Decaffeinated Timor hit the shelves today. My first attempt at this turned out to taste a little too dark, but the roast profile used for what we are selling results in a coffee that tastes almost identical to our regular Timor Maubesse. A difference of three degrees on the end temperature and a few seconds further into the second crack makes a really big difference with this coffee.
This coffee is another confirmation of my opinion that with the current generation of decaffeination processes, the most important factor in the quality of a decaffeinated coffee is the quality of the green coffee going into the process.
That decaffeinated coffee can taste every bit as good as regular coffee may come as a surprise to some who have had regular and decaffeinated coffees at other places and found the decaf lacking. There are a number of reasons why some places may offer an inadequate decaf. These are cost, care, and understanding.
Decaffeinating coffee is not a cheap process, particularly in those processes where the decaffeination plant cannot recover the caffeine to sell to pharmaceutical companies. If a roaster attempts to sell decaffeinated coffee at the same price as a regular coffee, the decaf is likely to be of lower quality. If a cheaper coffee is used for decaf, it should come as no surprise that it does not taste as good. Even if it were not decaffeinated, it would not taste as good. There are people who accept this, either because they have never had good coffee to begin with or they simply assume that decaffeinated coffee cannot possibly taste as good as regular.
The view that decaffeinated coffee cannot taste as good as regular, unfortunately, does not only exist in consumers of roasted coffee beans. There are roasters who, upon failing to roast decaffeinated coffee correctly, claim that the coffee cannot taste as good because it has been decaffeinated. This is ultimately a lack of care, either to source good decaffeinated coffees or to take the time to properly roast the coffee. In some cases, this can be traced to the culture of the roastery in question. A roastery that only produces dark roasts, for example, is very likely to be wreckless with decafs.
Decaffeinated coffees do not behave the same in a coffee roaster as regular coffees. This is to be expected as decaffeination is all about changing the properties of the coffee bean. If a decaffeinated coffee is roasted in exactly the same way as a non-decaffeinated counterpart, the decaf will often not be as good as the regular. Just as it takes practice, experience, and lots of cupping to learn how to roast a spicey Indonesian or pull the chocolate and nut notes out of a Brazil, decaffeinated coffee requires a slightly different roasting methodology learned with hard work and experience.
There will be a coffee tasting on Sunday, July 11. I intend to sneak some decaf into that. Those who are still skeptical, are welcome to stop by and try to identify the decaf.