[HN Gopher] A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee
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A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 152 points
Date : 2024-07-25 12:04 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| hooverd wrote:
| SWP is trendy and "chemical-free" but in my experience every
| decaf made with it is lacking something. C02 is neutral. EA is
| probably the best for fruity coffees.
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| I agree. SWP coffee usually has a very flat profile to my
| taste. EA is far and away the better processing method.
| jmann99999 wrote:
| The way this author[0] took complex scientific processes and made
| them understandable to someone without a science background is
| admirable. I want to try and emulate this when I write for non-
| technical audiences.
|
| [0]https://miamioh.edu/profiles/cas/michael-crowder.html
| martinpw wrote:
| The decaf process seems expensive so you might expect the end
| result to cost more, but it never does. Which means either the
| producers are making less profit on decaf, or they are using
| lower quality beans. If the latter is true, which seems more
| likely, that might explain why decaf sometimes tastes less good,
| separately from the effect of the process itself on taste.
| criddell wrote:
| I suspect that when you buy decaf beans from a roaster they
| don't aren't the ones decaffeinating the coffee beans. I think
| roasters have a lot less choice when buying decaffeinated beans
| so I bet your theory is correct.
| edkennedy wrote:
| There are two main decaf plants, one in Vancouver and one in
| Mexico.
|
| The Mexican one is supposedly superior in taste, but the
| majority is processed through Vancouver with the Swiss Water
| plant. https://www.swisswater.com/blogs/sw/swiss-waters-new-
| decaffe...
| xattt wrote:
| Is this for North America or worldwide?
| scottlamb wrote:
| I've noticed many roasters have only one decaf option. But
| there are exceptions. Equator Coffees has many blends
| available in both regular and decaf, with the decaf costing
| slightly more (e.g. $15.30 vs. $15.75 for a subscribe-and-
| save 12 oz bag). They advertise "decaffeinated using the
| mountain water process of caffeine extraction", which I
| believe is the same as the article's Swiss water process. Not
| sure if they have their own equipment or if they assemble
| their blends, send them off, get them back and roast them.
| jolmg wrote:
| The decaf I buy states they have close ties with the farmers.
| The company they use for decaffeination seems to be a
| service-oriented company. You send them the raw coffee, they
| decaffeinate it, and then send it back with recommendations
| for roasting.
|
| So, the "roasters" (if they don't use a separate company for
| that) does have the ability to select the exact same beans
| between their decaf and regular coffee products. Whether they
| sort the beans they get from the farmers and choose which go
| to be decaffeinated according to some criteria, is a separate
| thing.
| johntb86 wrote:
| Maybe the extracted caffeine has some market value that can
| make up for some of the cost of extracting it.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Dry Arabica beans are about 1.5% caffeine by weight.
| Synthetic caffeine costs maybe $40 per kilogram, wholesale. A
| kilogram of beans could have perhaps $0.60 worth of caffeine
| extracted from it, unless there's a price premium for "all
| natural" caffeine extracted from beans.
| jcynix wrote:
| The German inventor of a decaf process sold the extracted
| coffein separately in pills, which might have given him a
| second income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Roselius
| amelius wrote:
| I guess nowadays most of the extracted caffeine ends up in
| energy drinks like Red Bull.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Not true in my experience - at least when I buy decaf beans
| online they are normally more expensive, which I put down to
| them being niche in comparison.
| harimau777 wrote:
| I don't know if this makes a difference, but my understanding
| is that most additive/non-natural (for lack of better terms)
| caffeine comes from caffeine extracted to make decaf.
| sBqQu3U0wH wrote:
| >but it never does
|
| Depends on a producer, I guess. Where I'm from, same amount of
| decaffeinated coffee by the same producer is around 42% more
| expensive.
| reillys wrote:
| The same decaf coffee is more expensive. The producers
| decaffeinate their lesser coffees. But you've hit on why the
| "sugar-cane method" i.e. the solvent based approach produces
| better coffee. It's possible for it to be done at origin and so
| the actual coffee producers can choose what coffee to
| decaffeinate and can absorb some of the additional costs in the
| "processing" stage while using higher quality coffee in the
| process.
| malfist wrote:
| CO2 can be reused so it's not that expensive, and the caffeine
| that gets extracted is sold separately, so it's possible
| decaffeinated coffee could have more profit that caffeinated.
|
| After all, we don't really make synthetic caffeine, we extract
| it from tea and coffee and add it to a lot of things.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Synthetic caffeine has been commercially used in beverages
| and medicine for over 100 years. I believe that most caffeine
| consumed today is actually synthetic, but it's hard to find a
| good citation for its prevalence. Most of the web pages
| mentioning synthetic and natural caffeine are spam for
| "market research" reports or natural health woo.
|
| You can see section "2.1. Production and use" for some
| relevant information about synthetic and natural caffeine
| production, as well as dated 20th century statistics about
| synthetic production:
|
| "Coffee, Tea, Mate, Methylxanthines and Methylglyoxal"
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507027/
| malfist wrote:
| My statement of synthetic not being super prevalent comes
| from a memory of a really old how it's made episode, so it
| could be wrong or out of date
| leetrout wrote:
| Decaf that I buy is more expensive. It is the grocery store
| brand and looks identical to the regular bags they sell for a
| similar price but on close inspection you will find the decaf
| contains ~9oz net weight and the regular is 12oz net weight.
| tptacek wrote:
| Boutique-roasted decaf coffee beans often are more expensive.
| But the logic also doesn't hold: it assumes coffee is being
| sold at or near the cost of its material inputs, and that's
| certainly not true. If you have a reasonable built-in margin
| for your coffee --- and boutique roasters certainly do --- it
| can be normal and rational to price irrespective of your cost
| basis. Customers are brand-loyal (especially if they have to go
| out of their way to buy your stuff). You want to get them in
| every packaging they're interested in. All sorts of products
| are "loss leaders", for that reason, and here we're not even
| talking about that; we're just talking about something
| _slightly less profitable_.
|
| Finally, just a note that the "lower-quality bean" thing is
| itself sort of hollow, in that: you're probably not buying the
| absolute best quality means no matter what coffee you buy, even
| if you're driving to a coffee roaster to get them. Unless
| you're an extreme coffee weirdo, there is, I'd confidently bet,
| a higher-quality bean available to you that you're sacrificing
| because of cost and convenience. Certainly, if you're buying
| beans _of any sort_ at a supermarket, the "best bean" thing is
| inoperative.
| esquivalience wrote:
| GP observed that either the profit margin or the input cost
| is absorbing the difference, so I think the logic holds well
| and you are in agreement :)
| tptacek wrote:
| Not so much? Like I said: decaf beans often _are_ more
| expensive, and they believe margin hits for decaf are
| unlikely, which is probably not at all true unless you 're
| talking about Starbucks.
| esquivalience wrote:
| The premise may not hold - you're right - but the logic
| seems to.
| fabian2k wrote:
| The price difference between cheap supermarket coffee and
| high-end local roaster is large enough (up to 10x) that the
| potential additional cost for decaffeination doesn't seem
| that big of a deal if you're looking for coffee at the higher
| end of the quality scale.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yeah, that's a much better and more concise way of saying
| what I did.
| Always42 wrote:
| I thought the means should be beans
| feyr wrote:
| they either resell the caffeine for a profit themselves,
|
| or often the coffee producer send the beans to be
| decaffeinated, which is done for free. the company doing that
| process keeps the caffeine and resell it to pharma companies
| wnolens wrote:
| Will an entrepreneur please make high quality (great tasting)
| decaf coffee ubiquitous?
|
| There's a growing anti-drug sentiment that should be a great
| tailwind.
|
| It's hard for me to find as good tasting a bean as it is with
| non-decaf. I've tried subscription services or pay huge shipping
| and product premium from some boutique retailer, the beans are
| always just ok. Decaf still doesn't get enough priority as the
| product itself, always an afterthought it feels like.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| It can't ever taste the same as caffeine has flavor.
| xeromal wrote:
| I don't think people necessarily need it to taste identical.
| It just needs to not taste like ass.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| It has a sharp, very bitter flavour most people hate. It's
| unlikely caffeine is contributing positively to the taste of
| anything.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm not sure what your standards are, but I'm not sure if this
| is even possible.
|
| I drink Stumptown which I grind at home for my espresso machine
| -- their caffeinated Hair Bender blend in the morning, and then
| in the afternoon I'll often have their decaf Trapper Creek
| (Swiss water process) on the days I don't need an extra jolt.
|
| It tastes perfectly great to me. Maybe my palette isn't refined
| enough.
|
| But decaffeination is always going to alter/remove flavor
| _somewhat_. So if you 've tried high-quality versions like
| Stumptown and find them lacking, I'm not sure it's even
| chemically possible.
|
| (Also I'm not super clear -- have you found high-quality decaf
| and you just wish it were more common? What brand(s) are high-
| quality? Or you haven't found it, and you're complaining that
| they're _all_ "just ok"?)
| jpp wrote:
| The gold standard for this in sensory analysis is a triangle
| test -- which I happen to have done with coffee from Ninth St
| Espresso, who sells a regular and substantial identical
| decaf. We brewed 3 identical batches (where 2 were the same
| beans and the 3rd was the other bean). In an office with ~12
| tasters, the ability to pick out the "different" beans was
| 33%... ie random chance.
|
| If the above sounds confusing, consider red wine vs white
| wine... visual inspection alone would get you 100% accuracy.
|
| I used to believe decaf processing would have to change the
| taste, but empirically, with admittedly untrained tasters
| (but ones who know coffee very well), we couldn't tell.
| reillys wrote:
| Decaf is simple to pick out by a person who is competent at
| tasting coffee. As easy as your red/white wine visual test.
| People in general are very bad at tasting and especially
| thinking and communicating about tasting. Plus also people
| may not know what decaf coffee tastes like or may have
| never thought about it before.
| et-al wrote:
| There was a recent lifestyle article about decaf coffee. Have
| you tried any of the roasters listed here?
|
| https://sfstandard.com/2024/07/15/decaf-coffee-is-finally-wi...
| wnolens wrote:
| I am not in SF, and so I've never heard of any of those
| roasters.
| infecto wrote:
| Beanfruit generally ranks as one of the decaf favorites online.
| You should check it out.
| wnolens wrote:
| Good example of what I mean:
|
| They offer 7 different coffees. Only 1 is decaf! As if it
| were a "flavor"
| hooverd wrote:
| The decaf process matters, a lot.
| jderick wrote:
| Even great regular coffee isn't ubiquitous yet.
| langcss wrote:
| It will depend on your taste buds but I find that in bean form
| you can get reasonably good decaf coffees. Try a local roaster
| and one that was roasted 1-2 weeks ago or so. In instant it is
| very hard! This one is alright:
| https://www.republicaorganic.com.au/products/organic-decaf-i...
| deegles wrote:
| I thought about buying a supercritical CO2 extraction machine
| from Alibaba and having a small business around making decaf
| beans for roasters, but the numbers didn't work out great. I
| believe it was around $20k usd for the medium sized ones.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I'd like to talk a bit more about the cheapest and most common
| process here. They state that ethyl acetate is below the FDA
| limits and therefore safe. For a start ethyl acetate is still
| pretty bad but it's not the cheapest.
|
| Another common solvent not mentioned here is Dichloromethane.
| It's a pretty clear cancer causing agent
| https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/pr8k9v/til_s...
|
| You know what else is a solvent for decaffeinating coffee?
| Benzene. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzene#Health_effects
|
| Don't drink decaf. The CO2 method is pretty safe but the simple
| fact is unless you're sure how your beans were decaffinated
| you're better off not drinking it.
| ptsneves wrote:
| The reddit post mentions that DCM is evaporated and it is
| basically not present after the process. Actually the thread
| mentions that all the fuss like your post is mostly
| scaremongering without actual understanding the mechanisms. Do
| you have evidence that indeed the phase change and separations
| may not happen?
| anjel wrote:
| "Basically" and "mostly" undermine your assertion.
| skrbjc wrote:
| My thought is: if the process is followed properly there is
| very little risk of these chemicals being in the end product,
| but if a mistake is made, they could be present in levels
| that may have some negative health effect. However, if the
| water or co2 processes were screwed up, the only risk is
| caffeine being present, which is not ideal, but not as bad as
| those chemicals. We all know mistakes happen, which is why
| I'd rather go with a process that has less negative outcomes
| from a mistake.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| This reminds me of a reddit post from about 10 years ago where
| people started to notice that when they get decaf coffee at
| work it sometimes bleeds through the styrofoam cup while the
| regular coffee never does. There have been several other
| reports of this since. The most credible theory was that
| sometimes there is solvent left over after the decaf process:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/2m2fiy/o...
| ricardobayes wrote:
| It's been a hot minute since I've seen a styrofoam cup in the
| wild.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Ya, the styrofoam is almost as shocking as what this
| solvent might be doing to the bodies of those who drink it.
| LarsAlereon wrote:
| Do you have evidence that solvents remain in the coffee in
| significant levels? They're highly volatile so this seems
| unlikely.
| infecto wrote:
| Provide actual links to research or everything you say is fear
| mongering.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Benzene hasn't been used in decades. See this for information
| about solvent decaffeination:
|
| https://www.compoundchem.com/2018/09/26/coffee-decaffeinatio...
|
| Earlier this year dichloromethane was banned in the US for all
| but a handful of uses, so producers who used it in the recent
| past will not be able to any more:
|
| https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration...
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| Decaffeinated coffee and tea are, I believe the only food
| products allowed by FDA even a trace amount of dichloromethane
| (methylene chloride) in them. It's not allowed in cosmetics
| either.
|
| I came across a startup once using it as the solvent in their
| liquid bandage product though because 510k clearances are a
| fucking joke.
| jb1991 wrote:
| > You know what else is a solvent for decaffeinating coffee?
| Benzene.
|
| Please don't spread misinformation. Benzene was the original
| solvent used 120 years ago in Germany when decaf was first
| invented. It did not last long as the dangers of benzine became
| apparent. There have been several generations of solvents used
| in the over one century since then and benzine has not been a
| part of the decaf world in a very long time.
|
| > Don't drink decaf.
|
| There is no reason not to drink decaf and recent studies have
| found it to be just as beneficial as normal coffee for
| antioxidant properties. Coffee in moderation is good for you,
| caffeine or not.
| iscrewyou wrote:
| A good video explanation from James Hoffman:
| https://youtu.be/yYTSdlOdkn0
|
| And a quick follow up: https://youtu.be/IszQ2JR3Olc
| jollyllama wrote:
| Does it work the same for instant?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Instant coffee is "just" freeze dried coffee. You make "normal"
| coffee, and then freeze dry it (and then usually you process
| the results to get nice shaped lumps instead of randomly sized
| flakes and powder). I say "normal", because you will get flavor
| loss/changes in the freeze-dry process, so you'll want to brew
| with that in mind.
| settsu wrote:
| And if you're interested in an actually (relatively) decent
| instant decaf, I'd suggest trying Mount Hagen brand of instant
| decaf coffee. Although, just from personal anecdotal
| experience, I believe it could have slightly more caffeine than
| some other decaf coffees.
| zokier wrote:
| It is somewhat magical to me that these processes can be as
| selective as they are. Coffee beans must have hundreds if not
| thousands of organic compounds in them, and somehow something as
| simple as co2 (or the other solvents) picks up mainly caffeine.
| Somehow that is very counterintuitive to me.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Surely it must also extract some other stuff. I wonder what the
| extracted stuff tastes like (minus the CO2 of course)
| tobias2014 wrote:
| I was interested and looked at the actual patent:
| https://patents.justia.com/patent/4348422 (there seem to be
| multiple patent documents, but this one adds some explanation),
| and he writes "I have now surprisingly discovered".
|
| https://tastydecafs.com/blogs/learn-about-decaf/co2-decaf
| further explains "The story of C02 decaffeination goes back to
| 1967. It was then when a chemist at Max Planck Institute named
| Kurt Zosel stumbled upon an interesting discovery. Zosel, like
| many other chemists, was using high-pressure C02 to remove
| individual substances from other mixtures."
|
| It must have something to do with caffeine being an alkaloid,
| while coffee overall is acidic. So I suspect that this
| pressurized CO2 is able to dominantly remove such alkaloids...
| I leave the details to a chemist :)
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| To add some clarification: decaffeination is as old as 1903
| (also Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination)
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Extraction and separation are a function of time, temperature,
| and solubility, not just polarity. It's easy to target
| solubility limits for certain compounds, which why using a
| Soxhlet extraction method could be effective for at home
| decaffeination.
|
| I've always assumed that's why steam extraction for espresso
| doesn't extract more caffeine than drip, and why a Madras
| coffee decoction isn't ultra-caffeinated concentrate.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I love decaf but the main problem is how fragile the stability of
| the beans are. They go bad quickly. To get the same cup of decaf
| coffee every day requires more work if you are grinding your own
| and making espresso. Still, I love them.
|
| Personally, I've found the CO2 method to have a lot more flavor
| than the Swiss Water. I also found the CO2 beans don't
| deteriorate as quickly as the Swiss Water beans.
| haswell wrote:
| How quickly is quickly?
|
| I literally yesterday bought my first bag of decaf and mixed
| them with my regular beans. I need to sleep more, and reducing
| caffeine intake is the low hanging fruit.
|
| Decades of habits around buying and using normal beans are
| about to be replaced, and this comment is already helpful.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I think it depends how you brew it. Filter, for example, is a
| lot more forgiving on flavor than espresso. My decaf beans
| start to go bad for espresso after a few days of buying them,
| but for filter they will last much longer. One recommendation
| by coffee aficionados is to freeze your decaf beans as soon
| as you get them and then grind them frozen. I haven't tried
| that yet, I just buy in small batches so they are usually
| rather fresh.
|
| Mixing half decaf with regular beans is a great idea, I've
| been doing that for years. The mix of flavors is good too, if
| you are brewing filter. You can get away with a lot more when
| you do filter.
| haswell wrote:
| This is really helpful. I'm doing pour over, and I tend to
| use lower temperature water, so it sounds like I've got
| some leeway.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| I hunted around for good decaf espresso beans for a couple
| years and then someone recommended local own-brand supermarket
| beans, 9.50e/kg and I've had some better tasting extractions
| than a lot of artisan expensive regular beans I've bought. No
| roast date, so who knows how old, but a good consistent cup
| until bag empty.
|
| What I also then noticed was that a lot of the coffee houses
| here use an inferior grinder for their decaf, smaller burrs,
| and/or the older hopper based grinder vs on-demand for their
| regular beans. No wonder it gets a bad rep.
|
| Anyway I was quite amazed to suddenly find myself enjoying
| decaf so much.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I keep my decaf beans frozen. That seems to help a lot.
| pillefitz wrote:
| I'd love if all psychoactive compounds could be removed from
| coffee beans. The stress response and inability to sleep I get
| from decaf beans is pretty much comparable to that from normal
| beans (and distinctly different from pure caffeine or green tea)
| eric-hu wrote:
| Have you looked into L-Theanine? It's an extract from green
| tea. I add it to my coffee sometimes and it smooths out the
| experience
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Do you put sugar in your (decaf) coffee? A lot of energy comes
| from sugar.
| Teslazar wrote:
| I had a similar problem. Coffee, decaf, even dark chocolate
| would be very stimulating and would mess with my sleep, even a
| single cup in the morning. I tried quite a few things to solve
| this and ended up discovering that supplementing with
| molybdenum solved it. Molybdenum is an essential element
| important in the metabolization of some compounds, including
| caffeine. It's cheap and may be worth trying.
|
| Also, I found that L-Theanine helped but only for maybe a week
| or so before it became less and less effective. For me, it was
| obviously a band-aid solution that wasn't correcting the
| underlying problem.
| hcrisp wrote:
| I couldn't find any citations that mention molybdenum as a
| way to increase metabolism of caffeine. However, I found one
| reference [0] that mentions, "Consumption of broccoli and
| brassica vegetables in general and absorption of large
| quantities of vitamin C increase caffeine clearance".
|
| EDIT: It would seem that the vitamin C paper [1] concludes
| the opposite of what [0] states. "These results indicate that
| the elimination of caffeine in the elderly is not affected
| significantly by the concentrations of vitamin C achieved
| during this study." [0]
| https://www.coffeeandscience.org/health/coffee-and-
| caffeine/caffeine-and-metabolism [1]
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7064899/
| TeaBrain wrote:
| A limited number of studies suggested tobacco smoking
| increases the metabolism of caffeine, an effect possibly
| mediated by caffeine.
|
| "Caffeine metabolism is increased by smoking, an effect
| mediated by an acceleration in its demethylation (it also
| increases xanthine oxidase activity) (Parsons and Neims,
| 1978). Smoking cessation returns caffeine clearance rates
| to nonsmoking values (Murphy et al., 1988)."
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223808/#:~:text=Caffe
| i....
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Interesting, either the store is selling you fake decaf, or
| there's really a whole bunch of other chemicals, other than
| caffeine, that can mess with your body.
|
| I have an unusually strong response to caffeine (a cup of
| coffee, strong tea, or, on a bad day, even a small glass of
| Coke). It doesn't really affect my heart (as far as my Apple
| Watch can tell), but it obliterates my sleep and makes me feel
| quite a bit more anxious than usual. Decaf coffee solves the
| problem completely -- no stimulation, no anxiety, normal sleep.
| Coincidentally, I had a tall glass of iced decaf just two hours
| ago, and I'm going to bed in a few minutes.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Everybody is different. I'm sensitive enough to caffeine that
| trace amounts causes anxiety. I have to avoid chocolate.
|
| I'm equally sensitive to alcohol. Because it's immediately
| absorbed into the blood, a sip of scotch will take out my
| antidepressant in seconds. It's shocking how quickly and how
| severely even a small amount of alcohol affects me. It's
| almost like an allergy.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Caffeine isn't the only bioactive substance in coffee. Coffee
| also contains high levels of chlorogenic acid, which has a
| metabolism boosting effect. I suspect it or other bioactive
| compounds are responsible for much of the stimulation derived
| from coffee, considering the effect of coffee feels markedly
| different than the effect of caffeine consumed in a pill.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| it might be easier to just artificially recreate "natural
| coffee flavor" than to try to remove everything
| tptacek wrote:
| I quit caffeine a decade ago and am an evangelist for doing so;
| garbage drug. I'm very sensitive to it, and it absolutely
| wrecks my sleep. But I drink like five cups of black decaf
| every morning, which probably works out to 10-20% of the
| caffeine in a normal cup, and am pretty much fine. There's
| enough caffeine in decaf that I'd be afraid to drink it after
| 2PM.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I had to greatly reduce my caffeine intake at one point, and
| I've kept it down since. I'm inclined to agree that it's a
| garbage drug, but in small amounts and strictly in the
| morning work -like you do- it seems to work for me. Rather
| than drink 5 cups of decaf I drink one cup of decaf made with
| 6 parts decaf beans to 1 part caf. Then maybe later in the
| day I might eat three tiny pieces of 100% chocolate mass, but
| like you I'm afraid to after 2PM-ish.
| jerkstate wrote:
| I'm a big advocate for replacing coffee with cacao. I drink
| it in the morning instead of coffee. Made from raw cacao
| paste and hot water, I use an immersion blender to mix it
| well and then add half and half for flavor. Way more
| nutrients than coffee and the theobromine is much gentler
| than caffeine and lasts all day.
| diob wrote:
| It's mostly genetics. Some folks should never have any amount
| of caffeine, while others it hardly affects. I have the hardly
| affects gene.
| eirikbakke wrote:
| So, in the Swiss Water process, caffeine-free coffee is made by
| soaking the beans in... caffeine-free coffee?
|
| (My initial though was, "then how do you get the cafeeine-free
| coffee in the first place", but I see the answer is that you can
| decaffeinate liquids by running them through charcoal filters...
| something you can't do with solid beans.)
| bishfish wrote:
| Why not try low caffeine variety like Laurina? It's about 1/3 to
| 1/2 the caffeine of Arabica.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I wonder why we don't use genetic modifications to get caffeine
| free coffee?
| sethhochberg wrote:
| At least part of the reason coffee plants produce caffeine is
| as a defense mechanism from insects. If you genetically
| engineer out the caffeine, your effort to farm the plant just
| went up if you aren't also able to genetically engineer insect
| resistance.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Besides that if the caffeine-free variants were to spread in
| the wild and cross-breed with regular coffee that would be
| disastrous.
| Murky3515 wrote:
| TIL about one of the solvents involved, ethyl acetate, and the
| fact that it is not good for you. How do I know that my local
| coffee shop's machine is working correctly and provides only safe
| levels of this solvent?
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| It smells like nail polish remover, well nail polish remover
| with the acetone subtracted, and it is noticeable _well_ below
| any toxicity threshold. It 's also a characteristic component
| of some fruit / fermentation aromas
| jolmg wrote:
| I wouldn't expect a coffee shop to do the decaffeination there.
| Rather, the company that does the decaffeination is its own
| thing, which then ships their product to the roaster, which
| then ships their product to your local coffee shop.
| tptacek wrote:
| Also, if you're buying fancy coffee, chances are it's Swiss
| water process, for better or worse.
| jolmg wrote:
| Worse? You mean in comparison to the CO2 one, which I
| hadn't heard of before?
| tptacek wrote:
| My understanding of the consensus is that it favors EA
| decaf.
| valec wrote:
| how did you get that from the article?
|
| "One of the common solvents, ethyl acetate, comes naturally in
| many foods and beverages. It's considered a safe chemical for
| decaffeination by the Food and Drug Administration."
|
| speaking from a chemist's perspective, ethyl acetate is
| basically non-toxic. it decomposes into ethanol and acetic acid
| (vinegar). dcm (methylene chloride) is toxic, but should be
| completely removed before it ever reaches you. the nice thing
| about volatile organic solvents is that they're...volatile, so
| they are easily stripped from coffee beans.
| tptacek wrote:
| There's probably more ethyl acetate in apple juice (it occurs
| naturally in fruit) than there is in the equivalent quantity of
| coffee. Because people freak out when they hear terms like
| "ethyl acetate", the industry has started calling this "sugar
| cane decaf".
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