All You Need to Know About Decaf Coffee

By Anne T Miller

What is Decaf Coffee?

Decaf (short form of Decaffeinated) Coffee is Coffee that has been brewed by decaffeinated beans. For beans to be classified as decaffeinated they have to have 97% of the caffeine removed, or have 99.9% of their mass be caffeine free.

How it’s made

Decaf Coffee can be made in many different ways. Most methods involve steaming the coffee beans before they’ve been roasted, then soaking the softened beans with a type of solvent that dissolves the caffeine. These steps are usually repeated multiple times. The goal of this process is to remove all the caffeine while leaving all the other chemicals, and taste intact. Some popular versions of this process are:

-The Roselius Process Invented by Ludwig Roselius and Karl Wimmer, this was the first commercial decaffeination process. It involved steaming the beans with salt water and then bathing the beans in benzene. This method has become unpopular due the health concerns related to benzene.

-The Swiss Water Process Developed by the Swiss water Decaffeinated Coffee Company. There is only one remaining commercial facility left using this method, but it is frequently used by independent coffee makers

-The Direct Method This method requires the beans to be steamed for a half hour followed by repeated rinsing with dichloromethane or ethyl acetate. The rinsing step repeats for around ten hours.

-The Indirect Method (also known as water processed) First the beans are soaked in hot water until the water is essentially brewed coffee. At this point the beans are removed and the chemicals dichloromethane or ethyl acetate are added and used to decaffeinate the water. This decaf coffee water is added with a fresh batch of beans, and the process is repeated. After a few cycles the water is so full of coffee that the only chemical left to take is the caffeine, and so none of the bean’s strength or flavor is lost.

-The CO2 process Popular due to the fact that no harmful chemicals are used. This method uses liquid carbon dioxide to dissolve the caffeine at high pressure. Beans are first steamed, then soaked by supercrital carbon dioxide at a pressure of roughly 200 atmospheres. After ten hours the CO2 is evaporated with the Caffeine. The CO2 is then recycled to use with another batch.

-The Triglyceride Process This process involves soaking the beans in hot water to draw the caffeine to the surface of the bean. Then the hot beans are covered in special coffee oils. The oils are made from old coffee grounds, and at high temperatures the Triglycerides found in the oils remove the caffeine in the beans.

Does Decaf Coffee Taste worse?

Many people believe that decaf coffee tastes worse than regular Coffee. The true answer is complicated. Decaf coffee that is properly decaffeinated tastes the same as regular coffee, or at least close enough that you and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The reason decaf has a bad reputation when it comes to taste is because in an effort to save money most companies use a lower quality bean for their decaf coffees. This is done because to decaffeinate a batch of beans costs money, so there for decaffeinated beans are more expensive, but companies like to sell there decaffeinated brands at the same price, so they use a cheaper bean. If you want to avoid poor tasting decaf just make sure to buy premium beans, because the taste of the coffee is mostly dependent on what bean is used.

This article was created by Dylan McLauchlan from Effects of Caffeine your #1 source for information on the effects of caffeine.

To checkout other ways to cut back on you’re caffeine consumption checkout other Sources of Caffeine

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Topics: Coffee | Comments Off

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