Decaf Coffee: The Swiss Water / Mountain Water Methods

Why Decaf Coffee Has a Bad Reputation, and Why It Doesn’t Deserve It

Decaf coffee used to be a drink you ordered apologetically. A consolation prize. Something for people who liked the idea of coffee but not the reality of it. That reputation is changing fast, and it’s largely down to how modern decaf is being made.

Our Decaf Dream has become one of our most popular coffees at Dreambeans, something that surprised us when we first introduced it. But it makes sense. More and more coffee drinkers want the ritual and the flavour of a good cup in the evening without the caffeine keeping them awake. And when decaf is done right, there’s genuinely very little to give up.

The key is in the decaffeination process. Not all decaf is created equal, and the method used to remove the caffeine makes an enormous difference to the flavour in your cup.

Decaf Coffee tastes much better using the water method of decaffeination.

The Three Main Methods of Decaffeinating Coffee

There are three main ways to remove caffeine from coffee beans. Two of them involve chemicals. One doesn’t. Here’s how they compare.

Method 1: Chemical Solvent Decaffeination (What We Avoid)

The oldest and most common industrial decaffeination method uses chemical solvents, typically methylene chloride or ethyl acetate, to strip caffeine from the beans.

The process works like this. Green coffee beans are steamed for around 30 minutes to open their pores, then rinsed repeatedly with the solvent for up to 10 hours. The solvent bonds with the caffeine molecules and carries them away. The beans are then steamed again to evaporate the solvent before drying and roasting.

Methylene chloride is a chlorinated hydrocarbon. It’s also used as a paint stripper and a degreasing agent. The FDA permits its use in food processing at very low residual levels, but it’s not something we want anywhere near our coffee.

Ethyl acetate is sometimes marketed as a “natural” solvent because it occurs in fruit. In practice, the ethyl acetate used in industrial decaffeination is almost always synthetically produced. The word “natural” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Some coffee labelled “naturally decaffeinated” has actually been processed using these solvents, the logic being that the chemicals are removed before the beans are sold. We don’t find this particularly reassuring, and it’s one of the reasons we’re very specific about where our decaf comes from.

We do not ever buy coffee beans that have been decaffeinated using chemical solvents. Full stop.

Method 2: The Swiss Water Method

The Swiss Water Method was developed in Switzerland in the 1930s and refined commercially from the 1980s onwards. It uses no chemicals at all, just water, activated charcoal, and osmosis.

Here’s how it works, step by step:

Step 1 — Soaking. Green (unroasted) coffee beans are soaked in hot water. This causes the caffeine, along with most of the flavour compounds in the beans, to dissolve into the water.

Step 2 — Creating the Green Coffee Extract. The beans from this first soak are discarded. The water, now rich in both caffeine and flavour compounds, is passed through activated charcoal filters. These filters are specifically designed to trap caffeine molecules while allowing the smaller flavour molecules to pass through. What remains is a liquid called Green Coffee Extract (GCE): full of flavour, but now essentially caffeine-free.

Step 3 — Decaffeinating a new batch. Fresh green beans are now soaked in this Green Coffee Extract. Because the GCE is already saturated with flavour compounds, it can’t absorb more of them from the new beans, but it can still absorb caffeine. The caffeine migrates from the beans into the solution, leaving the flavour compounds largely intact inside the bean.

Step 4 — Filtering and repeating. The GCE is passed through the charcoal filters again to remove the newly absorbed caffeine, then returned to the beans. This cycle continues until around 99.9% of the caffeine has been removed.

Step 5 — Drying and roasting. The decaffeinated green beans are dried and then roasted in the normal way. The skill at this stage is exactly the same as with any other coffee, the roast profile determines the final flavour.

The Swiss Water Method is certified organic and is the gold standard for specialty decaf coffee.

Method 3: The Mountain Water Method

The Mountain Water Method works on the same principle as the Swiss Water Method, water and activated charcoal, no chemicals, but it’s carried out by a single company in Mexico called Descamex, using glacial water from the Pico de Orizaba, Mexico’s highest mountain.

The process is identical in its chemistry to the Swiss Water Method. The difference is geographical and operational: the source water is different, and the process is managed by a different certifying body. Both methods produce excellent decaf with no chemical residues.

When you see either “Swiss Water Process” or “Mountain Water Process” on a bag of decaf coffee, you can be confident that no chemical solvents were involved.

Does the Swiss Water Method Affect the Flavour?

This is the question most people ask.

The honest answer is: yes, slightly, but far less than other methods, and far less than most people expect.

All decaffeination processes affect flavour to some degree, simply because removing caffeine means interfering with the bean at a molecular level. Caffeine itself contributes some bitterness to coffee, so removing it actually changes the taste profile in ways that aren’t always negative.

The Swiss Water and Mountain Water Methods preserve flavour far better than chemical decaffeination. The use of Green Coffee Extract in the process means the beans are essentially bathed in their own flavour compounds throughout, the caffeine leaves, but most of what makes coffee taste like coffee stays behind.

The bigger impact on flavour is often the roasting. A well-roasted Swiss Water decaf from quality green beans will taste significantly better than a poorly roasted one, regardless of the decaffeination method. Which is why the sourcing and the roasting still matter just as much for decaf as they do for caffeinated coffee.

The Swiss water method makes the best decaf coffee.

Who Drinks Decaf? And Why It’s Growing in Ireland

The picture of who drinks decaf has changed considerably. It’s no longer just people who’ve been told by a doctor to cut back on caffeine. A growing proportion of decaf drinkers are people who simply want to manage their caffeine intake more deliberately.

Common reasons people in Ireland are switching to (or adding) decaf:

• Drinking coffee in the afternoon or evening without disrupting sleep
• Pregnancy or breastfeeding
• Anxiety or sensitivity to caffeine
• Heart conditions or blood pressure concerns
• Simply preferring a lower overall caffeine intake

Many of our Decaf Dream customers drink regular caffeinated coffee in the morning and switch to Decaf Dream after lunch. It lets them keep the ritual and the flavour without the stimulant effect.

Decaf Dream: Dreambeans’ Swiss Water Decaf

Our Decaf Dream is sourced from quality green coffee and decaffeinated using the Mountain Water Method before arriving with us for roasting. We roast it with the same care and attention as any of our other coffees.

It works well as an espresso and as a filter coffee. The flavour profile is smooth and balanced, it’s not trying to pretend to be something it’s not, but it tastes amazingly good, and that’s what matters.

If you’ve avoided decaf because you assumed it would be disappointing, it’s worth giving a properly made water-process decaf a try.