Why drink decaffeinated coffee?
For years, decaffeinated coffees have been seen as something you need to offer to your customers. Often the coffee is aged, the flavour is vinegary, flat, and lacking complexity. Now there are companies offering alternative decaf methods which are chemical free and leave you with all the positive notes of specialty coffee. We have chosen to use a coffee that has been decaffeinated by using the sugar cane ethyl acetate process which tends to highlight the flavour attributes that are found naturally in coffee.
But why offer decaf? Well as this is a student-led project, where many of our customers are students themselves, we want to be able to ensure that caffeine is regulated and that students are drinking coffee responsibly.
The other benefit of buying the sugar cane process from Colombia, is that the process takes place in Colombia. This means that the coffee is grown, picked and processed in the same origin. With most other decaf methods, the coffee is shipped to a non-origin country, such as Germany, then shipped to a decaf facility, then shipped to the roaster. Environmentally, this has a consequence on the environment, with more transportation costs and air miles, and as a school we want to support projects where we can reduce our impacts.
In many coffee-origin countries, there is an abundance of sugar cane, so it’s logical to use this as an option to decaf in-country, it makes economic sense. When sugar cane is processed, one of the by-products is molasses, and it is this part of the process that is used to start the process.
Molasses are fermented to create ethanol (alcohol). This is then mixed with acetic acid (vinegar) to produce ethyl acetate and this is the solvent used to remove the caffeine from the bean. Ethyl acetate is found in many things such as fruit and vegetables, wine and beer!
Once the green coffee beans have been sorted and processed, the decaffeination journey begins. Firstly, the beans are gently steamed for around 30 minutes to open up the pores of the coffee itself, it’s the preparation stage. Then the beans are placed in a mixture of ethyl acetate and water, which removes the caffeine from the bean. The caffeine is then sold on to soft drink companies and pharmaceutical companies to be used, so it’s not wasted!
The beans are then washed with water to ensure none of the solvent residues is left, which could of course affect flavour, and then gently dried to a moisture content of between 10-12% which is the industry standard.
We hope you enjoy the roasted beans and join us in trying to change the image of decaffeinated coffee.
Author - Andy