Drinking coffee without remorse.

“Pheeew, I’ve had too much coffee…” Every now and then you actually hear this in our office – usually in the evening, at the end day of a day filled with long meetings, after the 6th or 7th cup, when once again, those cups had not been filled with our Decaf, the decaffeinated organic Arabica.

Picture of Karsten Suhr

Karsten Suhr

photo: tony tri on unsplash

Why decaffeinated organic coffee? Here's why…

The cause of sweaty palms and the like is not coffee, but caffeine. In the morning, it stimulates the metabolism and gets you going, while in the evening (or in larger quantities) it deprives many people of sleep (see info box). But – and this is the good news: Caffeine has nothing to do with the taste of coffee. In other words, a decaffeinated coffee can (!) taste just as good as one with caffeine. Mind you, “can”.

Decaf should always (!) be an organic coffee. Apart from the fact that organic cultivation has so many positive effects on the environment, only 2 decaffeination processes are permitted for the coffee to be called “organic”: The so-called “Swiss water process” and the CO2 process.

All other decaffeination methods use solvents such as dichloromethane and ethyl acetate. Although coffee that has been decaffeinated with ethyl acetate can be described as “naturally decaffeinated” (ethyl acetate consists of ethanol and acetic acid), we prefer to keep quiet about the taste – chemical, astringent, watery at best.

Incidentally, most decaffeinated coffees do not state the method used to remove the caffeine. This means that only with organic coffees you can be sure that no chemical solvents have been used.

Caffeine, noun

An alkaloid, an essential component of coffee, but also of tea, guarana, and cocoa. Has a stimulating effect, increases the ability to concentrate. An espresso has significantly less caffeine than a comparable amount of filter coffee, which is due to the longer roasting process. Caffeine has a relatively long half-life. It takes around six hours for half of it to be broken down. In other words, if you drink an espresso at 5 pm, you will still have half an espresso in your blood at 11 pm.

Our organic method for decaffeinating.

At Mount Hagen, all decafs are produced using the CO2 process. This means that the unroasted beans swell with warm water and steam and are rinsed with natural, “inert ”* carbon dioxide, which binds the caffeine. This process is repeated several times until the caffeine content is below 0.1%. Carbonic acid (i.e. CO2) occurs in nature as a gas or dissolved in water. It is a component of the air that we breathe in and out. The great thing is that under certain temperature and pressure conditions, it is an ideal extraction agent for caffeine. This decaffeination process is quite complex, but the taste definitely justifies it. Speaking of…

What actually makes coffee taste good?

The most important factors for aromas and flavors are:

  • Growing area/soil conditions
  • Sunlight and rainfall
  • Cultivation method
  • Harvesting method
  • Processing
  • Roasting
  • Preparation.


This applies to all coffees – organic or conventional, decaffeinated or not.

Which one tastes better?

Of course, there are also well-made, delicious coffees from conventional cultivation. But to be honest, I personally don’t like the idea of consuming a product (in large quantities) that has been treated with chemical pesticides, and fertilizers and then decaffeinated with dichloromethane.

“Organic” and “Fair trade” are important aspects that certainly go far beyond pure taste. Would you actually enjoy a coffee if the farmer couldn’t even feed his family from the harvest? Or whose pesticides might make you ill? We couldn’t. But everyone has to decide that for themselves.

Let’s get back to the taste. Whether decaffeinated or not, good coffee is a luxury. It takes a lot of work, time, dedication, care, and even more work to turn such a small bean into such a great, opulent taste. So, your decaf definitely deserves to be appreciated during preparation. Because only then can its aromas fully develop. You can read more about how this works and how you can prepare your decaffeinated organic coffee even more sustainably here:

Conclusion: You can do without caffeine. But definitely not the taste.

Just because you can’t handle caffeine (be it for health reasons or because you are pregnant or very sensitive) doesn’t mean you have to give up enjoying a good cup of coffee. An organic decaf from Mount Hagen, such as the decaffeinated organic Arabica, has been grown, processed, and roasted just as carefully as its caffeinated counterpart. Spicy, nutty, elegant, with a very fine acidity. We bet that you can’t tell the difference between the two. Give it a try.

*inert

In chemistry, the term chemically inert is used to describe a substance that is not chemically reactive. From a thermodynamic perspective, a substance is inert, or nonlabile, if it is thermodynamically unstable (positive standard Gibbs free energy of formation) yet decomposes at a slow, or negligible rate. (Source: Wikipedia)