Interest and the market for decaffeinated coffee are growing steadily. We explain where decaf comes from, who decaffeinates it, how it can taste even better, and why it's undemocratic.
Until recently, I associated decaffeinated coffee with headaches. I drink coffee primarily for enjoyment, but I don't deny the effect caffeine has on me — its absence leaves me with headaches. This creates a somewhat difficult triangular relationship 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. To prepare for it, I gradually changed my coffee consumption a month before starting my caffeine-free month:
Our Sueño - the decaf from Mexico from Rancho San Felipe
Each day I replaced 5% of the weighed coffee beans for a filter coffee with our decaf beans. After nearly a month, I felt ready for Decaf December.
Or so I thought.
Welcome to a different world
"Decaf" is not just another type of coffee drink, it's its own cosmos:
decaffeinated coffee often tastes different from untreated coffee. Decaffeinated coffee should be roasted and prepared differently, and the market behind the bean is highly concentrated among a few key players.
Interest in decaffeinated coffee has grown significantly in recent years. We notice this as a roastery — every year we roast more decaffeinated coffee. The reasons for the increased interest are individual, but we hear mainly two specific ones:
- Avoiding caffeine
- milder taste (milder here means less bitter)
I received many tips on social media about where to find good decaf coffee. I was sent coffee samples and had great conversations.
>> If you know great decaffeinated coffees, feel free to write them in the comments <<
I got real insider tips; it felt like coffee people were on a treasure hunt. I asked myself why it had to be this way. Why doesn't it seem obvious to find 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 roasts exclusively decafs, I discussed how our understanding of decaffeinated coffee seems to be changing. In my self-reflection, I realized that we simply misunderstand decaf.
How is coffee decaffeinated?
Green coffee, which is the state of coffee before it's roasted, contains between 1-1.4% caffeine in Arabicas and between 1.8-3.5% in Canephoras (Wintgens, 2012). The roasting process has only marginal effect on caffeine; the content remains almost identical between green and roasted coffee.
The decaffeination process is applied to green coffee, so before roasting. There are various processes that differ in speed and efficiency and can affect coffee taste to varying degrees.
All processes share the same starting point: the green coffee is placed in a closed vessel with water or steamed so that the pores of the green coffee open. Then a solvent is added, which is supposed to extract the caffeine.
DCM / Dichloromethane for decaffeination
DCM, dichloromethane, works most efficiently, but "is not very selective," according to Sebastian Gabriel from CR3. Highly efficient means a batch is decaffeinated in eight to nine hours. Not very "selective" means that not only caffeine but also other readily soluble substances are extracted, which the coffee loses and this often has an effect on the sensory profile.
Supercritical CO2 process for decaffeination
In the CO2 process, CO2 is used as a solvent. In the more efficient method, the CO2 works supercritically. In supercritical decaffeination, high pressure is applied, so the coffee already undergoes the first Maillard reactions, slowly caramelizes, and color changes begin to occur.
Subcritical CO2 process for decaffeination
In the subcritical CO2 method, CO2 is brought to 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 from CR3, CO2 is "a lazy solvent that takes about six to seven days to dissolve caffeine."
Water process for decaffeination
In water processes, a "lye" is used that works without a solvent but with a so-called green coffee extract. For this, green coffee A is soaked in water and then pressed through a semi-permeable membrane. The water that exits is saturated with soluble substances from the green coffee, but the membrane filters out the caffeine. The resulting "lye," or green coffee extract, as Stacey Lynden from Swisswater calls it, is now where green coffee B to be decaffeinated is placed. The extract now goes after only the caffeine.
Ethyl acetate / Sugar cane processing for decaffeination
In the ethyl acetate method, also called sugar cane processing more prosaically, a solvent made from ethyl acetate extracts the caffeine from the green coffee. Ethyl acetate is formed through the esterification of acetic acid and ethanol. Because the solvent in the case of decaffeination by Descafecol in Colombia is derived from sugar cane, it's called sugar cane processing.
The taste of decaffeinated coffee
How should a decaffeinated coffee taste? Like a 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 that's negative depends on what taste reference we use for a decaf.
Is the reference for a decaf a non-decaffeinated coffee, or is it a decaf? Is the reference for alcohol-free beer a regular beer?
In the case of Swiss Water, Stacey Lynden tells me that in the sensory analysis of decaffeinated coffees, they have an attribute for how strong the process notes taste.
The coffee world has managed to treat Robustas separately and discuss them sensorically in a different category — even though it's also a coffee. We don't compare capsule coffee with espresso from a portafilter machine either, because we know there are differences.
As long as we think we should always penalize process notes in decaf, we remain stuck in quite rigid thinking and might overlook what's behind the taste and what influences it.
It should be said that there are process notes and "process notes" — the same green coffee, processed using different decaffeination methods, will taste different. Some heavier, some lighter — but what's much more important:
"Coffees with bigger personalities tend to stand out a lot more during the Decaf process"
says Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water Coffee, the largest water decaffeinator. The more characteristic the green coffee being decaffeinated, the more characteristic the coffee tastes afterward.
Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water in Vancouver, Canada
"High quality coming in, high quality coming out"
The best decaf filter coffee during my Decaf December was from Les Révélations, a roastery from 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's that from?" — And I simply said, "Panama, roasted in Paris," but left out the decaf info.
We didn't detect the process notes because the green coffee was very characteristic: it was a natural that fermented in closed vessels 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, you hardly taste it in this case.
What does the decaffeination process do to coffee taste?
The process also removes something, namely bitter compounds, besides caffeine, which is also bitter.
"The acidity is also homogenized,"
says Sebastian Gabriel from CR3, the largest decaffeinator with subcritical CO2. Often roasteries had purchased lower-quality green coffee, then decaffeinated it because the process can somewhat mitigate poor green coffee quality. Or more prosaically: "It can even flavor the poor green coffee quality, or flatter the green coffee," according to Gabriel.
Sebastian Gabriel, CR3, Bremen
The decaffeination process always removes soluble compounds from the green coffee, such as fats, carbohydrates, acids, or melanoidines, which affect our perception of texture — how a coffee feels on the tongue.
Swiss Water Decaf in Vancouver has developed its own score sheet to document 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 it into texture (mouthfeel) and thickness (density).
Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water says the body of the coffee changes most. This is related to the loss of soluble compounds. Thus, in a decaffeinated coffee, there are relatively more insoluble compounds than soluble ones. This affects not only brewing but also taste.
The color: darker, but not burnt
"The color change is primarily not due to oxidation,"
Sebastian Gabriel from CR3 tells me. In their case, decaffeination with subcritical CO2, it's a combination of pressure, heat, rehydration, and re-drying of the green coffee that causes color changes.
Left: an untreated green coffee from Ethiopia, right: decaf from Mexico, decaffeinated with water
Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water says the green coffee extract, the "lye" in the water process, deposits some of its color into the seed, making the coffee darker.
Freshness: Decaf ages faster
However, according to both Gabriel and Lynden, oxidation occurs faster in decaffeinated coffee generally because antioxidants in the coffee are dissolved by the process. This means: the coffee ages faster — as green coffee and as roasted coffee.
An interesting fact about decaffeinated coffee is that it can appear darker even at low end temperature in the roasting drum. However, once it's ground, it remains light — the difference between outer and inner color is relatively large.
For all non-decaffeinated coffees, this would indicate uneven bean development, but in the decaf case, it's the process that causes this phenomenon: during the process, the cell structure of the coffee bean becomes more porous, and coffee oils more easily escape to the outside.
This not only changes the color but also makes the coffee 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 with dry-processed coffees, we drink decafs just a week after roasting.
Brewing decaffeinated coffee
Although decaffeinated coffee is still coffee, the process changes brewing behavior. In all my tests during Decaf December, water-, DCM-, and ethyl acetate-decafs had longer extraction times in filter preparation than non-decaffeinated coffee. Subcritically decaffeinated CO2 coffees behaved most similarly to non-decaffeinated coffee, thus having similar extraction times in filter coffee.
"The decaffeinated coffee bean is more porous, resulting in greater contact surface for the water, so brewing takes longer,"
Sebastian Gabriel from CR3 tells me. They suspect that decaf breaks differently in the grinder, which we'll check next in a grinding analysis.
The decaf beans (left) appear darker than the light roasted filter coffee from Brazil on the right
In ground form, the decaf (left) is barely darker
Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water therefore brews her decaf filter coffee with a coarser grind. However, since the decaffeinated coffee has already broken down soluble compounds during the process, she measures lower strength (or TDS) in her beverage. Stacey recommends:
- 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 only recently roasted, I extracted it slightly over-dosed. It showed hardly any sensory signs of being a decaf — why isn't this the standard?
Because of volume.
And focus.
And risk.
And price.
In short: because the decaf market is highly consolidated and coffees like our Panama example are nano-stories in a non-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 mixed coffees, so-called basket blends, decaffeinated by a decaffeinator (CR3, Coffein Company, Swiss Water, etc.). Sebastian Gabriel from CR3 told me that the decaffeinator is never the "owner of the goods, only the processor."
If it's not trading houses, then it's roasteries that want a specific coffee decaffeinated. We did this with Rancho San Felipe a few years ago: We committed to purchasing 50% of a batch of decaffeinated coffee. They had the coffee decaffeinated at Descamex, and since then we've 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, so 2500kg. This is the minimum size to decaffeinate coffee at Descamex. At Swiss Water in Vancouver, it's now 4560kg, and at CR3, it's around 3000kg.
This leads to three challenges:
- First, a trading house or roastery needs customers for approximately 3000kg minimum of decaffeinated coffee. This volume should sell relatively quickly since decaf storage capacity is shorter than untreated coffee.
- The process is blind — there's no way to quickly decaffeinate a sample of a specific coffee and then decide if it's sensorily interesting. The 3000kg is the test batch.
- And again sensory: if at least 3000kg or more must be decaffeinated to make it worth running the equipment, which coffees will be processed? Exactly — rarely the microlots, because there's only little coffee from them.
Few complex decafs because the barrier to entry is too high
I joked with Piroska Hunyadi from Révélations that we actually needed a 60kg decaffeination machine to make it attractive to decaffeinate very rare and sensorily complex coffees on a mini scale.
The Panama lot mentioned, which she roasted, was therefore at least 3000kg, so Swiss Water could decaffeinate it. There are only very few coffee producers who can make 3000kg of coffee at such a level, so the barrier to entry for great coffees to the decaf market is way too high.
I'd love to have a 300kg lot from Peru decaffeinated because it's a coffee I also want to drink in the evening. But it's not possible because there's too little coffee. Sebastian Gabriel from CR3 on this again:
"Scaling is much more economically sensible. Decaffeination is capital-intensive and the safety and environmental regulations are very high, which really only justifies scaled production."
Thus, the decaf market is not really retention. As long as batch sizes are so large, and at Swiss Water are becoming even larger, smaller lots don't make it into the decaffeination process. Coffee drinkers are sensorily at a disadvantage: the tastily very complex decafs won't exist, and if they do, only from a few farms that can make super quality on a large scale.
A stark consolidation
We know the coffee market is highly consolidated: on the roasted coffee side, a handful of roasteries are responsible for 50% of offered coffee. And on the green coffee side, the five largest countries produce more than 80% of all green coffee.
On the decaf market, things look not so different:
The options for decaffeinators where trading houses and roasteries can have their coffee processed are severely limited. The ever-increasing price pressure and associated efficiency efforts cause batch sizes to grow larger rather than smaller. Special coffees struggle to get decaffeinated, as mentioned.
Closing thoughts and a wish
"Decaf drinkers are the most loyal of all customers — if we manage to offer high-quality decaf, we do a service for our best customers,"
says Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water in Vancouver. Yes, from a sensory standpoint, she's right: decaf drinkers drink decaf because of taste and feeling, not because of caffeine.
Both she and Sebastian Gabriel from CR3 see great potential for even better decaf. Common to all these statements is that the process should be as mild as possible so the processed coffee is as close as possible to non-decaffeinated coffee.
But looking at the coffee farm, it's different. Very few farms or producers can produce lots of 3000kg or more of sensory highest quality — and if they can, there's still the decision of the trading house or roastery whether this coffee should be decaffeinated.
These uncertainty factors often lead roasteries to be somewhat less bold in selecting decaffeinated coffee. However, if roasteries join together and commit to a certain amount of coffee, then even sensorily highest-quality coffees can be decaffeinated.
So my wish would be a small decaffeination machine — one that could decaffeinate 60 to 120kg. The market for it would be small roasteries wanting to decaffeinate special coffees.
No headaches — and much more coffee
After the first week of my Decaf December, the headaches disappeared. I woke up, drank a decaf filter coffee, and felt just as awake as usual starting the day. I drank filter coffee as if there were no tomorrow, because normally I stop drinking coffee mid-afternoon so caffeine doesn't affect my sleep.
But in my Decaf December, I kept drinking coffee in the evenings since there were no side effects. My bean consumption increased by 80%, of course because I also tried various coffees. Meanwhile, consumption went back down, I regularly drink decaf as filter coffee in the evening but have continued otherwise: I experience fewer to no headaches anymore in the morning — maybe it's related to the 30-day caffeine abstinence, maybe not, but in any case, a new world has opened up for me that I don't want to miss anymore.
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, the Sueño from Mexico:
- The story behind the coffee, Rancho San Felipe
- The video for it see below
- The coffee in the Shop CH and in the Shop DE/AUT
