Caffeine-free coffee

[Simpo Two]

Is there such a thing? Apparently 'decaff' still has some caffeine in it.

If anyone knows of a 0% caffeine coffee that's any good please let me know

[Gary29]

It never tastes the same in my experience (my mum forces it on me whenever I visit), so the question is why wouldn't you find something else to drink that you like the taste of rather than trying to extract the 'active' ingredient in coffee and ruining the taste?

[devnull]

Gary29 said:

It never tastes the same in my experience (my mum forces it on me whenever I visit), so the question is why wouldn't you find something else to drink that you like the taste of rather than trying to extract the 'active' ingredient in coffee and ruining the taste?

Sometimes you just want a hot drink at night.

Problem is, none of the decaf options actually tell you how much is in it, you can only see how it affects you by just having some.

[Simpo Two]

Gary29 said:

It never tastes the same in my experience (my mum forces it on me whenever I visit), so the question is why wouldn't you find something else to drink that you like the taste of rather than trying to extract the 'active' ingredient in coffee and ruining the taste?

Well because sometimes, like at breakfast and maybe lunch, I like coffee to wash the food down. I'm not a coffee expert; we're talking instant here and if the taste is 5% down I can live with that.

Tea has the same problem of course, though I hear Twinings decaff Earl Grey is good.

[Muzzer79]

Out of interest, why does it have to be 100% caffeine free?

I've been decaff for a few years now and it's the best thing I did - seemingly being one of the most caffeine-sensitive people on the planet

[Gary29]

I often have a cup of hot water straight out of the kettle, people think I'm strange (for a fair number of other reasons too!) but it's actually quite enjoyable, and 100% zero caffeine if you're hyper sensitive to the stuff.

[Simpo Two]

Muzzer79 said:

Out of interest, why does it have to be 100% caffeine free?

I've been decaff for a few years now and it's the best thing I did - seemingly being one of the most caffeine-sensitive people on the planet

Doctor's advice, for the time being at least.

I think a cup of hot water might lack a bit in the flavour department...

[RammyMP]

I can’t drink decaf coffee after about 3 o’clock as it keeps me awake, I’m proper sensitive to caffeine also.

I wrote to Nescafé once complaining that their decaf isn’t 100% decaf, they wrote back telling me I was right and gave me a voucher for a free jar of coffee.

[bunchofkeys]

If it's a hot drink you're wanting, how about a fruit tea?
Different "fusions" of blackcurrant and strawberry, etc.
I doubt that they would have any caffeine, although i've not checked.

[Fishlegs]

Lavazza Dek beans are good everyday beans. We mix them with normal beans to about 1/3 caffeinated to 2/3 decaf. So a few cups in the morning over a couple of hours is about the same total dose of caffeine as we used to drink, but we found we don't get the unpleasant jitters from having all our caffeine in one hit.

We plan to make the mix weaker over time until we're completely weaned, but to be honest, the unpleasant effects we wanted to cut out have already gone at 1/3 strength, so we've sort of forgotten the overall goal of cutting it out completely. It's quite a nice balance I think.

[Simpo Two]

C4ME said:

Try ditching anything coffee flavoured completely and try one of the many fruit teas.

bunchofkeys said:

If it's a hot drink you're wanting, how about a fruit tea?

That's not an avenue I'd thought of, probably because I know tea (as in leaf tea) has just as much caffeine as coffee - but I guess fruit tea not so.

OK so now I have to find a fruit tea I like - thanks for the idea

[RammyMP]

Fishlegs said:

Lavazza Dek beans are good everyday beans. We mix them with normal beans to about 1/3 caffeinated to 2/3 decaf. So a few cups in the morning over a couple of hours is about the same total dose of caffeine as we used to drink, but we found we don't get the unpleasant jitters from having all our caffeine in one hit.

We plan to make the mix weaker over time until we're completely weaned, but to be honest, the unpleasant effects we wanted to cut out have already gone at 1/3 strength, so we've sort of forgotten the overall goal of cutting it out completely. It's quite a nice balance I think.

I do that too, the Lavazza decaf beans are ok.

I tried cutting out caffeine completely a few years ago, I gave up, after 2 days of generally feeling like crap with ‘flu like symptoms’, headaches, etc I gave up, had a cup of coffee and within minutes felt fine again. No will power!

[Simpo Two]

Well I'm now the proud owner - after some complete guesswork in the shop - of some Twinings 'Rooibos & Honey with essence of Spiced Fig' tea. I have no idea what a Rooibos is, some sort of springbok most likely. It's a pity you can't smell the tea before you buy; this one smells of Bactrian camel dipped in treacle. But it is caffeine-free, as all good camels should be.

[sgtBerbatov]

Decaf coffee produced using the Swiss Water Process is 99.9% caffine free. So if the 0.1% of caffine is alright, you should go for this.

The Nestle Azera Americano Decaf coffee uses this method, and it tastes nice. Far better than Kenco.

But obviously if you have a few quid you'll probably find a more expensive version using this method if you're not in to common brands.

[Simpo Two]

sgtBerbatov said:

Decaf coffee produced using the Swiss Water Process is 99.9% caffine free. So if the 0.1% of caffine is alright, you should go for this.

The Nestle Azera Americano Decaf coffee uses this method, and it tastes nice. Far better than Kenco

Well as a matter of fact that's what I bought at the outset, as I usually have the normal version. It says 'decaffeinated with pure water', but as I'm not up to speed on the various caffeine-removal technologies I had no idea if that was good or not.

'99.9% caffeine free' is a bit vague. Does it mean that 0.1% of the whole pack is caffeine, or do they mean that 99.9% of the original caffeine has been removed? The latter would obviously be very much lower.

[sgtBerbatov]

Simpo Two said:

sgtBerbatov said:

Decaf coffee produced using the Swiss Water Process is 99.9% caffine free. So if the 0.1% of caffine is alright, you should go for this.

The Nestle Azera Americano Decaf coffee uses this method, and it tastes nice. Far better than Kenco

Well as a matter of fact that's what I bought at the outset, as I usually have the normal version. It says 'decaffeinated with pure water', but as I'm not up to speed on the various caffeine-removal technologies I had no idea if that was good or not.

'99.9% caffeine free' is a bit vague. Does it mean that 0.1% of the whole pack is caffeine, or do they mean that 99.9% of the original caffeine has been removed? The latter would obviously be very much lower.

Haven't found that out myself to be honest. I'd imagine it's 99.9% of whatever coffee beans are put in to the process.

The usual, bog standard way, involves the use of a chemical which if you drank it would poison you. It's nasty stuff, and the remnants of it can be in the coffee you drink. Hence why some people are sensitive to this decaf type of coffee, which causes all sorts of issues like head aches through to heart palpitations.

[elanfan]

About 30+ years ago I went to the doctors complaint of heart palpitations at night. He told me to give up coffee which was hard as it was just about all I drank. Later I found same with Oepsi and Coke and gave them up too. Probably 10 years ago I started trying the various brands of decaff coffee, I didn’t react to it but couldn’t find one I actually liked the taste of. Eventually tried a jar of Douwe Egberte Decaff and found ‘my’ taste. It’s a medium blend and imho very tasty. Just went and looked at a jar and it doesn’t say what percentage decaff it is. Worth a try??

[Elderly]

sgtBerbatov said:

The usual, bog standard way, involves the use of a chemical which if you drank it would poison you. It's nasty stuff, and the remnants of it can be in the coffee you drink. Hence why some people are sensitive to this decaf type of coffee, which causes all sorts of issues like head aches through to heart palpitations.

Does it still? https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions...

I remember when 'healthy decaff first became popular, the caffeine was removed using trichloroethylene !

[Simpo Two]

elanfan said:

Eventually tried a jar of Douwe Egberte Decaff and found ‘my’ taste. It’s a medium blend and imho very tasty. Just went and looked at a jar and it doesn’t say what percentage decaff it is. Worth a try??

Noted, thanks

Will try Bactrian camel tea tomorrow...

[sgtBerbatov]

Elderly said:

sgtBerbatov said:

The usual, bog standard way, involves the use of a chemical which if you drank it would poison you. It's nasty stuff, and the remnants of it can be in the coffee you drink. Hence why some people are sensitive to this decaf type of coffee, which causes all sorts of issues like head aches through to heart palpitations.

Does it still? https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions...

I remember when 'healthy decaff first became popular, the caffeine was removed using trichloroethylene !

Yeah, Food Unwrapped did a thing on it and the (bloody lovely) Kate went to investigate it and the expert had the chemical - may have been trichloroethylene - and he said they still used the chemicals to do it.