: 18g to 36g yield in 28 seconds
- V60: 15g to 250g water at 93°C, 3:00 total
- Cafetière: 42g to 500g water at 94°C, 4:00 steep
The Peru G1 listing on Decaffeinate carries the directory entry. Buy direct from Ovenbird for the freshest roast date.
Coffee With No Name (the blend they started with)
Ovenbird’s first ever decaf was a blend of Ethiopian Sidamo and Guatemalan Acatenango, Typica variety, named after the song A Horse With No Name. The roaster’s own copy gave the Ethiopian the credit for “fruit and floral complexity” and the Guatemalan the credit for “body and structure”. That is a reasonable read of those two origins.
The decaffeination method was never publicly disclosed. The Decaffeinate directory records it as Unknown. A roaster who normally publishes everything chose not to publish this one detail, and the product has since been retired. There is no reliable way to fill the blank now.
It is no longer listed on ovenbird.co.uk. The Decaf Peru G1 has effectively taken its place. If you find a 250g bag of Coffee With No Name in a stockist’s cold corner, the roast date will tell you everything you need to know about whether to buy it.
That trajectory, blend to single origin, is the right direction for a small roaster getting more confident about their decaf programme. The Peru G1 is the more interesting product.
Is Ovenbird decaf any good?
The honest answer rests on quality signals rather than first hand tasting. We have not personally cupped this coffee against a comparable Swiss Water Peruvian. What we can say is what the evidence supports.
The raw material is specialty grade. Peru G1, washed, smallholder cooperative, mountain grown. Fair Trade Organic certified. The decaffeination is genuinely solvent free, run by a 45 year old Mexican facility, removing more than 97% of the caffeine. The roaster publishes brewing parameters, sells in 500g and 1kg formats, and runs only two decafs at a time, both processed the same way. The tasting notes are specific and origin appropriate, not the “smooth and chocolatey” boilerplate of commodity decaf.
That is a long way short of saying Ovenbird makes the best decaf in the UK. We have no comparative cupping evidence to support that. But every quality signal a customer can sensibly check is present. For a drinker who has been buying supermarket decaf and wants to move into specialty without overthinking it, Ovenbird’s Peru G1 is a sensible first step. For a drinker who already brews specialty caffeinated coffee carefully and wants the decaf version to deserve the same attention, the Peru G1 is the kind of coffee that earns it.
Glasgow’s specialty roasting scene is small. Ovenbird sits alongside Dear Green and a handful of others in the city itself. Loch Lomond Coffee runs from Balmaha just outside. Glen Lyon roasts further north in Aberfeldy. Of those, Ovenbird is the only Glasgow based roaster with a consistent two product decaf range and a published process commitment to Mountain Water. The Scottish specialty decaf shelf is not crowded.
Where to buy
Direct from the roaster is the cleanest route: ovenbird.co.uk. Free UK delivery over £15, which a single 500g bag clears comfortably. Pittenweem Chocolate in Fife stocks the Peru G1 if you want to add it to an existing order with them.
The Decaffeinate directory entry sits at the Peru G1 listing above. If Ovenbird’s approach appeals, small Scottish roaster, solvent free Mountain Water, single origin transparency, browse the rest of the directory and filter by Decaf Method = Mountain Water for the other Mexican origin specialty decafs that work the same way.