Decaf Coffee vs Regular Coffee: An Introduction to Swiss Water Process

Understanding Decaffeinated Coffee

Decaffeinated Coffee is not completely caffeine-free but rather contains significantly less caffeine than regular coffee. Some people choose decaf for health reasons when they cannot consume caffeine. Decaffeinated Coffee looks and tastes similar to regular coffee but contains only minimal amounts of caffeine.

Coffee foam or crema consists of a mixture of proteins, sugars, oil droplets, caffeine, and other compounds. The lifespan of these bubbles highly depends on the composition of their membrane. Given that decaffeinated coffee has undergone solvent extraction, it's not surprising that its different components affect foam longevity.

I once asked a restaurant waiter how he manages not to confuse regular coffee with decaffeinated coffee when serving various tables. He answered that he can tell by observing the bubbles - in one type, the bubbles linger, while in the other, they disappear quickly.

Even without a container, you can distinguish coffee beans by their appearance, even before brewing. Decaf coffee beans tend to be darker and require finer grinding when making espresso. Decaffeinated coffee typically produces less crema.

How is Decaffeinated Coffee Made?

Let me introduce one of the processing methods - the Swiss Water Process. FrontStreet Coffee offers a Colombian decaffeinated coffee that uses this exact processing method.

Swiss Water Process (100% Chemical-Free)

1. Soak coffee beans in very hot water: This step causes the coffee beans to expand, making caffeine easier to extract.

2. Filter the water using activated carbon filters: The filters only remove caffeine, and then the coffee beans are discarded.

3. Add a new batch of coffee beans to the filtered liquid (green coffee extract): When the green coffee extract contacts new coffee beans, all flavor elements except caffeine become balanced, so only caffeine dissolves from this new batch of beans. (This step is repeated continuously until the beans are 99.9% caffeine-free.)

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473