(Bloomberg) -- On a trip to Colombia last year, Weihong Zhang was given a “mysterious bag of coffee” by his friend Francesco Sanapo, a three-time Italian Barista Champion. This was not quite assuspect as it might sound: Weihong is the owner of BlendIn Coffee Club, a roastery with a pair of cafes in Houston. Mysterious bags of coffee are kind of his thing.
With itsnotes of eucalyptus and strawberry, Weihongassumed the bag containedexpensive beans like anaerobically fermented Geishas or Sidras. But Sanapo revealed something much more rare for a coffee of this quality: It was caffeine-free.
“It completely opened my eyes to decaf,” Weihongrecalls. Hedecided to use the beans, a basic typica variety from Finca Los Nogales in Colombia, in his upcoming appearance in Rancho Cucamonga at the US Brewers’ Cup, a competition that“highlights the craft of filter coffee brewing by hand.”
He won. It was the first time inthe competition’s 20-year history that a decaf coffee had taken the title.
Such an unlikelyvictory isn’t quite the same aswinning the Tour de France on a unicycle. But a comparison to theso-called Judgment of Paris in 1976, in which California wines prevailed in a blind tasting against established French vintages, isn’t so far off. The event upended perceptions of American wines and ushered in a new era of global wine production.
As Sergei Kutrovski, who with his brother Mark runs Mirror Coffee Roasters in Bellingham, Washington, put it on their podcast analyzing the ramifications of this victory:“I feel bad for people who tattooed ‘Death Before Decaf’ with,like, the grim reaper.”
Changing Perceptions
Decaf has long been the subject of derision and jokes within the coffee industry and out. But it has quietly continued to grow in both quality and popularity. Skyquest Technology predicts that the decaf market will grow, from $19.5 billion in 2022 to $28.86 billionby the end of the decade.
In 2022, Erin Reed, the director of marketing for Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee,told coffee industry publication New Ground that “decaf growth has largely been outpacing regular [coffee] growth over the past five years.”
In an email, Reed confirmed that “this growth trend still holds. And is even stronger within the specialty segment,” referring to artisanalroasted, higher-quality coffee than typical grocery store fare.
Sales of Blue Bottle Coffee’s Night Light Decaf blend put it in the“top five blends in both our cafes and online,” according to Matthew Longwell, the brand’s global director ofcoffee and beverage.
Withalcohol-free co*cktails and meat-free hamburgers all the rage, decaf doesn’t seem such a strange proposition, says Adam Paronto, a founder of Chicago’s Reprise Coffee Roasters.
“People want their drugs without their drugs,” he says. “I hear this phrase all the time, and it’slike:People want their rituals, but they don’t want it to mess them upwhere they can’t function normally, whether that be their job, or sociallyor whatever.”
Renewed and Re-brewed
New techniques in caffeine removal have played a key role.
The process dates back to the early 20th century in Bremen, Germany, whenLudwig Roselius noticed that coffee beans accidentally soaked in seawater had lost most of their caffeine content while losing little flavor. In 1906, he patented a process that involved steaming coffee beans to open their pores. Then he switched to using benzene (now known to be a carcinogen) as a solvent to remove the caffeineand established Kaffee HAG (Kaffee-Handels-Aktiengesellschaft) to sell his decaffeinated coffee.
Other solvents, such asmethylene chloride—also a carcinogen—eventually replaced benzeneand became integral to what became known as the European Method of decaffeination.
Organizations such as the Clean Label Project recently petitioned the California Assembly and the US Food and Drug Administrationto prohibit use of the substance, which has already been banned by the EPA in products like paint strippers.The National Coffee Association has pushed back, arguing that all of the samples tested by the Clean Label Project were withinthe FDA’slevel of concern.
A process for removing caffeine from coffee without the use of chemicals was developed in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, in the 1930s. Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Inc. has refined that method into a proprietary process in which green coffee is immersed in green coffee extract, during which 99.9% of the caffeine is released and filtered out. (In the US, removal of 97% of the caffeine is enough for a coffee to qualify as decaffeinated; in the European Union, 99.9% must be removed.)
While it is generally considered to preserve the taste of coffee better than other methods, the methodis relatively expensive. It adds$1 to $2per poundto the cost of the green coffee, saysParonto—not to mention travel and time to the process, becausedecaffeination takes place at Swiss Water’s facility in Delta, British Columbia.
In recent years, another process using ethyl acetate has been gaining popularity. The chemical can be used in a synthetic formor derived naturally in what is often called the “sugarcane method.” In either case, the beans are steamed to open their pores andthen soaked in a solution containing ethyl acetate, which bonds to caffeine molecules before being flushed.
Thecoffee Weihong used was decaffeinated viaa modified version in whichthe pulp, or mucilage, of the coffee berry is added to the fermented sugarcane solution. “It’s a groundbreaking way to do the decaffeination,” he says, because “it not only doesn’t take out any flavors, it imparts nuanced complexity into the cup.”
On Friday,Weihong will try his hand in the World Coffee Championships at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Chicago. Whatever the outcome, things are changing quickly. He thought he had a six-month supply of Los Nogales decaf, but it sold out within a week of his victory at the US BrewersCup. The next batch,a Castillo variety, isslated to arrive at the end of the month.
Where to Get a Decaffeinated Fix
While Blue Bottle Coffee’s Swiss Water Process-treated Night Light Decaf is always available, the dawn of cold brew season has us looking to a more sporadic offering: Decaf New Orleans-style coffee and chicory. Traditionally served as a sweet, milky antidote to the Crescent City’s heat and humidity, this decaf version is suitable for even late afternoon coffee breaks. $21 for 12 oz
Rather than just the typical decaf and half-caf, Chicago’s Reprise Roasters makes the cuts in itsUncaf line where you’d least expect them. Along with Zero,a 99.99% caffeine-free Swiss Water Process-treated blend of beans from Central America and Africa, it offers the Micro Dose, with 10% caffeine, and Light Buzz, with 25%. $16.49 for 12 oz
Dare to challenge two stereotypes in one cup? Perc Coffee of Savannah, Georgia, offers decaffeinatedHuila, a Colombian coffee that’s also …instant. $12 for a pack of five
If neither caffeine nor brewing appeals, Explorer’s 32-oz, 20-serving bottles of cold brew concentrate offera just-add-water solution. Daydreamer is a 99.9% caffeine-free Swiss Water Process decaf brew;Seeker is thehalf-caffeine option. Do not, under any circ*mstance, confuse themwithMaverick, which speeds in the opposite direction—meaningtwice the caffeine. $45 for a 32-oz bottle
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