Decaf Explained

Summary

This video delves into the world of decaffeinated coffee, addressing the common misconceptions and highlighting the potential for high-quality decaf. The host explores the history of decaf, from its controversial beginnings with benzene to modern methods like the Swiss Water Process and supercritical CO2. They discuss the importance of freshness and the impact of decaffeination on coffee's roast and flavor, emphasizing the need for specialty roasters who prioritize decaf quality. The video concludes with tips for enjoying decaf at home, advocating for its taste and health benefits when done right.

Takeaways

• ☕️ Decaf coffee is often considered inferior due to its disappointing taste in many places, but it can be as enjoyable as caffeinated coffee when prepared correctly.
• 🍃 The decaffeination process can affect the coffee's taste and quality, with methods like the Swiss Water Process and supercritical carbon dioxide being popular for their gentler approach.
• 🚫 The original decaffeination method using benzene was abandoned due to its carcinogenic properties, leading to safer alternatives like ethyl acetate and methylene chloride.
• 🌱 The choice of decaffeination process can impact the coffee's flavor profile, with some methods being perceived as less intrusive to the coffee's natural taste.
• 🏥 Health considerations play a role in the preference for decaf, with some consumers avoiding caffeine for reasons such as sleep quality or anxiety.
• 🔍 The level of caffeine reduction in decaf is significant, typically reaching below 0.3% caffeine by weight, which is more than 99.7% caffeine-free.
• 📊 The analysis of decaf coffee shows higher chlorogenic acid levels, which are beneficial polyphenols for gut health.
• 📉 Decaf coffee tends to stale faster than caffeinated coffee due to its increased porosity, emphasizing the importance of freshness.
• ❄️ Freezing decaf beans can help maintain freshness, as decaf is more susceptible to oxidation and degradation over time.
• 🛒 Sourcing decaf from roasters who prioritize quality and freshness is crucial for a good decaf experience, as not all cafes or roasters may handle decaf with the same care as caffeinated beans.

Q & A

What is the main controversy surrounding decaffeinated coffee?

The main controversy is that many coffee enthusiasts believe decaf coffee often disappoints in taste compared to its caffeinated counterparts, leading to a skepticism about its quality.

Why are some people against decaffeinated coffee?

Some people are against decaffeinated coffee because they believe it lacks the rich flavor of regular coffee and is often of lower quality.

What is the significance of the year 1905 in the history of decaffeinated coffee?

In 1905, Ludwig Roselius, a German coffee trader, patented a process for decaffeinating coffee using hot water and benzene, marking the beginning of commercial decaffeination.

What are the three main decaffeination processes discussed in the script?

The three main decaffeination processes are the use of organic solvents like methylene chloride or ethyl acetate, the Swiss Water Process, and supercritical carbon dioxide extraction.

Why did the use of benzene as a solvent in decaffeination become controversial?

The use of benzene became controversial because it was later discovered to be a carcinogen, leading to its discontinuation in the decaffeination process.

How does the Swiss Water Process for decaffeination work?

The Swiss Water Process involves steeping green coffee in hot water to extract caffeine and flavors, then using activated carbon to remove caffeine from the liquid, which is then reused to decaffeinate new batches of green coffee.

What is the significance of the 'supercritical carbon dioxide' process in decaffeination?

The supercritical carbon dioxide process uses the properties of CO2 under specific temperatures and pressures to extract caffeine from coffee beans without the need for additional solvents.

Why does decaffeinated coffee often taste disappointing?

Decaf coffee often tastes disappointing because the decaffeination process can disrupt the coffee bean's structure, making it more porous and altering the roasting and brewing characteristics, which can lead to a less desirable flavor profile.

What is the role of chlorogenic acids in decaffeinated coffee?

Chlorogenic acids, which are polyphenols, are present in higher quantities in decaf coffee compared to caffeinated coffee. They are beneficial for gut health and contribute to the overall health benefits of coffee.

Why should decaffeinated coffee be stored differently from caffeinated coffee?

Decaf coffee should be stored in a freezer to maintain freshness because its porous nature makes it more susceptible to staling due to oxygen exposure.

What is the advice for finding and brewing great decaffeinated coffee at home?

To find great decaf, look for roasters who take pride in their decaf offerings. For brewing, ensure the coffee is fresh, possibly by freezing, and adjust your brewing method to account for the decaf's unique characteristics.

Outlines

00:00

😕 Controversy and Quality Concerns of Decaf Coffee

The speaker begins by addressing the controversy surrounding decaffeinated coffee, highlighting the skepticism of some coffee enthusiasts who prefer regular coffee. They argue that while decaf is often disappointing, it can be just as enjoyable as caffeinated coffee when prepared well. The speaker aims to explore the reasons behind the varying quality of decaf and to discuss the history, health aspects, and how to make a great cup of decaf at home. The historical origin of decaf is traced back to 1905 in Germany, where a coffee trader named Ludwig Roselius developed an early decaffeination process using benzene, a carcinogenic compound, which is no longer in use today.

05:02

🔬 The Evolution of Decaf Processes

The paragraph delves into the evolution of decaffeination processes, starting with the replacement of benzene by methylene chloride, also known as dichloromethane. This compound, despite being effective, is not ideal for consumption and is now less popular due to negative public perception. The successor, ethyl acetate, derived from sugarcane, is presented as a natural and less controversial alternative. The speaker also discusses the Swiss Water Process, which uses water extraction to remove caffeine, and the supercritical carbon dioxide process, which leverages the properties of CO2 in its supercritical state to extract caffeine. The paragraph concludes with a brief mention of the speaker's interest in visiting these processing plants.

10:02

☕️ The Impact of Decaf Processing on Coffee Quality

This section discusses the effects of decaffeination on the coffee bean's structure and the subsequent challenges in roasting and brewing. The initial steps of decaffeination make the beans more porous, which alters their roasting dynamics and can lead to a misleading appearance of roast level. The speaker uses a roast color analyzer to demonstrate the discrepancy between the exterior and interior roast levels of decaf beans. They also touch upon the higher polyphenol content in decaf coffee, which can contribute to health benefits, especially for those sensitive to caffeine.

15:03

🌡️ The Challenge of Freshness in Decaf Coffee

The speaker emphasizes the importance of freshness in decaf coffee due to its increased porosity, which allows air and oxygen to enter the beans more easily, accelerating staleness. They advise using a freezer to preserve decaf beans and to purchase from roasters who prioritize the quality of their decaf offerings. The paragraph also addresses the common practice of cafes not investing in decaf, which can result in lower quality options for consumers. The speaker suggests engaging with coffee communities to find high-quality decaf and stresses the need for proper grinding and brewing techniques.

20:05

🗣️ Community Engagement and Personal Experiences with Decaf

In the concluding paragraph, the speaker invites viewers to share their recommendations and experiences with decaf coffee in the comments section. They also express interest in visiting decaf processing plants and encourage viewers to provide feedback on what they'd like to see in future videos. The speaker thanks the sponsor, CoPilot, and provides a link for viewers to try the fitness app, emphasizing the importance of community and personal exploration in the world of coffee.

Keywords

💡Decaf

Decaf, short for decaffeinated, refers to coffee that has had most of its caffeine removed. In the video, decaf is a central theme as the speaker discusses the processes of decaffeination and the potential misconceptions about decaf coffee. The script mentions that decaf can be just as enjoyable as caffeinated coffee if prepared correctly, challenging the common belief that decaf is inferior.

💡Decaffeination

Decaffeination is the process of removing caffeine from coffee beans. The video delves into the history and different methods of decaffeination, such as using solvents like benzene, methylene chloride, or the Swiss Water Process. The script explains that these processes can affect the taste and quality of decaf coffee, which is why the speaker advocates for understanding how to make delicious decaf at home.

💡Caffeine

Caffeine is a natural stimulant found in coffee beans and is often associated with the benefits and drawbacks of coffee consumption. The script discusses the removal of caffeine during decaffeination and touches on the idea that some people might prefer decaf for health or sleep reasons, thus making caffeine a key concept in the discussion of decaf coffee.

💡Benzene

Benzene is a chemical compound historically used as a solvent in the decaffeination process. The video script mentions that benzene was later found to be a carcinogen and is no longer used in decaffeination, highlighting the evolution of decaffeination methods to be safer for consumers.

💡Ethyl Acetate

Ethyl Acetate is a naturally occurring chemical used in one of the decaffeination processes discussed in the video. It is derived from sugarcane and is portrayed as a safer alternative to earlier solvents. The script uses ethyl acetate as an example of how modern decaffeination methods have improved in terms of safety and consumer perception.

💡Swiss Water Process

The Swiss Water Process is a decaffeination method that uses water and activated carbon to remove caffeine from coffee beans. The video script praises this method for being water-based and therefore less concerning to consumers, despite the speaker's neutral stance on the superiority of one decaffeination process over another.

💡Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

Supercritical Carbon Dioxide is a term used to describe the state of carbon dioxide when it is subjected to specific temperatures and pressures that allow it to act as a solvent. In the context of the video, this process is used for decaffeination, and the script highlights its appeal due to carbon dioxide being a naturally occurring substance in the environment.

💡Polyphenols

Polyphenols are a type of antioxidant found in coffee, including chlorogenic acids, which are mentioned in the script as being more prevalent in decaf coffee. The video discusses how polyphenols contribute to the health benefits of coffee, such as supporting gut health, making decaf an attractive option for those seeking the health benefits without the caffeine.

💡Freshness

Freshness is a critical factor in the quality of coffee, especially decaf, as discussed in the video. The script emphasizes that decaf coffee can stale faster due to its porous nature post-decaffeination, advising viewers to store decaf in the freezer to preserve its quality, which is crucial for a good cup of decaf at home.

💡Roasting

Roasting is the process of heating coffee beans to transform their flavor and is mentioned in the video in relation to how decaf coffee beans roast differently due to their treatment during decaffeination. The script explains that the roasting process affects the final taste and quality of decaf coffee, with roasters needing to adjust their techniques for decaf beans.

Highlights

Decaf coffee is a controversial topic with some coffee enthusiasts preferring not to consume it.

Most decaf coffee served in places is often disappointing in taste, but it can be amazing if prepared correctly.

Decaf drinkers are considered the purest of coffee drinkers as they drink it for the taste rather than the caffeine.

The history of decaffeination dates back to 1905 with Ludwig Roselius, a German coffee trader.

Early decaffeination processes used benzene, which is now known to be a carcinogen and is no longer used.

There are three main categories of decaffeination processes: solvent-based, water-based, and supercritical carbon dioxide.

Methylene chloride or dichloromethane is a successor to benzene and is used in some decaffeination processes.

Ethyl acetate, derived from sugarcane, is a naturally occurring chemical used in the 'Sugarcane Process' for decaffeination.

The Swiss Water Process involves using hot water to extract caffeine from green coffee beans.

Supercritical carbon dioxide is used to extract caffeine because it acts as a solvent under specific temperature and pressure.

Decaf coffee is often described as 99.7% caffeine-free, but it still contains a small amount of caffeine.

Decaf coffee has higher levels of chlorogenic acids, which are beneficial for gut health.

Decaf coffee often tastes bad because the decaffeination process disrupts the coffee bean's structure, making it more porous.

Decaf coffee stales faster than caffeinated coffee due to its increased porosity, which allows oxygen to enter more easily.

To enjoy decaf coffee, it's crucial to ensure it's fresh, as it doesn't last as long as caffeinated coffee once roasted.

It's important to buy decaf from roasters who take pride in their decaf offerings to ensure quality.

Freezing decaf beans can help maintain their freshness, as decaf coffee ages quickly.

Transcripts

- Today we're gonna talk about decaf

because decaffeinated coffee

seems to be this weirdly controversial topic.

There's a big group of people out there

that are really kind of against decaf,

the whole Death Before Decaf crew.

And if you're one of those people watching,

well then I've got good news and bad news.

And the bad news is, I think you might be wrong,

but the good news is, well, decaf

you know, often is disappointing

and you're kind of right to be skeptical of it

because I would say most cups of decaf coffees served

in most places are a letdown, are not that good.

I wanna get into the hows and whys of decafs

because the kind of decaf drinker

to me is the top tier coffee drinker.

They are the purest of all coffee drinkers

because they're just drinking it for the taste.

They just like the taste of coffee

and they're willing to drink decaf,

disappointing decaf, often, to get there

and that feels very sad.

But the really good news is that decaf can be amazing.

It can be as good and enjoyable

as any other caffeinated coffee if you get it right.

Now, you might also be of the mindset

of like, "What's the point?

The point of coffee is caffeine!"

and I would argue a point of coffee is caffeine,

but that misses a bunch of fun

and that's kind of the whole point of this channel.

We think coffee can be really genuinely delightful

in a whole bunch of ways.

Not just how it tastes, but its history,

the whole process of making it,

coffee's great and worth exploring.

Now I want to get into why decaf is so often disappointing.

And to do that, we're gonna have to go right back

to the beginning of decaf

and then talk through the processes used

to decaffeinate coffee.

Then I wanna kind of touch on the health side of things

because I think it is a really important part

of this whole conversation.

And then, of course, we will cover

how to make delicious decaf coffee at home.

What's important, what you need to worry about,

what tends to go wrong, and what should go right.

Let's go back to 1905 in the city of Bremen in Germany

and there was a coffee trader there called Ludwig Roselius.

Now his claim is that the idea of decaf came to him

when he had a batch of raw coffee

soaked in seawater at some point,

and then afterwards when they roasted it,

he thought it tasted pretty good

and it was kind of decaffeinated.

He patented a process

where they would kind of soak the coffee beans in hot water

and then get in there with a compound called benzene

that would bind into the caffeine

as a kind of solvent and take it out.

And at the end of it, you had relatively decaffeinated

raw coffee beans that you could then roast.

And being an entrepreneur,

well, he then built a brand selling decaffeinated

roasted coffee and that brand was called Kaffee HAG.

They had another brand too, actually they started

called Sanka, which was 'sans caffeine'.

And that brand I think had much wider reach.

It was certainly popular in the US,

really pushed decaf into that market.

And most of the early marketing for decaf

was it was a healthier choice to drink a coffee

without the caffeine.

Small problem with that, benzene,

the compound they were using as a solvent in that process

turned out to be a carcinogen.

We don't do that anymore, benzene is off the table,

but that basic process

of treat the coffee bean in preparation for the extraction,

use a solvent to get at the caffeine specifically,

and then get rid of that and keep the remaining beans

to roast and drink.

That's kind of the process that we still use today.

But there's kind of three main categories of decaffeination

that I think are worth sort of talking about separately.

Before I tell you about those processes though,

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The first is actually very similar to the original process.

It's gonna be organic solvent used

to extract the caffeine from the coffee beans.

The sort of successor to benzene

was one called methylene chloride or dichloromethane.

It's the same thing.

That compound has a bunch of names.

It's a very effective way of doing it.

The process is much the same.

You might steam the beans or heat the beans up in hot water

to kind of open them up so that you can get inside them.

Green coffee beans are very dense

and if you're trying to get stuff out of the middle of them,

you've gotta do something to them to kind of open them up

to give you access chemically to the middle.

Dichloromethane isn't the most glorious

and wonderful chemical in the world.

I don't recommend consuming it.

I strongly recommend not consuming it.

You shouldn't be exposed to it in any serious quantities.

But the EPA in the US,

the Environmental Protection Agency

have a little paper on dichloromethane

and they say in a US city,

they measured three different cities.

Daily exposure to airborne dichloromethane

was 30 to about 300 micrograms per day.

Per day.

If you take a well processed kilo of decaf coffee

that's used the dichloromethane process

that might have, in total, retained in it

200 micrograms of dichloromethane,

the limit is 2000 micrograms per kilo,

but most of them are, in well run optimized plants,

are below that limit there.

So if you drank that entire kilo

and you extracted all of it in that process,

you'd be kind of at a typical day in a North American city

in terms of exposure.

It's a bad compound but the dose makes the poison.

Dichloromethane became less and less popular

because the name freaks people out

and there was a big push against it

and there is a successor to it called ethyl acetate.

That also sounds very scary,

so you don't tend to see that on bags of coffee.

What you tend to see is the Sugarcane Process listed.

Sugarcane is what's used to produce ethyl acetate.

It is a naturally occurring chemical.

It occurs in fruits,

it occurs in a bunch of different processes.

Yes, if you concentrate it down

you can use it as nail varnish remover,

but it's present in a bunch of stuff

and it's really not that scary.

It works much the same way where again,

you're gonna steam the coffee beans to open them up,

add the ethyl acetate, dissolve out the caffeine

through a number of different washes, take that away,

extract the caffeine from it

'cause that stuff's actually useful and valuable,

and then steam the coffee beans a second time

to get rid of any solvent before drying them down

and having them ready for kind of roasting.

That's actually a very common process.

It's really kind of interesting

how popular it's become recently.

There's a few different plants around the world doing it.

One of them is in Colombia, so you tend to see

a lot of Colombian coffee processed as ethyl acetate decaf.

The second kind of grouping, I suppose,

is kind of water extraction.

The Swiss Water Process

involves making a green coffee extract.

You are gonna take a very large batch of raw green coffee

and steep it aggressively in hot water

to try and leach out everything you can.

That's the caffeine

and all of the stuff that makes the flavor.

That raw coffee is no longer useful to you.

But the green coffee extract really is

because you can decaffeinate the liquid

using things like sort of active carbon rods

and then you've got a caffeine-free green coffee extract.

When you put a fresh batch of green coffee into it,

well the flavors aren't gonna leach out of the coffee bean

because they're already in equilibrium with the solution,

but the caffeine isn't.

And so the caffeine leeches out of the coffee bean

into the green coffee extract.

You do this multiple times

and it will fully decaffeinate the raw coffee.

And again, each time you're pulling out caffeine

from the green coffee extract,

that you can sell to pharmaceuticals

or to you know, beverage manufacturers.

It ends up in things like Red Bull or cellulite cream.

A lot of people like the Swiss Water Process

because it is ultimately a water-based process

and people aren't freaked out by water.

I don't really have an opinion that lines up with that.

I'm kind of open to any and all decaf methods.

They're all safe.

And I'm not gonna come down on one side of one decaf process

in this whole thing.

I'm interested in all of them.

This leaves us with our third process,

which has I think the coolest sounding name,

which is 'supercritical carbon dioxide'.

Now carbon dioxide is kind of weird.

It's one of those things that sublimates,

what a lovely word.

It goes from being a solid straight to being a gas.

You'll see it if you have a block of dry ice,

when it melts, it doesn't turn into a liquid.

To get carbon dioxide to act like a liquid,

you need to apply a specific temperature and pressure to it.

And if you get those right, it sort of acts like a liquid.

And if you mix it with water,

well then you can use that mixture

to sort of decaffeinate coffee

because the supercritical CO2

does seem to extract caffeine specifically.

This process sounds very interesting.

It doesn't tend to freak people out

because even though CO2 may not be good

in excess for the environment, it's not a scary thing.

It's in the air around us.

There's nothing terrifying about CO2 from that perspective.

Again, this is not me saying ethyl acetate

and methylene chloride are bad,

I'm just saying how people react to them.

Now I'd love to go to these plants

and look in depth at how they work

and if that's something you wanna see,

let me know down in the comments below.

Okay, so you've got your raw decaffeinated coffee

and then you roast it up.

You buy a bag of roasted beans,

you take them home, you brew a cup.

Does that coffee have zero milligrams of caffeine in it?

No.

If you look at a lot of the language around decaf,

you'll see that it's often described

as being 99.7% caffeine free.

Looking at the EU legislation specifically,

they say that of the dry coffee matter,

I presume that means the ground coffee,

it can be up to 0.3% caffeine by weight

in order to be classed as decaffeinated.

Coffee, normal caffeinated coffee,

is one to maybe 2% by weight, caffeine.

So the reduction is going from say 1 to under 0.3.

So yes, once it's below 0.3,

it is more than 99.7% caffeine free.

But that's not the reduction,

it's not reduced by 99.7%.

Now viewers of the channel may be familiar with this:

it's a caffeine meter,

it's a little device I've used over the years

to do a bunch of caffeine testing.

And interestingly, it's actually not sensitive enough

to measure decaf coffee as brewed coffee

because it's below a concentration

of 10 milligrams per hundred milliliters.

So it's definitely gonna be below 20 milligrams

for like an eight ounce cup of coffee

or a 225 ml cup of coffee.

It will typically be lower than that.

One thing we can measure though is espresso

because that's obviously much more concentrated.

So here we have 36 grams of liquid espresso

brewed from 18 grams of ground decaffeinated coffee.

In this case it was an ethyl acetate decaf.

That's not particularly important to us now.

What I'm gonna do is give it a good stir

and then pull a sample, add it to some reagent,

and then add it to this little machine

and it will give me a number

about how much caffeine is in here.

This has 13.91 milligrams per deciliter

per hundred milliliters.

And this is about a third of a deciliter

but it's four and a little bit milligrams of caffeine.

Very little caffeine for a double espresso,

which is good news.

Now I do wanna draw your attention just quickly

to this number here, the chlorogenic acid number.

Now we've never really talked about this aspect

of the analyzer on the channel before,

but chlorogenic acids are polyphenols,

they're kind of plant defense chemicals

and they're actually present in relatively high quantities

compared to caffeinated coffee, in decaf.

Now recently I did a podcast with Tim Spector.

They invited me back to the Zoe podcast.

I don't think that's out yet,

but when it is, I'll leave a link

in the description down below.

They were talking more about the importance of polyphenols

from coffee for gut health.

It's one of the ways I think in which coffee is

particularly healthy for you,

in that it's got loads of CGA, got loads of polyphenols,

so it feeds your gut and that makes you,

or helps you have a healthier gut basically.

And that has a bunch of health benefits on the back of it.

That makes decaf to me particularly interesting.

It tastes great when it's done right,

it's got loads of polyphenols in it, so it's good for me,

but there's no caffeine, which is also potentially useful

if I suffer sensitivities to caffeine,

if it delays the onset of my sleep,

or it lowers the quality of my sleep,

or it exacerbates things like anxiety for me.

So there's reasons not to drink caffeine,

but decaf lets you have a load

of the potential, theoretical health benefits of coffee

without kind of the downsides.

So why is decaf bad so often?

It turns out that first part of every process

is extremely disruptive.

The part where you kind of open up the coffee bean

changes the kind of structure

of the raw coffee irreversibly.

It makes it kind of more porous.

It looks really weird as well, let me show you.

Here we've got some Swiss Water Processed decaf coffee

and here we've got some ethyl acetate processed coffee.

The green is a very different green to most green coffee.

These are both washed coffees originally.

It's kind of interesting to see,

they don't look that much different in size.

You can see some difference between the two.

The way that these roast is totally different

to the way that normal coffee roasts, right?

Like the way that the heat transfer happens

in this very different kind of density coffee bean,

means that it's a tricky thing to roast well.

And as a result, a lot of decaf goes wrong at this stage.

And this whole thing does funny things

to the way that the coffee looks once it's roasted.

Decaf often looks a kind of different roast level

than it is inside on the outside of the coffee beans.

There's a couple of reasons for that.

One, I think the heat transfer is a part of it

and two, because it's so porous,

when it has been roasted that little bit darker,

the oils that usually don't come to the surface

until a pretty dark roast,

will come to the surface after roasting relatively quickly.

So you get these weirdly oily looking beans

that aren't that darkly roasted.

I'll try and show you this in a slightly nerdy way.

We have a roast color analyzer here

and we'll look at two different coffees.

One sort of specialty coffee, caffeinated coffee,

and we'll look at the color of the outside

and then the inside once we've ground it.

And then we'll do the same thing with a decaf coffee.

When it comes to using this little machine,

the lower the number, the darker the roast.

So with the decaf you can see, to me,

the beans look much darker than these beans,

but the ground coffee looks only fractionally darker.

And I think that's what we saw with the color testing.

Essentially the outside of a decaf coffee bean

is not as good an indicator of the color of the inside

of the coffee bean, of the ground coffee,

of the overall roast level.

But this is where it becomes truly relevant

for you brewing decaf at home.

Because this decaf is more porous.

Yes, oils are able to get to the surface more easily,

but the far bigger concern is that air, oxygen,

is able to get in to the coffee beans much more easily.

Decaf coffee stales faster than caffeinated coffee

of kind of matching roast levels

'cause the darker you roast normal caffeinated coffee,

the faster it stales.

So if you have a very dark roast of decaf

that will be stale incredibly quickly, two weeks off roast

if it's not held in a kind of oxygen free environment,

you will really taste a significant drop off

in quality and flavor.

I'd love to tell you that most cafe operators

think the same way about this kind of stuff,

that they're really paying attention to the freshness,

but often they're not.

You'll still see, you know,

small coffee shops buying large bags of decaf

and not going through them that quickly.

Decaf is as popular as cafes want it to be

in a funny sort of way.

Actually side note in researching this,

we came across one article from the eighties

from the New York Times, which claimed

that up to 25% of coffee drunk in America

at that time was decaf.

That's astonishing numbers.

I would say right now,

I had a look at Prufrock's cafe kind of figures for 2023

and four and a half percent of the drinks were decaf.

It's one of those things that often people don't buy

if it's not clearly available.

And then lots of cafe owners don't sell

because no one's asking for it.

It's a kind of chicken and egg thing that's confusing.

A lot of cafes, frustratingly, don't really invest

time and energy into decaf.

Again, their most passionate consumers

are not well-catered to.

Buying massive bulk bags of decaf

is not in the consumer's end interest.

You know, you need to invest in a good grinder.

It doesn't actually grind particularly differently

to normal caffeinated coffee.

We took a bunch of different decafs

and run them through the particle size analyzer

for a fixed grind setting

and we didn't see much difference

as long as the roast was fairly consistent.

Different roasters do grind differently,

but decaf doesn't grind substantially differently

to caffeinated coffee.

You still sometimes see people pulling out the sachet

of pre-ground decaf that is 100% guaranteed to be terrible.

You see them sort of shaking the little foil thing

into the portafilter, spilling everywhere.

That's not a cafe you wanna be drinking decaf in

or probably much coffee at all.

You know, decaf can be great,

but I don't think most coffee shops are a good benchmark

for how it should taste.

So let's wrap up with the key stuff

around great decaf at home.

First and foremost is gonna be freshness.

Use your freezer, decaf freezes really well.

All coffee beans freeze really well.

I would recommend potentially even portioning

a little portion of decaf that you might need.

And freezing them individually, as when you need them

you can kind of draw them down.

If you don't go through decaf that much,

it will keep really well in the freezer.

If you go through loads of decaf, just yeah, have a bag out.

Things like, you know, the canisters and stuff

help a little bit, but really the freezer is the best place

to keep coffee that ages quickly.

The second thing is the most difficult thing,

which is you need to buy great decaf from a roaster

that cares deeply about their decaf.

I had an experience in 2007

where I was visiting a cafe in Portland.

It was a Stumptown cafe

where they still roasted in the cafe.

And the roaster there, I was chatting

and they said, "do you want espresso?"

And I said, yes.

Brought me an espresso.

I drank it, it was delicious.

And he is like, "By the way, that's our decaf."

And that ruined me, like that was like

"Oh no, there's no excuse for decaf not to be good."

And that stuck in sort of my head from that point onwards.

I don't think that's true of all people involved

in coffee roasting and that kind of stuff.

I would say find the passionate people who are excited

to serve you decaf, sell you decaf, talk about their decaf.

You wanna find a roaster who is proud

and excited about their decaf

because then, it genuinely, it can be very good.

It's one where I would recommend being involved

in online communities who talk about coffee,

who recommend coffee from local roasters, swap tips,

who's had a good experience,

who hasn't had a good experience.

Buying great decaf is tricky,

but really that's kind of the key to this whole thing.

Well-roasted, well-sourced, well-processed decaf

is a wonderful and very enjoyable coffee to drink,

but freshness is key.

Dialing it in 'cause it will brew differently

to other coffees.

Those are the key things.

And beyond that, shockingly,

there's no extra tips or tricks.

It shouldn't be as hard as it seems to be.

But drinking decaf is really lovely.

It's become a little ritual here at the studio.

About three o'clock we brew a little batch of decaf

'cause we all like drinking coffee

and we all like sleeping well.

I don't want any caffeine after two o'clock,

but I really enjoy a little cup of decaf in the afternoon.

I just like drinking coffee,

which is probably not a great surprise.

But now I wanna hear from you down in the comments below.

Will you tell me, do you recommend decafs

that you've really, really enjoyed?

Don't use URL, don't put a link in there

because that won't work.

Just just talk about some decaf

you've really enjoyed and why.

I'd love to hear from you.

Are there other things you want to know

about the decaf process?

Do you want me to go and visit some decaf processing plans?

Would that be interesting stuff to see in the future?

I'd love to hear your thoughts down in the comments below.

Also, thank you again to CoPilot for sponsoring this video.

Don't forget about the link down in the description below

and the QR code on screen.

But for now I'll say thank you so much for watching

and hope you have a great day.