Some people like a bit of caffeine to get them buzzing – and some people prefer a LOT and have to be scraped off the ceiling from time to time! Perhaps not surprisingly, a demand has arisen for products like coffee, tea and cola that taste like they contain plenty of caffeine - but don’t. But these drinks all contain ingredients that naturally contain caffeine, so how do we make these drinks de-caffeinated? There are four methods commonly used to decaffeinate drinks: 1. Water processing This is the method normally used to extract the caffeine from coffee beans and it works because caffeine is soluble in water. The coffee beans are soaked in hot water which is then passed through a carbon filter to remove the caffeine. The beans are then rehydrated with the filtered water to return many of the flavours and oils back to the beans that were also dissolved by the water when they were soaked. 2. Methylene chloride processing Methylene chloride is a chemical that binds to caffeine. It’s used as a solvent to either remove the caffeine directly from raw ingredients softened by water or steam, or indirectly as part of the water processing method – using methylene chloride to remove the caffeine instead of the carbon filter. 3. Ethyl acetate processing Ethyl acetate is another chemical that binds to caffeine and it is used to extract caffeine from the raw ingredients in exactly the same way as methylene chloride. Ethyl acetate is found naturally in many fruits and so products decaffeinated by this method are referred to as "naturally decaffeinated". 4. Carbon dioxide processing This method of decaffeinating is thought to remove the least amount of natural flavouring from the raw ingredients. The raw ingredients are softened with water and then cooked with pressurised carbon dioxide. Under these conditions carbon dioxide acts as a solvent for caffeine. … and that’s how they do it. But remember - even decaffeinated drinks may have some caffeine in them. They can contain up to 2.5% caffeine and still be labelled as decaffeinated. So if you’ve scheduled a full 8 hours beauty sleep before your supermodel photoshoot, don’t spend the evening drinking decaff cappucinos. You can’t fool your nervous system! Go back