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| - Acting on an idea from the poet Johann von Goethe, in 1820 Friedrich Ferdinand Runge first isolated caffeine as the cause of insomnia in coffee drinkers. Initial attempts at decaffeinating coffee involved applying solvents to already roasted coffee beans. While it was easier to remove the caffeine from a roasted bean (the solvents did not adequately penetrate unroasted beans), the flavor and aroma were also adversely affected. In subsequent efforts, green coffee beans were broken or ground so that the solvents could better extract the caffeine. However, pre-ground coffee proved too difficult to roast adequately.
- Decaffeination is the act of removing caffeine from coffee beans, mate, cocoa, tea leaves and other caffeine-containing materials. (While caffeine-free soft drinks are occasionally referred to as "decaffeinated", some are better termed "uncaffeinated": prepared via simply omitting caffeine from production.) Despite removing the caffeine, many decaffeinated drinks still have around 1-2% caffeine in them.
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| abstract
| - Decaffeination is the act of removing caffeine from coffee beans, mate, cocoa, tea leaves and other caffeine-containing materials. (While caffeine-free soft drinks are occasionally referred to as "decaffeinated", some are better termed "uncaffeinated": prepared via simply omitting caffeine from production.) Despite removing the caffeine, many decaffeinated drinks still have around 1-2% caffeine in them. In the case of coffee, various methods can be used. The process is usually performed on unroasted (green) beans, and starts with steaming of the beans. They are then rinsed with a solvent that contains as much of the chemical composition of coffee as possible without also containing the caffeine in a soluble form. The process is repeated anywhere from 8 to 12 times until it meets either the international standard of having removed 97% of the caffeine in the beans or the EU standard of having the beans 99.9% caffeine-free by mass. Coffee contains over 400 chemicals important to the taste and aroma of the final drink; it is, therefore, challenging to remove only caffeine while leaving the other chemicals at their original concentrations. Coffea arabica normally contains about half the caffeine of Coffea robusta. A Coffea arabica bean containing little caffeine was discovered in Ethiopia in 2004.
- Acting on an idea from the poet Johann von Goethe, in 1820 Friedrich Ferdinand Runge first isolated caffeine as the cause of insomnia in coffee drinkers. Initial attempts at decaffeinating coffee involved applying solvents to already roasted coffee beans. While it was easier to remove the caffeine from a roasted bean (the solvents did not adequately penetrate unroasted beans), the flavor and aroma were also adversely affected. In subsequent efforts, green coffee beans were broken or ground so that the solvents could better extract the caffeine. However, pre-ground coffee proved too difficult to roast adequately. In 1906, Ludwig Roselius developed a commercially viable method of extraction. He accidentally discovered that by steaming unroasted coffee beans so that they would expand, he could then extract much of the caffeine by applying benzene. Roselius would patent this method in 1908 and go on to found the brand of decaffeinated coffee that would eventually become Sanka, now a sub-brand of Kraft General Foods's Maxwell House brand. In the United States, the Merck pharmaceutical company would soon sell his coffee as Dekafa. As the health effects of benzene became better known, other solvents replaced benzene in the decaffeination process. One of these was methylene chloride, which, though it too has adverse health effects, continues to be used in the KVW decaffeination method.
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