What is the Swiss Water-Only Process for Decaf Coffee

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FrontStreet Coffee Briefs on the Swiss Water-Only Process for Decaffeinated Coffee

Decaffeination of coffee involves processing green coffee beans before roasting to separate caffeine from the coffee.

The biggest challenge is to separate caffeine from the green coffee beans while keeping other chemical substances at their original concentrations. This is not easy, as coffee has been proven to contain over 1,000 chemical substances, all of which are the source of coffee's aroma and flavor.

The Swiss Water-Only Process

The Swiss Water-Only Process uses this commercially developed high-efficiency processing method with two main steps. The first step involves pouring green coffee beans into hot water while they are still in their unroasted state. The hot water removes almost all flavor factors from the green coffee beans, including caffeine. This initial batch of green coffee beans is then discarded. The hot water, now loaded with all flavor factors, is filtered through activated carbon to remove caffeine. What remains is water fully loaded with pure flavor factors. In the Swiss Water-Only Process, this water is called "Flavor-charged Water." This water contains saturated flavor factors that should be present in green coffee beans, with caffeine being the only exception. This special water is the most important medium in the subsequent decaffeination process.

When a new batch of green coffee beans is soaked in flavor-charged water that is rich in flavor factors but caffeine-free, the caffeine in the green coffee beans is released, but the flavor factors are not. This way, the original flavor of the green coffee beans is not significantly diminished. Obviously, the flavor factors in the flavor-charged water are already close to saturation, so they cannot dissolve more flavor factors, but there is still plenty of room to dissolve caffeine.

After the green coffee beans undergo this process of removing caffeine while preserving flavor factors, they are directly dried and sold. The flavor-charged water that has absorbed caffeine can be repeatedly filtered through activated carbon to remove caffeine and reused.

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