"decaffeinated" news and stories

Unroasted decaf coffee beans. Photo: Erin Meister

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

I say nuts to baristas who turn their noses up at decaf. As far as I'm concerned, decaf drinkers are the salt of the earth, and I think it's high time they get their due.

Just think of it: There are millions upon millions of regular-coffee guzzlers who'll down 20 ounces of swill just to get a fix, but I see decaf devotees as folks who pursue coffee just for the sheer love of it. It's gotta be love, since the buzz isn't the main draw. Not only that, but poor decaffers are often stuck with the dregs: Stale coffee left sitting in an urn for hours, espresso poorly made by way of utter dismissal and even snide service from pro-caffeinators.

Well call me naive, but I just gotta stick up for the (probably pretty tired) underdog. Though the FDA has long considered caffeine a "safe" substance (though it is, strictly speaking, a kind of drug), try telling that to the folks who toss and turn all night as penance for a 6 p.m. cuppa. (And I can definitely sympathize.) Or worse yet, people who are allergic to the stuff!

But how does the buzz get out of that little bean? Click through to find out.

It looks like a tongue depressor and when it is stirred into a cup of regular coffee, will remove up to 70% of the caffeine in it. It could potentially revolutionize the coffee industry. The DeCaf Co., a startup based in San Francisco, has been able to apply molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) onto the sticks. As the stick is swirled in the cup, it "grabs" the caffeine molecules and when the stick is removed, so too is the caffeine - all with no change in the aroma or flavor of the coffee.

The company hopes to make the sticks available to restaurants and cafes, which would be able to dispense them with drinks or put them out with the other condiments. They also hope to be able to sell them in-stores, so consumers will always have a decaf option wherever they go.

The sticks will aIso work with other caffeinated drinks, such as teas and sodas. If paired with the caffeine litmus strips that we have seen before, those with sensitivities to caffeine wouldn't have to worry about finding caffeine in an unexpected place, since they could simply stir it out of the drink.

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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.

[Photo Sarah Gilbert]

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