New York discovers decaf that doesn’t suck
Posted by TheShot on 10 Mar 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues
On the continuing theme of New Yorkers being years behind on their coffee trends, yesterday the New York Times published an article on the improving quality of decaffeinated coffees: New Breed of Brewers of No Buzz – NYTimes.com. It is a slightly updated and expanded version of an L.A. Times piece we wrote about in November 2006: Demand is growing for rich decaf coffee. Of particular relevance here is the article’s emphasis on Bay Area roasters.
Caffeine is clearly a drug, as it makes people say and do stupid things. We don’t just mean all the people who give up caffeine “cold turkey” and, like Born Again preachers, feel obligated to tell everyone how much better their life is and how they too should forgo their sinful caffeinated ways.
In fact, most of the stupid things said about coffee usually have something to do with caffeine. But while we never understood the point of a vegetarian restaurant that fashioned non-meat to look and taste like chicken, consumers who don’t get the point of decaffeinated coffee always struck us as fake coffee lovers.
The article quotes Peter Giuliano of Counter Culture Coffee as saying, “Those guys are the true believers. They’re not drinking coffee because they need to wake up. They’re only drinking coffee because they like the taste.” Last summer, this sentiment was echoed by Starbucks co-founder Jerry Baldwin in The Atlantic: In Defense of Decaf – Food – The Atlantic. Decaf coffee drinkers may be much maligned and considered traitors to their kind, but we’ve always considered them among the beverage’s truest fans.
The one main drawback to decaf for us, however, has always been flavor. The sub-optimal sourcing of beans and the effects of the decaffeination process aside, caffeine does play a direct role in flavor enhancement. The nation’s chocolate cake mix manufacturers — who rank among some of the biggest purchasers of purified caffeine in the world — learned this lesson many decades ago.
4 Comments »
Hi Greg,
Just wanted to say thanks for dropping by the Micks Grill and leaving a comment. Nice blog you got here.
Cheers,
Mike Elliott
I remember at cafe abir when someone ordered a dry, decaf, nonfat, we’d pass the order on as “one nothing.” Not that our coffee back then merited any snobbery
You might want to check your facts before crowing too loudly that caffeine has a direct effect on coffee flavor. Your little statistic about Duncan Hines being the #3 consumer of caffeine, because of it’s flavor enhancing characteristics for chocolate cake and brownies, rings of urban myth. So, I naturally went on the Duncan Hines website, and caffeine is not listed as an ingredient in either chocolate brownies or devil’s food cakes. On many websites that track caffeine content in foods, these cake/brownine mixes are listed, as are chocolate bars. This is because theobromine (found in chocolate) and caffeine are very similar and often grouped together.
No doubt that caffeine is bitter, but there are other things in coffee that doubtlessly contribute much much more to flavor than caffeine.
peter
The Duncan Hines citation is not public information and comes rather from a unnamed, trusted source. (Actually, it came from a manufacturer of roasting equipment who did research and analysis on all the white powder that was building up in the vented exhaust of his new prototype.) Corporations do not want to share this information, and there’s no regulation that says they have to.
As for the science of caffeine influencing taste…not that we need a battle of questionable research citations here, but here’s a starter kit:
Nutrition in the ’90s: current controversies and analysis, Volume 1990 (Edited by Gerald E. Gaull, Frank N. Kotsonis and Maureen A. Mackey, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, 1991)
THE IMPORTANCE OF CAFFEINE AS A FLAVOR COMPONENT IN BEVERAGES (Journal of Sensory Studies, Vol 15, Issue 4, J Wiley, New York, 2007)