To those of us who love our caffeine the thought of a decaffeinated coffee makes us shudder but some people have to avoid caffeine for health reasons. So what exactly happens when you decaffeinate a coffee bean?
The Swiss Water Process
The Swiss Water process is one of the ways you can decaff coffee without using any chemicals. Green coffee beans are soaked in water until all the caffeine is dissolved from the beans. The caffeine gets filtered out of the water, what’s left behind is basically the coffee bean but minus the caffeine. As there are no chemicals involved in this process and it therefore takes longer it does cost more than other processes.
Ethyl Acetate
This is a faster method of decaffeinating a coffee bean but clearly it’s not as healthy! Beans are soaked in ethyl acetate to remove the caffeine. Many claim its natural as ethyl acetate can be produced naturally but it’s still a chemical solvent.
There are other methods that also call themselves water processing but they are not as pure as the Swiss Water method as absolutely no chemicals are involved.
It is important to note that whilst about 97% of the caffeine is removed some will still remain. With this in mind if you have a problem with caffeine the medical advice is usually not to drink any decaf coffee at all.
It is interesting to note that this debate may become redundant in the future as Ethiopia has now said that they have grown a natural decaffeinated coffee bean. This is not ready yet to be commercially harvested as tests are ongoing to see how the genetic flaw that stops the bean from producing caffeine really works.
For those of us who love our coffee with caffeine this may all sound horrendous but if you have a health reaction to caffeine you will need to buy decaffeinated coffee, but do check on the label how that process has been done so you avoid any unnecessary chemicals.