The interest and market for decaffeinated coffee are steadily growing. We'll clarify where decaf comes from, who decaffeinates it, how its taste can be even better, and why it's undemocratic.
Until recently, I associated decaffeinated coffee with headaches. I primarily drink coffee for enjoyment, but I don't deny the effect of caffeine on me, which, in its absence, brings on headaches. This results in a somewhat difficult love triangle between a cup of coffee, caffeine, and me as a coffee drinker.
I wanted to test this situation and decided to drink only decaffeinated coffee for a month. I called it my Decaf December. In preparation, one month before starting my caffeine-free month, I adjusted my daily coffee consumption:
Our Sueño - the Decaf from Mexico by Rancho San Felipe
Every day, I replaced 5% of the weighed coffee beans for a filter coffee with our decaf beans. After almost a month, I felt ready for Decaf December.
Or so I thought.
Welcome to another world
“Decaf” is not just another type of coffee drink, it's a cosmos of its own:
Decaffeinated coffee often tastes different from untreated coffee. Decaffeinated coffee should be roasted and prepared differently, and the market behind the bean is heavily concentrated among a few key players.
Interest in decaffeinated coffee has increased significantly in recent years. We feel this as a roastery; annually, we roast more decaffeinated coffee. The reasons for the increased interest are individual, but we primarily hear about two specific ones:
- Avoiding caffeine
- Milder taste (milder here likely means less bitter)
I received many tips on where to find good decaf coffee when I put out a call on social media. I was sent coffee samples and had great conversations.
>> If you know of any great decaffeinated coffees, please share them in the comments <<
I received real insider tips; it felt like coffee people were on a treasure hunt. I wondered why it had to be this way? Why it seemingly isn't a given to come across really delicious, decaffeinated decaf?
I spoke with some of the world's largest decaffeination companies, who introduced me to the decaf cosmos: CR3, Swiss Water, Descamex. With Les Révélations from Paris, a roastery that exclusively roasts decafs, I talked about how much the understanding of decaffeinated coffee seems to be changing, and in my self-reflection, I realized that we simply misunderstand decaf.
How is coffee decaffeinated?
Green coffee, i.e., the state of coffee before it is roasted, contains between 1-1.4% caffeine in Arabicas and between 1.8-3.5% in Canephoras (Wintgens, 2012). The roasting process has only a marginal effect on caffeine; the content remains almost identical between green and roasted coffee.
The decaffeination process is applied to green coffee, i.e., before roasting. There are various processes that differ in their speed and efficiency and can affect the coffee's taste to varying degrees.
Common to all processes is that the green coffee, at the start of treatment, is placed in a closed vessel with water or steamed so that the pores of the green coffee open. A solvent is then added to extract the caffeine.
DCM / Dichloromethane for decaffeination
DCM, dichloromethane, acts most efficiently, "but is not very selective," according to Sebastian Gabriel of CR3. Highly efficient means that a batch is decaffeinated in eight to nine hours. Not very "selective" means that not only caffeine but also other easily soluble substances are extracted, which are thus lost from the coffee and often influences the sensory profile.
Supercritical CO2 method for decaffeination
In the CO2 process, CO2 is used as a solvent. In the more efficient method, CO2 operates supercritically. In supercritical decaffeination, high pressure is used, so that the coffee already undergoes its first Maillard reactions, meaning it slowly caramelizes and the first color changes occur.
Subcritical CO2 method for decaffeination
In the subcritical CO2 method, CO2 is brought into a liquid state under high pressure and low temperature conditions, which, in combination with water, can absorb caffeine. This process takes several days, because according to Sebastian Gabriel of CR3, CO2 is "a lazy solvent that takes about six to seven days to dissolve caffeine."
Water process for decaffeination
In water-based methods, a "solution" is used that works without solvents, but rather with a so-called green coffee extract. For this, green coffee A is steeped in water and then pressed through a semi-permeable membrane. The emerging water is saturated with the soluble substances from the green coffee, but the membrane filters out the caffeine. Into this resulting "solution," or green coffee extract, as Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water calls it, the green coffee B to be decaffeinated is then added. The extract then only targets the caffeine.
Ethyl acetate / Sugar Cane Processing for decaffeination
In the ethyl acetate method, also more prosaically called Sugar Cane Processing, an ethyl acetate solvent is used to extract caffeine from green coffee. Ethyl acetate is formed by the esterification of acetic acid and ethanol. Because the solvent, in the case of decaffeination by Descafecol in Colombia, is obtained from sugarcane, it is called Sugar Cane Processing.
The taste of decaffeinated coffee
How should decaffeinated coffee taste? Like coffee that hasn't been decaffeinated? If we agree on that, then decafs have a really hard time, because the decaffeination process is noticeable in most cases.
Whether this is negative depends on what we use as a taste reference for a decaf.
Is the reference for a decaf a non-decaffeinated coffee, or indeed a decaf? Is the reference for an alcohol-free beer that of a beer with alcohol?
In the case of Swiss Water, Stacey Lynden tells me that in their sensory analysis of decaffeinated coffees, they have an attribute for how strongly the process notes can be tasted.
The coffee world has now managed to treat Robustas separately and discuss them sensorially in a different category – even though it is also coffee. We also do not compare capsule coffee with an espresso from an espresso machine, because we know there are differences.
As long as we believe that we should always penalize process notes in decaf, then we remain stuck in a rather rigid way of thinking and might overlook everything that goes into the taste and influences it.
It must be said that there are process notes and “process notes” – the same green coffee, processed using different decaffeination methods, will taste differently. Some heavier, others lighter – but what is even more important:
“Coffees with bigger personalities tend to stand out a lot more during the Decaf process”
says Stacey Lynden of Swiss Water Coffee, the largest decaffeinator using water. The more characteristic the green coffee that is decaffeinated, the more characteristic the coffee tastes afterwards.
Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water in Vancouver, Canada
“High Quality coming in, high Quality coming out”
The best decaf filter coffee in my Decaf December was from Les Révélations, a roastery in Paris. It was a natural from Panama from Creativa Coffee District. I brewed it multiple times and distributed it to the team, receiving feedback like "ah, Natural, where is it from?" - And I simply said, "Panama, roasted in Paris," but omitted the decaf information.
We didn't taste the process notes because the green coffee was very distinctive: it was a natural that had been fermented in closed containers before drying. As Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water would say: "high quality coming in, high quality coming out."
Yes, the decaffeination process adds a process note to the coffee, but if the base material is characteristic, then it is barely noticeable in individual cases.
What does the decaffeination process do to the taste of coffee?
However, the process also removes something, namely bitter substances, in addition to caffeine, which is also bitter.
“Acidity is also homogenized,”
says Sebastian Gabriel of CR3, the largest decaffeinator using subcritical CO2. Often, roasters had purchased lower-quality green coffee, then decaffeinated it, because the process can somewhat mitigate the poor green coffee quality. Or, more prosaically: "It can even enhance the poor green coffee quality in terms of taste, or flatter the green coffee," says Gabriel.
Sebastian Gabriel, CR3, Bremen
However, the decaffeination process always removes soluble compounds from the green coffee, such as fats, carbohydrates, acids, or even melanoidins, which influence our perception of texture—how a coffee feels on the tongue.
Swiss Water Decaf in Vancouver has designed its own evaluation sheet to document the changes before and after the process. They measure on a scale of 1 to 6 how much the coffee has changed. They assess flavor notes, acidity (and sourness), and body - but they divide this into texture (mouthfeel) and thickness (density or viscosity).
Stacey Lynden of Swiss Water says that the coffee's body changes the most. This is due to the loss of soluble compounds. Thus, in a decaffeinated coffee, there are relatively more insoluble compounds than soluble ones. This not only affects brewing but also the taste.
The color: darker, but not burnt
“The color change has primarily nothing to do with oxidation,”
says Sebastian Gabriel of CR3. In their case, decaffeination with subcritical CO2, it is a combination of pressure, heat, rewetting, and re-drying of the green coffee that results in a color change.
Left: an untreated green coffee from Ethiopia, right: Decaf from Mexico, decaffeinated with water
Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water adds that the Green Coffee Extract, i.e., the "solution" in the water process, deposits some of its color in the bean, making the coffee darker.
Freshness: Decaf ages faster
However, both Gabriel and Lynden state that oxidation generally occurs faster in decaffeinated coffee because antioxidants in the coffee are dissolved during the process. This means that the coffee ages faster – both as green coffee and as roasted coffee.
An interesting fact about decaffeinated coffee is that it can appear darker even at low final temperatures in the roasting drum. However, once it is ground, it remains light – the difference between the external and internal color is relatively large.
For all non-decaffeinated coffees, this would indicate uneven bean development, but in the case of decaf, it is the process that causes this phenomenon: during the process, the cell structure of the coffee bean becomes more porous, and the coffee oils penetrate more easily.
This not only changes the color but also causes the coffee to age faster. The opposite is also true: due to high porosity, oxygen penetrates the bean faster. This means: to get the maximum quality, you should buy decaffeinated coffee in small batches and drink it fresh to very fresh. While we wait up to three weeks for dry-processed coffees, we drink decafs as early as one week after roasting.
The preparation of decaffeinated coffee
Although decaffeinated coffee is still coffee, the process changes its brewing behavior. In all my tests during Decaf December, water-, DCM-, and ethyl acetate-processed decafs had longer extraction times in filter preparation than non-decaffeinated coffee. Subcritically decaffeinated CO2 coffees behaved most similarly to non-decaffeinated coffee, meaning they had similar extraction times in filter coffee.
“The decaffeinated coffee bean is more porous, resulting in a larger contact surface for the water, so brewing takes longer,”
says Sebastian Gabriel of CR3. They suspect that decaf breaks differently in the grinder, which we will investigate in a grind analysis soon.
The decaf beans (left) appear darker than the lightly roasted filter coffee from Brazil on the right
When ground, the decaf (left) is hardly any darker
Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water therefore brews her decaf filter coffee with a coarser grind. However, since the decaffeinated coffee has already lost soluble compounds during the process, she measures a lower strength (or TDS) in her beverage. Stacey advises:
- grind coarser
- dose higher
- shorter blooming time, because the coffee degasses faster
Back to our natural coffee from Panama: the coffee was very good and had just been roasted, I extracted it slightly overdosed. It showed hardly any sensory signs of being a decaf - why isn't this the standard?
Because of the quantity.
And the focus.
And the risk.
And the price.
In short: because the decaf market is highly consolidated and such coffees like our example from Panama are nano-stories in a less transparent mass market.
The Decaf Market: Undemocratic and Consolidated
Who actually decides which green coffee gets decaffeinated?
As a rule, it's trading houses that want a specific green coffee, or already blended coffees, so-called Basket Blends, decaffeinated by a decaffeinator (CR3, Coffein Company, Swiss Water, etc.). Sebastian Gabriel of CR3 told me that the decaffeinator is never "the owner of the goods, but only the processor."
If not trading houses, then it is roasteries that want a certain coffee decaffeinated. For example, we planned this with Rancho San Felipe a few years ago: We gave a purchase commitment for 50% of a batch of decaffeinated coffee. They then had Descamex decaffeinate the coffee, and since then, we have had the coffee as Sueño in our range.
Batch size is the bottleneck
For Descamex to decaffeinate the green coffee for Rancho San Felipe, they had to deliver 50 bags of green coffee, i.e., 2500kg. This is the minimum size for decaffeinating coffee at Descamex. At Swiss Water in Vancouver, it's now 4560kg, and at CR3, it's around 3000kg.
This leads to three challenges:
- Firstly, a trading house or roastery needs customers for approximately 3000kg minimum quantity of decaffeinated coffee. This volume should be sold relatively quickly, as decaf has a shorter shelf life than untreated coffee.
- The process is a shot in the dark – there is no way to quickly decaffeinate a sample of a specific coffee and then decide if it is sensorially interesting. The 3000kg is the test batch.
- And once again, sensory evaluation: if at least 3000kg or more need to be decaffeinated to make it worthwhile to run the plant, which coffees are then processed? Exactly, it's rarely the microlots, because there is only a small amount of that coffee.
Less complex decafs because the barrier to entry is too high
Piroska Hunyadi from Révélations and I joked that we actually needed a 60kg decaffeination machine to make it attractive to decaffeinate very rare and sensorially complex coffees on a mini-scale.
The mentioned lot from Panama that she roasted was therefore at least 3000kg, so Swiss Water could decaffeinate it. There are very few coffee producers who can produce 3000kg of coffee at such a level, so the barrier to entry for great coffees into the decaf market is far too high.
I would love to have a 300kg lot from Peru decaffeinated because it's a coffee I want to drink in the evening. But it's not possible because there isn't enough coffee. Sebastian Gabriel from CR3 again:
“Scaling is economically much more sensible. Decaffeination is capital-intensive, and the safety and environmental requirements are very high, which really only justifies scaled production.”
Thus, the decaf market is not truly democratic. As long as batch sizes are so large, and at Swiss Water even increasing, smaller lots do not make it into the decaffeination process. Coffee drinkers are at a sensory disadvantage here: the most complexly flavored decafs will not exist, and if they do, they will only come from a few farms that can produce super quality at a large scale.
A Drastic Consolidation
We know that the coffee market is highly consolidated: on the roasted coffee side, a handful of roasteries are responsible for 50% of the coffee offered. And on the green coffee side, the five largest countries produce more than 80% of all green coffee.
Now, the decaf market doesn't look so different:
The options for decaffeinators, where trading houses and roasteries can have their coffee processed, are severely limited. The constantly rising price pressure and the associated efficiency efforts mean that batch sizes are becoming larger instead of smaller. As mentioned, special coffees have a hard time being decaffeinated.
Concluding thoughts and a wish
“Decaf drinkers are the most loyal of all customers - if we can offer high-quality decaf, we are serving our best customers,”
says Stacey Lynden of Swiss Water from Vancouver. Yes, from a sensory standpoint, she is right: decaf drinkers drink decaf for the taste and the feeling, not for the caffeine.
She sees great potential for even better decaf, as does Sebastian Gabriel of CR3. Common to all these statements is that they refer to the process, which should be as mild as possible, so that the processed coffee should be as close as possible to the non-decaffeinated coffee.
However, if we look at the coffee farm, it looks different. Very few farms or producers can produce lots of 3000kg or more that are of the highest sensory quality - and if they can, it still remains the decision of the trading house or roastery whether this coffee should be decaffeinated.
In my opinion, these uncertainties often lead roasteries to be a bit less daring when selecting decaffeinated coffee. However, if roasteries team up and commit to a certain quantity of coffee, then even coffees of the highest sensory quality can be decaffeinated.
My wish would therefore be a small decaffeination machine - one that could decaffeinate 60 to 120kg. The market for this would be small roasteries that want to decaffeinate special coffees.
No headaches - and much more coffee
After the first week of my Decaf December, the headaches disappeared. I got up, drank a decaf filter coffee, and started the day feeling as awake as usual. I drank filter coffee as if there were no tomorrow, because normally I stop drinking coffee in the mid-afternoon so that the caffeine doesn't affect my sleep.
But in my Decaf December, I continued to drink coffee every evening, as there were no side effects. My bean consumption increased by 80%, of course because I also tried different coffees. Meanwhile, consumption has decreased, I regularly drink decafs as filter coffee in the evening, but something has remained: I have fewer to no headaches in the morning - maybe it has to do with the 30-day abstinence from caffeine, maybe not, in any case, a new world has opened up to me that I would no longer want to miss.
Best decaffeinated coffee
Decaf recommendations: what are your tips? Write them in the comments.
A few highlights from my Decaf December were:
- JB Kaffee
- Revelations de Cafe
- 6054 Coffee Roasters
- Green coffee samples from Brazil via Touton from Alec Pfuhl
More about our decaffeinated coffee, Sueño from Mexico:
- The story behind the coffee, Rancho San Felipe
- The video about it see below
- The coffee in the Shop CH and in the Shop DE/AUT
