Frequently Asked Questions

Decaf still retains a small amount of caffeine, depending on how it was decaffeinated, but typically about 10% of the original amount.

Simply put, it just comes down to the amount of time we are able to dedicate to decaf and low-caffeine coffee. Making specialty coffee is a time-consuming process. For every green coffee that a roaster decides to buy, dozens have been sample roasted, evaluated and rejected. The roaster then needs to find that coffee's sweet spot by trialing a variety of roast profiles. Traditional coffee roasters simply don't have the bandwidth to do this for decaf and lower-caffeine options. At Do, the majority of our day is spent sourcing, sampling and roasting decaf and lower caffeine coffees.

To brew better tasting decaf, we need to start by understanding two things:

1. Decaf contains slightly less soluble material than caffeinated coffee.

2. Decaf extracts faster than regular coffee.

What does this mean for the home barista? First. we suggest increasing the ratio of coffee to water - i.e. increasing the amount of coffee or decreasing the amount of water, or a combination of both. On a home espresso machine for example, instead of 20 grams of ground coffee yielding a 40 gram shot of espresso, we might pull a 30 gram shot.

Secondly we recommend a shorter contact time when making coffee. For espresso for example, where you might normally pull a 30 second shot, aim for somewhere in the 24-27 second range.

The Sugarcane decaf process uses a natural component derived from fermented sugarcane that is also found in certain fruits (especially when they are very ripe) called ethyl acetate. The process begins when milled green coffee is placed in tanks and steamed to remove the silver skin. The tanks are then filled with hot water to soften and open up the seeds’ cell membranes, ‘loosening’ their caffeine compounds. An ethyl acetate solution is then introduced to the coffee and cycled through several times, with increasingly more caffeine bonding to the chemical compound the longer it is exposed. The goal is to remove as much as 99.9% of the beans’ caffeine. Once they have achieved this target, the coffee seeds are gently dehydrated in vacuum dryers, until the desired moisture content of 11% is reached. This process has a major benefit: the coffee’s cell structure is only marginally compromised and sugar is retained, meaning beans remain dense and roast similarly to their non-decaffeinated counterparts.

TLDR: Yes.
Ethyl acetate (EA) is a natural compound derived from fermented sugarcane that is also found in certain fruits (including coffee cherries). A ripe banana, for example, contains 20 times more EA than decaffeinated green coffee. This is due to EA having a boiling point of 70℃, so when the beans are steamed after decaffeination to remove the EA, only negligible amounts remain.

The effect of decaffeination on the flavour varies dramatically depending on many factors, including how it processed by the producer, freshness, and the method of decaffeination.

With care and attention, the impact of decaffeination can be minimised. When we evaluate whether we are going to buy a green coffee, we are looking for a coffee that tastes clean and has the potential to be developed in such a way that it the effect of decaffeination is almost imperceptible.

Low-caffeine coffee refers to coffee that is either a varietal that is naturally lower in caffeine, such as Laurina or Eugenioides, or a coffee blend designed to have less caffeine, e.g. a blend of decaf and fully caffeinated coffee to produce a coffee that has approximately half the caffeine content.

Yes, we do. Here at Do HQ, we drink caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee - they both have a time and a place in our coffee drinking routine. We always have one or two fully caffeinated options.