Do you drink decaf coffee? It's really a necessary evil in the evenings and for those of us trying to watch our caffeine.
The process of decaffeinating creates imbalances of taste and sometimes flattens out the flavor of the beans. When buying decaf we strictly avoid any bulk or ground coffees and purchase directly from a local roaster.
We had a decaf coffee the other day from that local roaster. It was an otherwise excellent Indonesian single-origin coffee. It was rich and full but it had an unpleasant sourness that we don't usually associate with that region. When we mentioned this the roaster gave us a good tip on choosing decaf coffee.
It all has to do with those coffee regions we've been talking about. Each of those regions - Africa, Latin America, and Indonesia/Pacific - have their own unique taste characteristics.
These flavor profiles are each affected in different ways by the decaffeinating process and if you are buying single-origin decaf coffees you may notice heavy swings, like the sourness in the otherwise rich Indonesian.
So, our roaster friend said, when buying decaf look for blends instead of single origins. Look for blends that have a mix of beans from two or three regions - that way their complementary strengths can smooth out and mask deficiencies from the decaffeinating.
That's an interesting tip. When drinking decaf I love the Liberation decaf from Deans Beans (www.deansbeans.com). I always thought I preferred it because of the swiss water process, instead of a chemical decaf process, but maybe it's also because it's a blend.
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I agree with the previous post. I am pregnant and must live with decaf and I have come to prefer the swiss water process decaf beans of a local roaster here in OC called Keane (www.keancoffee.com).
I guess my palate is not clear enough to notice the difference. It may be a problem for others. But I do enjoy it.
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That's why I like Trung Nguyen's Passiona coffee (that I mentioned on the post below on Asian coffees). It's made from naturally-low caffeine beans, rather than being chemically decaffinated, and they blend it with a bit of Arabica to smooth out the flavor.
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Thanks for the tip on the Trung Nguyen Passiona Coffee -- it sounds like a must-try (for some strange reason, your link hooked up to a microsoft product, but the coffee was easy enough to find).
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