How they decaf coffee

This week is the start of a couple posts all covering decaf and how its made. There’s a couple different processes, and a few aspects decaffeinating affects so lets get into it!

Swiss Water Decaffeination

What is the Swiss water process?

So, in affect this process of decaffeinating is kinda like a big coffee bath with abit of chemistry thrown in there. First off, green coffee is soaked in water to expand the beans and allow easier extraction of caffeine.

Once soaked, the beans are moved to a tank of GCE -Green Coffee Extract. This liquid is water that’s had green coffee submerged long enough to extract all of the beans flavour compounds but has been filtered by carbon to remove the caffeine. The batch of beans used to make the GCE is often thrown away as they won’t taste of much at all.

While submerged in the GCE, the beans will have their caffeine extracted into the liquid as the caffeine concentration is far lower in the GCE than the beans, this will happen until an equilibrium is met and at which point the GCE is filtered to remove the caffeine and reintroduced to allow more caffeine extraction via diffusion.

This process is continued until the beans have met their desired amount of remaining caffeine which is usually around 0.1%, but this amount for minimum allowed caffeine for decaf varies around the world.

Once this requirement for removed caffeine is met, the beans are removed from the GCE and left to dry. Once fully dried they are sent off to be roasted just like any usual beans.

The affects of this process!

Now it’s important to remember that doing this whole process to the beans will have an affect on the them overall, but luckily the Swiss water process is the least harmful of all the processes. There’s no harmful chemicals used and the flavour loss is minimal, so this by far is hands down the best type of decaf coffee you can buy. (as of the time of writing)

Decaf is a great option for people who enjoy coffee but for any reason can’t or don’t want the caffeine, and so buying Swiss water processed beans is a sure fire way to enjoy your usual drink without the caffeine issues!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week, next week we will cover the chemical processes!

Have a great week and some even better coffees.