Coffee Decaffeination Techniques

Caffeine in coffee is one of the reasons why most people choose not to drink it. Many studies have showed all the harmful effects of caffeine to a person’s health. Although coffee has also been said to have health benefits, the issue with coffee having caffeine will always be a deciding factor for people who wants to drink it.

This problem has been solved with the process of coffee decaffeination. People who are wary with the effects of caffeine in coffee may now freely enjoy their cups of it without the worries about caffeine’s harmful effects to their health attached to it. Other decaffeinated products not only coffee are now available in the market these days such as decaffeinated tea, beverages and a lot more. This allows the consumer to freely choose whether they want to be invigorated by the effects of drink products containing caffeine or have the pleasure of drinking these beverages with caffeine but devoid of its invigorating effects.

People with coping difficulties when it comes to the caffeine content of their coffees can now choose to have theirs decaffeinated. Decaffeinated coffees are devoid of the invigorating effects of the caffeine element, but then it’s not completely scraped off of caffeine. The effects and capabilities of the caffeine are the ones taken out when coffee is decaffeinated not the caffeine itself. The standard percentage of caffeine in coffee beans is around 0.8% to 2.5% but then it’s conditional on the type and the origin of the coffee beans.

The first procedure for coffee decaffeination was invented by Ludwig Roselius in 1905. The decaffeination technique used benzene to eliminate the caffeine from the coffee beans. The first procedure in Roselius’ technique is done by pre-moistening the green coffee beans.

The procedure of decaffeination generally starts with steaming the green unroasted beans. After the steaming process is done, the coffee beans will be rinsed into a solvent containing as much chemical composition of the coffee beans as possible. The solvent must also be devoid of caffeine in a soluble form. This process will be repeated around 8 to 12 times until the procedure has meet the EU standard of having stripped the coffee off of 99.9% of its caffeine contents or the international standard which requires 97% of caffeine to be removed from the coffee beans. Over 400 chemicals are found in coffee beans which are essential to the flavor and aroma of a final coffee drink, leaving no possibilities of having effective means either by chemical reaction or physical process in being able to retain the other essential chemicals at their original state and condition when removing the caffeine content.

Through the years a lot of contemporary decaffeination methods have been invented and created which has led to much milder and much more natural way of coffee decaffeination. Removing the caffeine from still raw green coffee beans is common t to varieties of decaffeination techniques. Water-carbon and dichloromethane decaffeination techniques are two of the most widely employed methods that removes the caffeine from coffee beans by using a caffeine-specific solvent. These contemporary techniques have little effects to the coffees flavor and aromatic characteristics. Nevertheless, distinguishing highly-decaffeinated coffees from coffees that contain caffeine is now much harder to do with the development of contemporary decaffeination.