
Picture this: You walk into a cafe and order a double shot of espresso. While you’re waiting, your friend orders(almost) the same thing: a double espresso, but decaf! Suddenly, you feel very emotional and offended. You decide to never talk to your friend again, and most importantly: you block him on Facebook to express your disappointment. This used to be me once upon a time, and maybe you recognize yourself in this situation. Jokes aside, although coffee consumers have mixed feelings about decaf, there’s no doubt it’s growing in popularity!
☕️ What is decaf?
Decaf is short for ‘’decaffeinated’’, which refers to the process of removing caffeine from the coffee beans. Many different methods can be used to decaffeinate coffee, but the principle is the same: all methods use some kind of solvent that enters the coffee beans and extracts the caffeine. An ideal decaffeination process would remove only the caffeine and nothing else, however, that’s physically very difficult(if not impossible) to achieve.
🤔 How is Decaf Coffee made?
Once green coffee has been processed (i.e fermented and separated from the fruit), the coffee beans are exposed to steam - this is the first step of the decaffeination process as it opens up the pores of the coffee bean. Once the pores are open, the beans are then soaked in a solution that contains a solvent that absorbs caffeine. The solvent can be different substances, ranging from water, carbon dioxide, ethyl acetate (EA), or a naturally derived version of EA that involves fruits or sugar cane. All of the aforementioned methods reduce the caffeine content significantly, but do they remove all the caffeine? 🧐 Try the quiz of today’s edition and you’ll find the answer;). After the beans have soaked in the solution for a while, they are removed to clean water and washed before being placed to dry. After drying, the coffee is ready to be stored in coffee sacks until it’s time for export!
🤢 Why does Decaf Coffee taste so bad?
I used to believe that it was impossible to get a decaffeinated coffee to taste good. In my defense, many decaf coffees do taste horrible due to excessively high drying bitterness or metallic flavors. But these off-flavors are not necessarily due to the decaffeination process. In fact, decaffeinated coffee can taste amazing! Here are three reasons why you might have experienced bad tasting decaf:
Defective or low-grade coffee 🫑
Coffee roasters and cafés have traditionally not been willing to pay premium prices for decaf coffee, as the main goal is to remove the caffeine rather than give a premium taste experience. In practice, this has led to a large percentage of decaf coffees being of a lower grade, low-quality coffee that has noticeable defective flavours. There’s no way to create good flavours out of defective coffee(unless you add cinnamon or fruits into the fermentation tank 🤫)
Darker roast 🚬
I’ve noticed that many speciality coffee roasters who offer light-roasted coffee usually push their decaf coffees to a darker profile. This makes sense if the coffee is of a lower grade, as the dark profile hides more of the coffee’s flavour. Whatever the reason is, a dark roast is usually considered a step backwards, making the coffee taste more ‘’commercial and generic’’ for experienced coffee drinkers.
Incorrect brewing 🤦♂️
Depending on the decaffeination process used, the coffee beans might behave very differently than a caffeinated coffee. Some coffees seem to be more soluble, meaning that the brew time required to reach the ‘’sweet spot’’ of flavor is much quicker compared to traditionally processed coffees that haven’t been decaffeinated. A common mistake I’ve seen is to treat decaf as any other coffee, brewing it with similar brew times as caffeinated coffee - this often leads to extremely harsh, bitter, and astringent coffee that has a generic ‘’decaf’’ flavor. It’s also common that decaf coffees are pre-ground, making it impossible to adjust the grind to the specific setup and location where the coffee is brewed.
That’s your daily lesson on decaf! In upcoming editions of TBJ, we’ll go deeper into the different decaffeination processes, how they affect the taste, and how you can nail the brew with your decaf! 🫵
— H.S
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