A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee

Re:A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee by malfist on Thursday July 25, 2024 @01:54PM (#41071409)

CO2 can be reused so it's not that expensive, and the caffeine that gets extracted is sold separately, so it's possible decaffeinated coffee could have more profit that caffeinated.

After all, we don't really make synthetic caffeine, we extract it from tea and coffee and add it to a lot of things.

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Re:A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee by philipkglass on Thursday July 25, 2024 @02:55PM (#41072084)

Synthetic caffeine has been commercially used in beverages and medicine for over 100 years. I believe that most caffeine consumed today is actually synthetic, but it's hard to find a good citation for its prevalence. Most of the web pages mentioning synthetic and natural caffeine are spam for "market research" reports or natural health woo.

You can see section "2.1. Production and use" for some relevant information about synthetic and natural caffeine production, as well as dated 20th century statistics about synthetic production:

"Coffee, Tea, Mate, Methylxanthines and Methylglyoxal"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507027/

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Re:A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee by malfist on Thursday July 25, 2024 @06:33PM (#41074138)

My statement of synthetic not being super prevalent comes from a memory of a really old how it's made episode, so it could be wrong or out of date

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