Category: Coffee

There’s bad news for those who choose to drink decaf coffee for health reasons.

Decaf coffee, or descafeinado as it’s known in Spain, is a possible chemical hazard.

It all comes down to the way that the caffeine is removed from the pure coffee. 

Decaf is a very popular drink, with many combining drinking caf and decaf throughout their day. It is especially popular at lunchtime and evenings, as people try to avoid the stimulant effect of the caffeine which, of course, in the morning, is the whole point of coffee.

The Spanish have been generally slow to embrace decaf coffee, but it’s hugely popular in many countries, including the US, where over 26 million Americans are said to drink it.

Coffee comes from coffee beans which are grown on a plant and even though there´s some talk of synthetic versions, heaven forbid, the production of it is still on the right side of processed food. The beans are roasted and ground to produce the coffee grounds.

When it comes to the decaf version, things get a little more complicated.

A lot of decaf is produced by effectively cleaning the coffee beans with a chemical solvent, in most cases methylene chloride. Other chemicals involved include benzene, ethylene dichloride and trichloroethylene.

Even the name of these strikes a little bit of fear into us mere mortals. 

I was never any good at chemistry, but this collection of chemicals don´t sound that good for food, or drinks. 

For example, methylene chloride is a chemical which is used in many industrial processes to clean items, especially paint. It is also used to degrease metals. 

The US government is now looking at this, worried that the use of the chemical is dangerous for humans and maybe carcinogenic. 

It doesn’t have to be like this and there are alternative methods of decaffeinating coffee, such as the Swiss Water method. This method involves soaking the pre-roasted bean, the green bean, with water over a long period of time, which sees the caffeine seep out naturally.

So, it might be a good idea to check out how your favourite brands produce their decaf coffee.

The humble cup of coffee is not so humble nowadays, a fact which will shock drinkers in Spain and beyond.

The price of a cup of coffee is set to rise even further than the highs seen last February.

Back then, the price of coffee in Spanish shops rose by 23% compared to the same month in 2021. The figures come from the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

The coffee market is predicted to climb higher during the next crop cycle.

The US Department of Agriculture reported that the global demand-supply balance for coffee beans is currently looking fragile.

The trouble stems from what’s left at the end of the last cycle – the 2023-2024 season – that can be used in the following season.

It is reckoned that at the start of the 2023-2024 season, there was barely 16% of future consumption available. Compare this to 33% which was available in the 2005-2006 season.

As to what we’re likely to consume in this season, it comes in at 170 million 60kg bags, higher than any season for the last 20 years. In 2005-2006, the figure was 125 million bags.

Less rainfall is behind the reason for reduced inventories, as both Vietnam and Brazil have been hit by poor growing conditions.

Fears are that the current crop growing in both countries could be hit again by the weather.

Market observers predict that coffee producers might panic before the crop is harvested and push up prices whatever happens with the next harvest.

With experts now saying coffee is 600,000 years old, it’s sobering to think that the modern form of humans only evolved around 200,000 years ago.

Okay, human life has been around for around six million years, but popping into Starbucks for a skinny latte was maybe the last thing on their minds.

So how do we know coffee has a longer history than we originally throught? Well, it comes down to how long a coffee plant has been growing on the planet. Researchers built a family tree based on the coffea arabica plant, which supplies our most favorite type of coffee, and found the species evolved over half-a-million years ago via the natural crossbreeding of two other coffee species.

The researchers main objective was to discover more about the plants and help protect them from pests and climate change.

Wild coffee plants were first observed in Ethiopia. But as to when the coffee bean was first roasted and brewed to produce a cup of coffee, this was thought to be in the 15th century in Yemen. Two centuries later and legend has it that Indian monk Baba Budan smuggled some raw coffee beans back to his homeland, and Starbucks was born (well, to be precise, Starbucks started in 1971 in the US, so a little off).

Arabica is the world’s most popular coffee flavour, accounting for around 70% of the market.

The journal Nature Genetic published the study which was co-led by University of Buffalo.