Did you know about 75% of decaf coffee on the market uses harsh chemicals to remove the caffeine. Why? Because it is the cheapest method.
Surprisingly, it isn’t required to list how a coffee was decaffeinated on the label. At Savorista, we want you to know which decaffeination method was used in our coffees (spoiler alert, only the ones that use natural ingredients) so we label it clearly on every bag.
Most coffee is decaffeinated with harsh chemicals, including methylene chloride which has been banned by the EPA for use in paint thinners.
The Clean Label Project recently tested some of the most popular mainstream decaf coffees for methylene chloride, and found levels that were higher than they expected in many coffee brands, but still under the FDA limit.
But, even if the FDA approves, we just didn’t want to add more chemicals (even at tiny amounts) to our bodies. There are so many chemicals that are almost impossible to avoid, so when we can, we prefer to choose natural ingredients for ourselves. And we thought you'd appreciate that, too.
At Savorista, we only use decaffeination methods that use natural ingredients: the Swiss Water Process or the Sugarcane EA process.
The Swiss Water Process
The Swiss Water Process uses diffusion (a process similar to osmosis) to remove the caffeine.
Remember the idea that if you slept with a textbook under your pillow, knowledge would flow from where there is a lot (the textbook) to where there is less (your brain)?
At Swiss Water, diffusion is used to relocate caffeine from where there is a lot of it (in the bean) to where there is less of it (the water it soaks in).
Learn more about how The Swiss Water Process works
The Sugarcane EA Process
In Colombia, sugarcane molasses is fermented to produce EA (ethyl acetate), which is commonly found in wine, fruits and in bananas too. The beans are steamed and moistened before being bathed in a natural EA bath which captures the caffeine from the bean.
Learn more about the Sugarcane EA Process