People will never get tired of coffee. This can be confidently stated because from the time it was discovered as a beverage (supposedly at the middle of the fifteenth century), it had never waned to attract more believers. Because of coffee’s strong appeal to the public and the ever-growing technology, more and more ways of serving and drinking coffee came to be known. One of the most innovative ways of producing coffee is by serving it without the caffeine (decaf coffee). But how are decaf coffee beans really produced?

By taking out the caffeine from coffee, the beverage can be considered as “healthier.” This is said because whenever a person drinks too much caffeine, he or she can suffer from different health problems. Some of these caffeine-related health problems are trouble in sleeping, irregular palpitation of the heart, dizziness, and even troubles in breathing. In order to produce decaf coffee beans, a solvent is usually used, preferably dichloromethane or ethyl acetate as these are both organic and will not cause any harm. There are two methods to produce decaf coffee beans that make use of these solvents: the direct and indirect methods.

The direct method of making decaf coffee was named as such because the process requires physical contact between the solvent and the coffee beans themselves. The process is started by opening up the pores of the coffee beans by steaming them for thirty minutes. This part of the method is significant because this will make the extraction of the caffeine a lot easier. After the beans are steamed, they would be introduced to the solvent as they will be soaked upon it. Soaking the beans upon the solvent would be done for twelve hours to make sure that the caffeine is removed thoroughly. After the said time, the beans will be steamed again in order to remove the solvent residue still present on the beans.

The indirect method is akin to the direct method to a certain degree because it uses the same solvent to take out the caffeine. The difference comes from the fact that the indirect method does not require the beans to come in contact with the solvent. In order for this to be feasible, the coffee beans are soaked under very hot water to extract the nutrients present in coffee which of course include caffeine. This new liquid solution is then introduced to dichloromethane or ethyl acetate so that caffeine can be taken out.