Featured Coffee Fridays: Decaf Dark

We’re extra excited for the featured coffee for the next two weeks! Have you ever tried decaf coffee from a restaurant? Or the all too familiar instant decaf coffee? Not so great tasting … is it? This is where we CHANGED THE GAME. If you think decaf coffee is flavorless yuck that you have to deal with because you’re cutting caffeine, think again! Don’t trust us? Try for yourself — we’ll have an airpot with samples for you to try today and next Friday, and 6oz bags are $1 off (limit 2).

This coffee is from Brazil and features nuttiness, lemon-like acidity and a heavy body. The punch of flavor will surprise you that it is a decaf.

This coffee is decaffeinated via the Mountain Water Process (MWP). In order to remove the caffeine in this process, green coffee is soaked in a water solution, which removes both the caffeine as well as other solubles in the coffee (flavor compounds, for instance). The water is removed from the coffee and run through a special filter that captures caffeine molecules and allows them to be strained from the solution. The solution — now containing flavor compounds but no caffeine — is then reintroduced to the green coffee, which reabsorb the soluble materials. The coffee is then dried once more and prepared for export.

Other ways of decaffeinating coffee remove the caffeine along with flavor compounds via chemicals, without ever reintroducing the flavor compounds. Which leaves you with coffee that doesn’t taste so much like coffee anymore. We don’t think you should sacrifice flavor just because you don’t want the caffeine.