Full Flavour
Decaffeinated Coffee.

Caffeine is a naturally occurring stimulant found in the leaves, seeds, and fruit of many plant species including coffee beans, tea leaves, and cacao seeds. If you’re a part of the 83% of US adults that enjoy starting the day with a comforting cup of coffee but want to limit your daily intake of caffeine due to personal preference, sensitivity to caffeine, or pregnancy, decaffeinated coffee may be an excellent choice for you.

The first person to hit upon a practical decaffeination method was another German, Ludwig Roselius, the head of the coffee company Kaffee HAG. Roselius discovered the secret to decaffeination by accident. In 1903, shipment of coffee had been swamped by seawater in transit – leaching out the caffeine but not the flavour. Roselius worked out an industrial method to repeat it, steaming the beans with various acids before using the solvent benzene to remove the caffeine. Decaffeinated coffee was born.

“If you were to try and decaffeinate roasted coffee you’d end up making something that tastes a bit like straw. So that’s why with 99.9% of decaffeinated coffee to this day, the process is done at the green coffee stage.”

Another rather interesting characteristic of decaf coffee is that technically it isn’t caffeine-free. So how much caffeine in decaf coffee is there? It contains roughly three milligrams of caffeine per cup.

This is quite low compared to a standard cup of coffee, which contains 80–120 milligrams of caffeine. However, if you are very sensitive to caffeine, this small amount could still have an impact. And of course, you don’t want to overdo it with either regular or decaf coffee — or other caffeine products — in order to avoid caffeine overdose.

Since coffee contains an estimated 400 different chemicals that contribute to its overall flavour and aromatic qualities, the goal of decaffeination is to leave these valuable chemicals intact while removing the one undesirable chemical, caffeine. There is no way to accomplish this 100%, but modern methods are fairly refined and produce a cup of coffee almost as good as the unaltered (full caffeine) version.

The Swiss Water method sees the beans soaked with water; the caffeine rich solution (full of flavours) is then strained though activated carbon which captures the caffeine. Starting in Switzerland in the 1930s, the process was first used commercially in 1979. It gained favour because it was the first decaffeination method not to use solvents. www.roastycoffee.com Coffee decaffeinated using the environment-friendly Swiss Water Process undergoes regular caffeine level audits to ensure compliance to 99.9% caffeine-free.

To ensure product quality, manufacturers are required to test the newly decaffeinated coffee beans to make sure that caffeine concentration is relatively low. A caffeine content reduction of at least 97% is required under United States standards. There is less than 0.1% caffeine in decaffeinated coffee and less than 0.3% in decaffeinated instant coffee in Canada.

To do so, many coffee companies choose to employ high-performance liquid chromatography to quantitatively measure how much caffeine remains in the coffee beans. However, since HPLC can be quite costly, some coffee companies are beginning to use other methods such as near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. Although HPLC is highly accurate, NIR spectroscopy is much faster, cheaper and overall easier to use.

Lastly, another method typically used to quantify remaining caffeine includes ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, which can be greatly advantageous for decaffeination processes that include supercritical CO2, as CO2 does not absorb in the UV-Vis range.

According to European law standards, decaf coffee must contain no more than 0.1% of caffeine in roasted coffee beans and up to 0.3% in instant coffee.

Coffee — in all its forms — is a significant source of dietary antioxidants, according to research published in November 2014 in Molecules. Antioxidants fight against the attacks of free radicals, which are chemicals generated that damage your cells and genetic material. Free radicals come from nearly everywhere, including from the damaging rays of the sun to pollution in the air. They are even generated by your body as a result of turning food into energy.

Decaf coffee also contains 5 milligrams of calcium, 0.12 milligrams of iron, 128 milligrams of potassium and 0.526 milligrams of niacin (vitamin B-3) in each 8-ounce serving.

Diving further into research on decaf coffee consumption finds that the beverage can reduce the risk of specific diseases, too. A meta-analysis of studies published in February 2014 in Diabetes Care determined that every cup of decaffeinated coffee consumed in a day was associated with a 6 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Decaffeinated coffee contains no calories in an 8-ounce serving, so drinking it can help build up calorie deficit over time, which could eventually result in weight loss. Drinking decaf coffee one cup per day for 5 days a week for a year may lead to almost 8 pounds of body weight lost.

In the United States, millennials lead decaf consumption (via Perfect Daily Grind). Why? As on 29-year old decaf drinker explained, "Personally, I like moderation. Too much caffeine makes me drowsy and makes my eyes turn red. Decaf is ideal for a regular coffee lover like me. I take caffeinated once in a while, but decaf more regularly." Another decaf devotee said that regular was making her "super intense."

Worldwide, decaffeinated coffee is, not surprisingly, far less popular than its caffeinated counterpart. After all, it’s the jolt of java that makes the beverage so beloved for many. Still, decaf accounts for 12 percent of consumption, translating to 1 billion pounds a year, and even the most devoted regular coffee drinkers might opt for decaf in the evening so they’re not up tossing and turning all night long.

Sources

www.eatthis.com, www.roastycoffee.com, www.swisswater.com, www.medicalnewstoday.com, en.wikipedia.org, www.ncausa.org, www.vox.com