If you want to enjoy a cup of coffee without the associated buzz, why not try a decaffeinated brew? Decaf coffee has come a long way in recent years, and it is an increasingly popular choice among drinkers who love coffee but don’t always want the big helping of caffeine it contains.
Are you decaf-curious? Read on for answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about decaffeinated coffee.
Who came up with the idea for decaf coffee, anyway?
Like many other discoveries, from penicillin to Post-It notes, decaf coffee came about as the result of a serendipitous accident. As the story goes, in 1905 German coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius received a shipment of coffee beans that had been swamped by seawater. When he processed and tested the beans, he discovered that the extended soak in the brine had stripped them of most of their caffeine content but still conserved the basic flavor of the coffee (with an added dose of saltiness, of course). Intrigued, Roselius began to experiment with different methods for removing caffeine from coffee beans, and eventually, his company, Kaffee HAG, became the first to produce instant decaf coffee.
How is coffee decaffeinated today?
There are several ways that caffeine can be removed from coffee beans, all of which begin with green, unroasted coffee beans. These methods include:
The Swiss Water process—In this multi-step process, green coffee beans are soaked in hot water, where they release caffeine and other key coffee solids. The beans are removed and discarded, and the water is carefully filtered through carbon so that the caffeine is removed but the solids are left behind. The resulting extract is known as “green coffee extract” (GCE), which is used on a new batch of green coffee beans, acting as a kind of trap for the caffeine that is diffused from new beans. This soaking and filtering process is repeated several times until the beans are 99.9 percent caffeine-free. Then the beans are dried and made ready for processing.
The direct solvent method—While the Swiss Water process relies on water alone to do the work of decaffeinating, other methods employ solvents to dissolve and wash away the caffeine found in coffee beans. In the direct solvent method, as the name suggests, ethyl acetate, a solvent found in some fruits and vegetables, is applied directly to green coffee beans. The beans are first steamed, then rinsed with ethyl acetate for up to 10 hours, and finally drained and steamed again to remove any solvent residue.
The indirect solvent method—In this method, the solvent is the same, but the process itself is different. The coffee beans are first soaked in hot water to wash away the caffeine, then the beans are removed from the water and ethyl acetate is used to evaporate the caffeine from the water. This soaking and evaporation process is repeated several times.
Is decaf coffee safe?
The question of whether decaf coffee is safe to drink typically springs from concerns about the solvents used in some methods. Fortunately, the simple answer to the question is, yes—all decaf coffee, no matter how the caffeine has been removed, is safe to drink. While earlier decaffeination methods used chemicals such as benzene, a known carcinogen, as solvents, those methods are no longer in use today. Furthermore, the US Food and Drug Administration has strict rules in place to ensure that only safe, minute traces of any of the solvents used in contemporary decaffeination processes remain in the final beans.
Is decaf coffee caffeine-free?
While modern decaffeinating processes can remove most of the caffeine from coffee, a trace amount of caffeine typically remains in decaf coffee beans. The current standard is that to be marketed as “decaf” decaffeinated coffee must have at least 97 percent of its caffeine removed. This means that if you order a cup of decaf coffee, you could still be consuming somewhere around 2-3 mg of caffeine, but this is, of course, far less than the roughly 95 mg of caffeine that a cup of ordinary coffee contains. It’s also worth noting that the Swiss Water decaffeination process can remove virtually all the caffeine (around 99.99 percent) from coffee beans, but doing so makes the process longer and therefore more expensive, so not all coffee producers use it.
Does decaf coffee taste good?
When it comes to taste, decaffeinated coffee used to have an unfortunate reputation for lacking in flavor. However, decaf coffee tastes better than ever today for two big reasons. The first is that improvements have been made to the decaffeination process itself, resulting in fewer of the chemical compounds that impact the taste of coffee being lost during decaffeination. The second is that as the popularity of decaf coffee has grown, higher-quality beans are being decaffeinated; so naturally, you’ll get better-tasting coffee if you start with better beans.