Interest in and the market for decaffeinated coffee continues to grow 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 the enjoyment of it, but I can't deny the effect of caffeine on me – its absence leaves me with headaches. This creates a somewhat difficult love triangle between a cup of coffee, the 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, I spent a month gradually switching my daily coffee intake before my caffeine-free month began:
Our Sueño - the decaf from Mexico from Rancho San Felipe
Each day, I replaced 5% of my measured coffee beans for filter coffee with our decaf beans. After almost 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 universe:
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 grown significantly in recent years. We notice this as a roastery – we roast more decaffeinated coffee every year. The reasons for this increased interest are individual, but we hear mainly two concrete ones:
- Avoiding caffeine
- Milder flavor (milder meaning less bitter)
When I put out a call on social media, I received many tips on where to find good decaf coffee. I was sent coffee samples and had great conversations.
>> If you know great decaffeinated coffees, please write them in the comments <<
I received real insider tips – it felt like coffee enthusiasts were on a treasure hunt. I asked myself: why does it have to be this way? Why doesn't it seem obvious to find truly delicious decaf?
I spoke with some of the world's largest decaffeination companies, who introduced me to the decaf universe. CR3, Swiss Water, Descamex. With Les Révélations from Paris, a roastery that roasts exclusively decafs, I discussed how 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 – the state of coffee before it's roasted – contains between 1-1.4% caffeine for Arabicas and between 1.8-3.5% for Canephoras (Wintgens, 2012). The roasting process has only marginal impact on caffeine; the content remains almost identical between green and roasted coffee.
The decaffeination process is applied to green coffee, before roasting. There are various processes that differ in speed and efficiency and can affect the coffee flavor to different degrees.
What all processes have in common is that at the start of treatment, the green coffee is placed in a sealed container 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 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 easily soluble substances are extracted, which the coffee loses and this often affects 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 used so that the coffee already undergoes the first Maillard reactions – it slowly caramelizes and the first color changes occur.
Subcritical CO2 process for decaffeination
In the subcritical CO2 method, CO2 is converted to a liquid state under high pressure and low temperature conditions, which in combination with water can absorb the 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 the water processes, a "solution" is used that works without solvents, but rather 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 emerges is saturated with soluble substances from the green coffee, but the membrane filters out the caffeine. The to-be-decaffeinated green coffee B is then placed in this resulting "solution," or green coffee extract, as Stacey Lynden from Swisswater calls it. The extract now targets only the caffeine.
Ethyl acetate / Sugar cane processing for decaffeination
In the ethyl acetate method, also called sugar cane processing, a solvent made of ethyl acetate is used to extract caffeine from the green coffee. Ethyl acetate is produced through the esterification of acetic acid and ethanol. Because the solvent in this case is derived from sugarcane through Descafecol in Colombia, it's 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 really have a hard time, because the decaffeination process is usually noticeable.
Whether that's negative depends on what flavor reference we use for a decaf.
Is the reference for a decaf a non-decaffeinated coffee, or is it actually another decaf? Is the reference for alcohol-free beer 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 strong the process notes are.
The coffee world has managed to treat Robustas separately and discuss them in a different sensory category – even though it's also a coffee. We also don't compare capsule coffee to espresso from a portafilter machine, because we know there are differences.
As long as we think we should always penalize process notes in decaf, we remain stuck in rigid thinking and might overlook what's behind the flavor and what influences it.
It should be said that there are process notes and "process notes" – the same green coffee processed by different decaffeination methods will taste different. Some heavier, others 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 world's largest water decaffer. The more characteristic the green coffee being decaffeinated, the more characteristic the resulting coffee tastes.
Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water in Vancouver, Canada
"High quality coming in, high quality coming out"
The best decaf filter coffee I had 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 several 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 taste 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 barely taste it in individual cases.
What does the decaffeination process do to coffee flavor?
But the process also takes things away – namely bitter compounds, alongside the caffeine, which is also bitter.
"The acidity is also homogenized,"
says Sebastian Gabriel from CR3, the largest decaffer using subcritical CO2. Often roasteries bought inferior green coffee, then decaffeinated it because the process can somewhat mitigate poor green coffee quality. Or more plainly: "It can actually enhance the poor green coffee quality in taste, or flatter the green coffee," says Gabriel.
Sebastian Gabriel, CR3, Bremen
The decaffeination process always removes soluble compounds from the green coffee – for example, fats, carbohydrates, acids, or melanoidins, which affect our perception of texture, that is, how a coffee feels on the tongue.
Swiss Water Decaf in Vancouver has developed its own scoring 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 – which they divide into texture (Mundgefühl) and thickness (thickness or Dichte).
Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water says that the body of the coffee changes the most. This has to do with the loss of soluble compounds. So in a decaffeinated coffee, there are relatively more insoluble compounds than soluble ones. This affects not only the brewing but also the taste.
The color: darker, but not burnt
"The color change is primarily not related to oxidation,"
Sebastian Gabriel from CR3 tells me. In their case, decaffeination with subcritical CO2, it's a combination of pressure, heat, rehydration, and redrying 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 says that the green coffee extract, or "solution" in the water process, deposits some of its color in the seed and the coffee becomes darker.
Freshness: Decaf ages faster
However, both Gabriel and Lynden agree that oxidation occurs more quickly in decaffeinated coffee because antioxidants in the coffee are removed by the process. This means: 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. Once it's ground, however, it remains light – the difference between outer and inner color is relatively large.
For all non-decaffeinated coffees, this would be a sign of uneven bean development, but in the decaf case, it's the process that causes this phenomenon: the process makes the cell structure of the coffee bean more porous and coffee oils penetrate more easily to the outside.
This not only changes the color but also makes the coffee age faster. The opposite is also true: due to the high porosity, oxygen penetrates the bean faster. This means: to get maximum quality, you should buy decaffeinated coffee in small batches and drink it as fresh as possible. While we wait up to three weeks with dry-processed coffees, we drink decafs just one week after roasting.
Brewing decaffeinated coffee
Even though decaffeinated coffee is still coffee, the process changes brewing behavior. In all my tests during Decaf December, the water-, DCM-, and ethyl acetate decafs had longer extraction times in filter preparation than non-decaffeinated coffee. Subcritical CO2 decaffeinated 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 a larger contact surface for 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 lightly 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. Since the decaffeinated coffee has already broken down soluble compounds in the process, she measures lower strength (or TDS) in her drink. Stacey recommends:
- Grind coarser
- Use higher doses
- Shorter blooming time, because the coffee degasses faster
Back to our natural coffee from Panama: the coffee was very good and freshly roasted, I extracted it slightly over-dosed. It showed barely any sensory signs of being a decaf – why isn't this 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 little-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 decaffer (CR3, Coffein Company, Swiss Water, etc.). Sebastian Gabriel from CR3 told me that the decaffer is never "the owner of the goods, just the processor."
If it's not trading houses, then it's roasteries that want a specific coffee decaffeinated. We did this, for example, with Rancho San Felipe a few years ago: we gave a purchase commitment for 50% of a batch of decaffeinated coffee. They then had the coffee decaffeinated at Descamex, and since then we've had the coffee in our range as Sueño.
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 – that's 2,500 kg. This is the minimum size to decaffeinate coffee at Descamex. At Swiss Water in Vancouver, it's now 4,560 kg, and at CR3, it's around 3,000 kg.
This leads to three challenges:
- First, a trading house or roastery needs customers for approximately 3,000 kg minimum quantity of decaffeinated coffee. This volume should be sold relatively quickly, since decaf has a shorter shelf life than untreated coffee.
- The process is flying blind – there's no way to quickly decaffeinate a sample of a particular coffee and then decide if it's sensorially interesting. The 3,000 kg is the test batch.
- And again, on sensory: if at least 3,000 kg or more must be decaffeinated for it to be worthwhile running the facility, which coffees will be processed? Exactly – it's rarely the microlots, because there's too little coffee from them.
Few complex decafs because the barrier to entry is too high
I joked with Piroska Hunyadi from Révélations that we'd actually need a 60 kg 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 3,000 kg, so Swiss Water could decaffeinate it. Only very few coffee producers can produce 3,000 kg of coffee at this level, so the barrier to entry for great coffees into the decaf market is way too high.
I would love to have a 300 kg lot from Peru decaffeinated because it's a coffee I'd also like to drink in the evening. But it won't work because there's too little coffee. Sebastian Gabriel from CR3 on this again:
"Scaling is economically much more sensible. Decaffeination is capital-intensive and safety and environmental regulations are very high, which really only justifies scaled production."
So the decaf market isn't really democratic. As long as batch sizes are so large, and at Swiss Water they're getting even larger, smaller lots can't make it into the decaffeination process. Coffee drinkers are at a sensory disadvantage: very complex-tasting decafs won't exist, and if they do, only from a few farms that can produce top quality on a large scale.
Extreme consolidation
We know the coffee market is highly consolidated: on the roasted coffee side, Handvoll a handful of roasteries are responsible for 50% of the offered coffee. And on the green coffee side, the fünf largest countries produce more than 80% of all green coffee globally.
Well, the decaf market looks much the same:
The available options for decaffeination facilities where trading houses and roasteries can have their coffee processed are severely limited. The constantly increasing price pressure and associated efficiency efforts mean that batch sizes are getting larger, not smaller. Special coffees have it difficult, as mentioned, when it comes to being decaffeinated.
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 to our best customers,"
says Stacey Lynden from Swiss Water in Vancouver. Yes, from a sensory standpoint, she's 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 from CR3. Common to all these statements is that the process is meant to be as gentle as possible, so the processed coffee is as close as possible to non-decaffeinated coffee.
But if we look at the coffee farm, it's different. Very few farms or producers can produce lots of 3,000 kg or more that are of top sensory quality – and even if they can, there's still the decision by the trading house or roastery about whether this coffee should be decaffeinated.
These uncertainty factors often lead roasteries to be less bold in selecting decaffeinated coffee. But if roasteries band together and commit to a certain quantity of coffee, then sensorially highest-quality coffees can also be decaffeinated.
My wish would therefore be a small decaffeination machine – one that could decaffeinate 60 to 120 kg. The market for it 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 woke up, drank a decaf filter coffee, and felt just as alert starting the day as usual. I drank filter coffee as if there were no tomorrow, because normally I stop drinking coffee in the middle of the afternoon so the caffeine doesn't affect my sleep.
But during my Decaf December, I kept drinking coffee every evening since there were no side effects. My bean consumption increased by 80%, of course because I was also trying different coffees. Meanwhile, consumption went back down, and I regularly drink decafs in the evening as filter coffee, but something remained: I experience fewer to no headaches in the morning anymore – maybe it has to do with the 30-day caffeine abstinence, maybe not, but in any case, a new world has opened up to 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 Coffee
- Revelations de Cafe
- 6054 Coffee Roasters
- Green coffee samples from Brazil via Touton by Alec Pfuhl
More about our decaffeinated coffee, the Sueño from Mexico:
- Die Story behind the coffee, Rancho San Felipe
- See the video below
- The coffee in the Shop CH and in the Shop DE/AUT
