Which one has a better taste, CO2 process decaf or Swiss water decaf?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “best tasting swiss water decaf coffee“
Which one has a better taste, CO2 process decaf or Swiss water decaf?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “best tasting swiss water decaf coffee“
If you are starting with high quality coffee from the beginning, there is no difference in flavor between the two (or of the methyl chloride extraction method, for that matter), as (because) the process simply removes caffeine and almost no other chemical compounds that lend flavor to the coffee. The water extraction method runs the greater risk of removing other water soluble extractable flavor compounds, but when monitored properly for timing and temperature, it produces 97% (or so) decaffeinated beans. You can remove a tad more caffeine through the methyl chloride protocols, if I remember correctly, but people (consumers unfamiliar with the actual process) became unnecessarily fearful that the methyl chloride would still be in the coffee after processing…which it it is not—no more than there is extra CO2 or water left behind in the other processes.
Interestingly, decaffeination is predominantly done to obtain the caffeine for the pharmaceutical and consumer food & beverage industries and is not specifically performed by coffee companies to make decaf. The coffee growers sell the harvested beans to either coffee roasting/packaging companies or to pharmaceutical companies; depending on the grade of the coffee. Cheap beans go right to the pharmaceutical folks and the decaf beans are either dumped after extraction or sold really really cheaply to to be ground into animal feed, fertilizer/mulch, or to people who make really bad decaf coffee—especially the “instant” products you see sold really cheap. Most of that coffee is the more bitter robusta species rather than arabica. Big coffee companies buy better beans (mostly arabica) and contract with the pharmaceutical companies to distribute shipping costs and negotiate pricing for services rendered between the two groups. It’s pretty much a win-win for the coffee company who gets the decaffeination for almost nothing and the pharmaceutical/food group that gets the caffeine for pretty much the cost of the processing and some shipping to get the original beans and then, after processing, send them back to the coffee company.