Decaffeinated Coffee (aka DECAF) - How Do You Make It?

We have had a decaffeinated coffee in our range for two weeks now. The taste, not the rush. So black NOT rust.

Okay, that one was lame 😉 .

Anyway, we have a coffee in our range that is 93% decaffeinated, that's really a lot! Several people ask us how exactly this process works.

I'm going to explain that in a nutshell in this blog.

Decaf coffee, DECAF or decaffeinated coffee used to be just super bad. The opinions about decaffeinated coffee are therefore not very positive in general. But times change…

At the time, this was largely due to the fact that the green coffee used for this process was of poor quality. For example, very old and cheap coffee was often used. Fortunately, we now know better and this happens differently.

There are several known methods for decaffeinating a coffee bean. First of all, it is useful to know that the coffee bean grows as it normally does.

Caffeine is therefore not released in the plant, but is an operation afterwards. All known methods of decaffeinating a coffee come down to placing the coffee beans in a container with a certain liquid.

In order not to make it too complicated, I will mainly discuss the process that has been chosen for the DECAF that we have in our range, namely the CO2 method.

Our partner The Coffee Quest has explained this very nicely schematically below. They have chosen this method because this method preserves the flavors of the coffee the most.

So almost the same coffee, but without caffeine.

They, the Coffee Quest , explain the following about this themselves:

“ Liquid Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is the technology The Coffee Quest has chosen. Carbonated water is extracted from springs in the south of Germany.

This water naturally becomes carbonated water by being in contact with carbonated minerals for thousands of years. The water is pushed down through limestone or dolomite, pressurized and CO2 added to the water.

You can find this water in the supermarket, for example: Perrier or Bru.

The water is pumped to the surface and kept under pressure. The CO2 is separated from the water and by keeping it under pressure the CO2 remains liquid.

This liquid CO2 is the bath in which the coffee beans are decaffeinated. Unlike water, liquid CO2 is a very poor solvent, which comes in handy now.

Only caffeine is extracted from beans, leaving other compounds.

The liquid circulates past the beans absorbing all the caffeine and moves to a tank at the end of the process where the saturated CO2 drains off the caffeine and the CO2 is reintroduced into the beans.

This process is repeated until there is less than 0.08% caffeine in the beans. The caffeine is removed from the system by dissolving it in water.

This by-product is perfect to use as a natural additive for soft drinks or natural energy drinks."

Interesting, isn't it?

Taste it yourself now!