Columbia supremo Swiss Water treatment process and principle of low-caffeine Coffee

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Swiss Water treatment Act (The Swiss Water or Water-Only Process): the use of commercially developed and efficient treatment methods, there are two major steps. The first step is to pour the raw coffee beans into hot water, which will remove all the flavor factors in the raw coffee beans, including caffeine, and discard the original batch of raw coffee beans. After that, the hot water loaded with all the flavor factors is filtered out by an activated carbon filter, and the rest is hot water full of pure flavor factors, which is called "flavor filled water (Flavor-charged Water)" in Swiss water treatment. This water contains saturated coffee bean flavor factors, but lacks caffeine, followed by the most important medium in the decaffeination process.

A new batch of raw coffee beans soaked in water full of flavor factors and non-caffeine will release caffeine in raw coffee beans, but will not release flavor factors. In this way, the original flavor of raw coffee beans will not be much impaired. Obviously, the flavor factor in the flavor-loaded water is already close to saturation, so it can no longer dissolve more flavor factors, but there is still a lot of room to dissolve caffeine.

The treatment of low caffeine can be divided into three kinds: 1. Solvent extraction 2. Swiss Water treatment method 3. Carbon dioxide high pressure extraction.

Solvent extraction method

The coffee beans are softened first, then the bean surface is expanded by high-temperature and high-pressure steam heating to increase the contact area, and then the dichloromethane solvent is poured into the bean to contact with the solvent to extract caffeine. However, dichloromethane is a suspected carcinogen and harmful to the environment, and dichloromethane is currently banned from food processing in Taiwan.

Swiss water treatment method

After the coffee beans are soaked in warm water, after caffeine and other ingredients are dissolved in the water, the caffeine in the essence is filtered with activated carbon, and then the non-caffeinated essence is introduced into the previous coffee beans, allowing the beans to reabsorb the lost ingredients.

Carbon dioxide high pressure extraction

When roasting coffee beans, there is a large amount of carbon dioxide (CO2). At this time, the carbon dioxide is treated under high pressure to become liquid, and then poured into the processed coffee beans to remove caffeine, and then the pressure is released to convert the carbon dioxide into gas volatilization. This way of removing caffeine can retain more of the original flavor of coffee beans, but it requires a special high-pressure environment and requires a large amount of investment in equipment, which is rare in Taiwan.

Taste analysis: roasted hazelnuts, nuts, spiced rice, chocolate, caramel sweetness, soft acidity, body smooth