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When I was pregnant and thinking about limiting my caffeine a bit, I learned a handy
way to "decaffeinate" tea: just brew it once. The second steeping of tea has almost zero caffeine. As I
typically use each tea bag twice, I thought to myself, that means two cups of tea equals one cup of caffeine. And then
I proceeded to forget I'd ever heard that caffeine was bad for my unborn child.
Evidently, coffee is decaffeinated the very same way. Except that, just like my second steeping of tea, once the beans are soaked to removed the caffeine, the flavor isn't much to write home about. According toAsk Yahoo!, this is where the science comes in: "In one practice, the beans' post-soak water is mixed with a solvent that separates the caffeine from the liquid. Alternatively, the caffeinated water can be forced through activated charcoal or carbon filters, which also separates the caffeine from the solution. After either method, the coffee beans are re-submerged in the now-totally-caffeine-free watery extract where (hopefully) they reabsorb their flavor."
I don't drink decaf coffee much - especially now that I'm a mom of a baby, I need the caffeine. But I wonder: can you coffee nuts out there taste the difference? It's a pretty chemically-charged process, and it seems when chemicals enter the mix, flavor always loses.
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1-03-2006 @9:44PM Bruce Dearborn Walker said... 1. Yes I can taste the difference, which is one reason I don't drink decaffeinated coffee. The other reason is I like caffeine.
2. Don't use teabags. They use teeny tiny pieces of tea called dust and fannings, which allow the tannins and other bad flavors to leak out and ruin the tea. Baby Buddha cries when your ruin tea.
3. Most of the caffein in tea is leached out in the first thirty or forty seconds. If you buy nice whole leaf tea, whether black, oolong, or green, you can usually get at least another two or three cups with great flavor. Some people "wash" their tea, especially oolong, by steeping it for twenty five or thirty seconds to get most of the caffeine out and then discarding the wash. If you wish, you can discard your caffeine wash by sending it to me.
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1-04-2006 @1:34AM Kelley Ritchey said... I actually like (need?)the caffeine, so maybe you can give me an extra kick by sending that extra caffeine my way.
Maybe that caffeine ends up in all those "caffeine-enhanced" beverages.
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1-04-2006 @9:31AM Crosius said... Decaf coffee tastes terrible. Even the beans decaffeinated by the (no toxic solvents) "Swiss Water" method are simply not as good as the original, caffeinated beans. Something besides the caffeine is lost during the extraction process.
But, I am a coffee snob, so YMMV.
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1-04-2006 @11:28AM neshura said... There are at least four different industrial processes for decaffeinating coffee beans: Swiss Water process, Water Process, CO2, and Ethyl Acetate.
I roast green coffee beans at home, and my choice for decaf is usually a nice deep rich WP Sumatra. I like my coffee strong but I don't like heart palpitations, so it's decaf for me after dinnertime.
Sweet Maria's has a couple of articles on decaffeination processes -- see http://www.sweetmarias.com/health.eco.html for more information about each of the processes.
In my experience, the freshness and bean quality of the coffee is by far the most influential factor on the cup. Everyone I serve coffee to is surprised at how aromatic and rich a cup of modern decaf can be.
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