Decaf Amaretto Almond
Frequently Asked Questions
Short version: Instead of adding chemicals to remove the caffeine from coffee beans, the Swiss Water Process decaffeinates coffee beans using only water!
In order to turn naturally caffeine-rich coffee beans into decaf beans, the beans need to undergo a decaffeination process. Multiple methods of coffee bean decaffeination exist, most of them using some form of chemical additive to strip the coffee molecules from the bean. The Swiss Water Process, however, a patented method for coffee decaffeination, uses water to do the same thing.
Swiss Water, a processing plant in B.C., uses very hot water to soak green coffee beans until the caffeine and the other water-soluble components of the coffee beans (such as components that contribute to flavour, among others) infuse the water. This water, referred to as Green Coffee Extract or GCE, is then decaffeinated. (Because caffeine molecules are larger than the molecules of other important components, this happens as part of a simple filtration process.)
At this point, new green coffee beans (still full of caffeine) are soaked and heated in the decaffeinated GCE. As you may remember from science class, when two solutions are separated by a permeable divider, they naturally seek equilibrium. Since, in this case, the solutions are largely identical except for the amount of caffeine molecules, the caffeine molecules naturally travel from the green coffee beans into the GCE. Once they meet an equilibrium, the GCE is removed, filtered to remove the caffeine molecules, and reused to further decaffeinate the green coffee beans. This process is continued, for hours, until a sufficient amount of caffeine is removed from the beans.
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