How Coffee Is Decaffeinated Using Only CO2
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
- We had the unique opportunity to explore the CR3 decaffeination plant where coffee is processed using the Carbonic Natural™ process that just uses liquid CO2!
Thank you to our patrons for making this possible - support us on Patreon here: / jameshoffmann
Want to participate in the big, global decaf tasting? Get your kit here: www.thedecafpr...
What Is Decaf?: • Decaf Explained
About the Decaf Project: • The Decaf Project: Our...
Upcoming video 2: The Ethyl Acetate Sugarcane Process Explained
Upcoming video 3: The Swiss Water Process® Explained
Upcoming video 4: The Guided Decaf Tasting
Credits
Written and Directed by James Hoffmann
Produced by Daisy Collarile
Edited by Soufieh - soufieh.com/
A Unit Camera: Michael Losada
B Unit Camera: Danny Roher - dmrohrer.onfab...
B Unit 2nd Camera: James Nolan
Sound Recordist: Geraint Lewis - www.cochynsoun...
Drone Pilot: Michael Dreyer
Special thanks to Louisa, Christian, Jan, Julian, Oliver, Tim and the rest of the team at CR3.
www.cr3-kaffee...
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Its my workplace (I am a office worker) and I never saw the production site. So thank you James :)
come on man, are you not even curious? :)
@@DogDog173 I mean, I work in a completely different line of business, but despite having a lot of curiousity about the physical side of things, there's no convenient way for me to get access to my own site's processing. Really depends on how easy it is to get a tour.
@@Mebibit As someone who has worked both in an office and the production floor: every office worker should absolutely bug their superiors until they can get a tour of the production floor. It is extremely enlightening! Where I work we do a tour with all our new hires after a few weeks, even though we have to go to our customers and jump quite a few bureaucratic hoops to see actual production (we are consulting engineers). It is usually easier if you can organize a group of five or more people and you have to be patient for someone to be available. Just keep bugging your boss and ask your colleagues in the office to join in. I promise it is worth the effort!
At my company we have a monthly safety participation (check eyewash stations, emergency exits not blocked, check for burnt out lightbulbs and many many more). It is random and everyone will get one each month. It will often bring office people to the production floor and vice versa. Many of our office employees once worked on the production floor anyway, like myself.
Everywhere I've worked as an office worker that has a production side they've sent me for day on the production site.
No music, no faffing about, just big machines, wörk and technical process. This is your most German video ever.
Wörk would sound like vyrk.
I hate when people put music in there videos... i just wanna listen to the explanation not someone play music
I absolutely hate watching videos with loud music. Or any music really. It's very distracting for me as someone who already struggles to pay attention.
@@Aaron-jj9no Yeah it's annoying as someone with the same or similar difficulty to pay attention. I really dislike the mr beast style editing of most videos on youtube, so a food factory like video is good to chill or sleep to
1:40 James, I just want to say that it's always super cool and appreciated when non-German speakers do their best to get the pronounciation right. You were very close there, and I think that's more respect than most people would show for other languages👋
yeah his pronunciation is pretty good!
Korrekt! We Germans watch and love you!
how many takes u did, James? ;D
It's kind of frustrating how close he is. Hearing english speakers mispronouncing German words is one of my favourite things. I've once heard an American pronounce the City of Bochum as "Botch 'em". I still think about that quite often.
@@DamnZodiak Well he really "botched 'em" ;)
It goes both ways! Having been around a lot of Germans / German speakers, I've identified a few "problem words: "thousand" and "south" seem to present particular difficulties for some reason :)
Man, as a manufacturer, I absolutely love this facility. So much kickass equipment. And, clean and organized. No clutter anywhere.
It's a german facility, what did you expect? :)
@@nolram Less colour and warm wood finishes.
@@nolramyup german and japan is like that 😅
Same as an EC&I engineer, looks absoloutly state of the the art
You do realize that they selectively film only those parts that look the best and may even clean them up beforehand?
When I worked in the hospital in internal medicine, I brought the afternoon coffee to the patients. The elderly ladies mentioned how they look forward each day for the little kick of wakefulness. What they did not know was, that all the patients coffee was decaffeinated, because caffeine is contraindicated for some patients, influence blood pressure, heartrate and fluids etc. So it was just easier and save from mix ups to only have decaff. They never knew.
Placebo is strong with this one.
Maybe it can be explained as the aroma and warmth being invigorating, rather than the stimulant effect.
Decaf coffee actually still does have a little caffeine, but such a low amount that, I think the human body can illuminate it before we feel the effects from it, or maybe it’s just too low a dose for it to affect us.
Coffee is a mood enhancer, regardless of the caffeine present. Plus, everyone likes a good deed.
@@JasonB808 It's still around 8-10% of the original amount was my understanding. If you don't drink coffee often and have a specialty decaf you'd still feel the kick
I work for Solar Turbines, and the last place I expected to see one of our gas turbines was on a James Hoffman video! 🙂Looking forward to the rest of the series.
I loved how you presented the video. Imagine a show called How It's Made with James Hoffmann. You could become the 4th most popular British celebrity.
A very good summary of the CO2 process. I work in the technical department of CR3 and can agree with what has been said. 👍
Is there a reason why you can't continuously monitor the caffeine concentration over time in either CO2 or the aqueous phase using Raman spectroscopy or another remote-sampling method?
@maciejkepczynski8029
Good question,
Maybe you can measure the caffeine concentration in the ring line. But due to the constant change of coffee in the different treatment containers, the amount of caffeine rinsed out remains relatively the same. And for us, only the rest of the concentration in the coffee is important. So we would have no real benefit from it.
If you put a measuring system behind each treatment container, it might work.
But in this case, the cost-benefit factor would have to be seriously clarified.
Speaking as a manufacturer I was impressed with how clean, organized, and efficient your facility looks.
@@RedfishCarolina define german haha
@@kevin_00001 You don't want me to do that. There's a reason I drive Japanese vehicles and not German.
I ended up investing quite a lot in this whole decaf project. Bought three tasting kits from different roasters because the roast can make such a difference to the end product. I guess coffee is a hobby and I don’t mind spending money on things I enjoy, especially this opportunity to learn more about decaf. Really glad this global community of coffee enthusiasts exists and that we have people like James to help us learn more about it - totally worth the huge amount of work that’s gone into this project!
Side note: I had a lovely batch brew from my local cafe today, fruity and fresh and totally delicious. Just though I’d share with peeps who will appreciate that :)
Can you recommend any websites?
@ I got mine from Australia. One website gave me the most options - the fully Decaf only company. The other two had fewer options for roast level and/or grind. I prefer light roast and whole beans. I’ve found it really difficult in general to get decaf that’s light and fruity as most on offer is more chocolate and almond flavours.
This pleasantly reminded me of a German TV show a lot of people my age grew up with, called "Die Sendung mit der Maus". They'd always feature, among other things, segments explaining how things were made. Your style, pace, and narration was very close to how they did it back when I used to watch it.
So true! Didn't think about it until you pointed it out. Die Maus is truly educational and fun at the same time.
As a chemist / scientist, the industrial applications of science are always fascinating to me--great video!
0:14 Holy valves & tubes, Batman! Mad respect to the architects and engineers.
I bought one of your tasting kits from the roaster in Montreal, really looking forward to trying the different processes! I’m bringing it to my little village coffee shop and we’re going to do a tasting party with their equipment.
Same. Wanted to do espace café today, but all sold out. Thankfully, I managed to get it from nucleus yesterday!
I am considering participating, but could find no info on whether or not the coffee comes ground or as whole beans. Will I be needing a grinder to participate?
@@Frag-ile Out of 3 shops I checked out only one offered it in either ground or whole. If there are no options I'd assume whole beans, but should really be somewhere in description.
Pressed play on video, pauses video, goes to make decaff at 4pm in the afternoon, unpauses video. Thanks James.
If someone is interested, regarding the scary german compound words at 1:44, it's actually pretty easy to break down, you just slap words together, so
"Coffeinhaltig, röstreizstoffreduziert" is more like
"Coffein haltig, röst reizstoff reduziert" (technically reizstoff is also a compound word, and can be separated as "reiz stoff")
which translates as:
"Caffeine containing, roast[ing] irritant reduced" which is much easier to read for non germans I hope. Compound words look scary, but they're really easy to figure out actually.
On a related note, I did mention "reizstoff" was another compound word and translated it as "irritant". If we split this one into "reiz stoff" it literally means "irritation substance".
I do appreciate that james puts the effort towards getting pronounciation as right as possible, it shows a lot of respect.
so the German word "stoff" is where we get the English word "stuff" (I would guess) More English words from these: röst reduziert
@@pimacanyon6208 more accurate to say they were both came from the same word in an older language (proto-germanic in this case) that then split into multiple branches (english and german)
@@rockybond42 do haltig and reiz have cognates?
@@rockybond42 makes sense. interesting and fascinating to try to figure out why the pronunciations ended up the way they did in each country. Climate and geography must have something to do with it. Also, the French invading England and bringing that language with it surely influenced the pronunciation of words with German roots.
@@jiagengliu -haltig comes from enthalten, which comes from halten (hold in English), but the equivalent English word contain comes from Latin.
I'm not aware of a form of reiz, that's used in English.
I wasn't excited about The Decaf Project until I watched through this video. Halfway through, I bought a tasting kit for my partner and I! Really stoked to see how the coffees differ between processes!!!
I always love when foreigners butcher my mother tongue, and 1:40 is just priceless. Had to play it back at least five times.
And behold, you outdid yourself. Couldn't have chosen a less unfriendly phrase when it comes to pronouciation... BRAVO!
Got my tasting kit ordered from a roaster in Montana. Excited to sample the differences! As a reluctant decaf only drinker I'm so happy that you're giving attention to us coffee lovers who need some accommodation to enjoy our favorite bean :)
This is the best episode of "how it's made" yet. Really enjoying the series so far!
Footage and video was top-tier. I think I can speak for a lot of us that we’ve been waiting for years for this project. So far, you haven’t disappointed and we’re only two videos into the series. I look forward to the next video next Friday. I guess a question (two part) would be, besides taste and that you need to roast the coffee as soon as possible after it’s been decaffeinated, what do the roasters need to do differently to the decaffeinated coffee? For example, can they treat the same coffee (one decaf and one regular) the same if they were to roast them both? Or does the decaf need a different type of treatment? And, if the decaf does need different treatment, comma does that treatment change per type of method?
Decaf definitely needs to be roasted differently (another thing besides added cost of processing that puts people off) as the opening up of the bean to extract caffeine changes the internal structure. It also appears darker due to the processing than the actual roast level is, so you need to take that into account when roasting. James goes into more detail on it in his original decaf video from a while back.
Being involved in CO2 Decaf SC it was good to see the liquid process. I have enjoyed the many videos that ou have produced. Ater 50 years in the coffee business I find yours to be quite good
Fascinating! I'm surprised how much of the facility they let you film, very generous of them. Love to see all the crazy details and engineering that goes into this. This is the only main decaffeination process i've yet to try.
James should take over "how it's made" one day. Perfect narrator for how processes work
Decaf fan here
Now I have even more to demand from my roaster/supplier. Been trying to get more than one roast, now more than one decaf as well. Excellent.
I have zero interest in decaf coffee, I like my zoomies just as much as a love the rich taste of a good cuppa. HOWEVER!!!! You, sir, have a way of making anything interesting, and I will follow your exploits wherever they may lead. Carry on!
The facility having it's own power plant is an eye-opener. Wow!
I was just speaking with my boyfriend about the decaffination process 2 hours before this video came out. Its so easy for coffee people to get into coffee people's heads. Im a huge a fan of your channel and love what you do! (drink coffee that is and showing me new ways to extract/craft my brews) Happy Holidays love!
I never knew i needed a so much information about coffee in my life untill I found your channel. I have always just bought a bag of talylors ground coffee and thrown it through a cafetiere and enjoyed it but after watching your videos im definitely going to start trying different methods ect👍🏻
You've taken this thing to a level nobody else conceived
Fantastic
10:01 "Quite noticeable" ...one of the fun things about being colorblind is hearing statements like this while looking at something and thinking, "well those basically look the same."
Can you see the difference between raw and roasted? To me the co2 looks closer to raw and the rest look closer to roasted if that's helpful. It's noticeable, idk if I'd say "quite noticeable".
I think he exaggerated the difference somewhat, and I'm not colorblind.
They're the same colour, just different shades.
I'm definitely not colorblind and there's a perceptible difference, but I think the camera is washing out most of it. The two on the outside of the split screen shot are slightly brown, like a tan color, while the CO2 in the center looks like a very desaturated green.
Had to switch to decaf, and no issues. I am constantly looking for high flavor decafs. Looking forward to the DECAF project!! Thank you for all your videos. I learn so much!
Decaf has never been so eye opening until now (puns!). Lovely to learn about these processes. Thank you, James. I am proud to be a Patreon supporter and continue to see amazing things like this for our community.
I just wanted to say that I greatly appreciate the matter-of-factness of this video. This is how I want my documentaries done :).
This is so cool. The amount of coffee that is processed is truly incredible. I loved this video.
This is fascinating. I love the depth of education you provide to us coffee enthusiasts.
As a former ChemE student who didn’t go to a plant, it’s so cool to get this insider look of the production process 😊
We really enjoy our beans from Deluxe Coffeeworks, which is local to us (Cape Town, South Africa). They roast a beautiful Colombian CO2 decaf coffee that tastes absolutely incredible. Great body, aroma and flavour, beautiful crema. One thing we have noticed switching from caffeinated to this type of bean is that the beans are very oily, and as a result, sometimes they don't feed into the grinder properly. It's an easy fix, you just give the beans in the top of the hopper a little prod or shake and they fall down where they're supposed to be. But it's something to keep in mind regarding machine maintenance. And you might want to not walk off while your beans are actively grinding. Thanks for another great video!
Great video and welcome to Germany!
I will drink two cups (or less) of commercial cheap coffee in the morning from a coffee pad without anything in it. When I want to drink another coffee in the second half of the day I drink decaffeinated coffee. I'm not able to taste a difference and never thought that there would be a difference.
I say this whenever I remember for channels I like: please add chapters! It makes the watching much more enjoyable
This was incredibly interesting. It’s really cool to see how the CO2 gets reused again and again, I assume in an effort to reduce waste. Absolutely staggering to think of the sheer quantity of coffee they’re actually processing, I can’t get over that. So curious about the other two processes now, thank you for the insight. I could have watched an hour of that, it was so interesting.
I’ve had CO2 decaffeinated coffee and it was the best decaf ever. I’m looking forward to the December 5th testing. I’ve already ordered some kits!
I have to switch some of my coffee consumption to decaf and am therefore loving this series - I have found some roasters with excellent decaf - so it is a good time have to drink decaf
Please share the roasters and decafs you like! I like tasting different options (and yes, I ordered several of the decaf projects and am very excited to try them with friends).
I bought a tasting kit locally in Melbourne. I drink a lot of different coffee and have quite a setup at home but I can't wait for this one! Super excited to participate. Thanks for the really interesting video and can't wait for the next two.
bro I can't express how thankful I am, cause you make such documentaries.
I do not drink decaf, but it is fascinating to watch how the decaf process goes! Thanks for the informative natute of this video!
I hope in this series you might spend some time on naturally low-caffeinated coffees, such as Maragogype, and others?
THANK YOU for this!! I travel the world, and wherever I go, I try to find decaf coffee processed by water (which is hard to do if you're not in a Western European country). I also find this method to be less acidic (easier on my stomach).
As a chemical engineer it was great to see the footage of the process. I had always suspected there would be some interesting industrial chemistry going on. P.s yes the sound of industrial sites is always intense, I still remember my first day or walking into an oil refinery and being struck by the intensity of the noise.
ChemE here too, I was thinking the same thing!
Despite buying my decaf beans from specialty roasters, I don't (typically) see the decaf method listed. If the method is listed, then it's nearly always Swiss Water Process. I get the feeling roasters are worried that other processes will be seen by the customer as 'scary' in some way.
That's absolutely the case from my experience helping out in a speciality coffee roastery
CO2 wouldn't scare me away, nor would Ethyl acetate, but I suspect most would be scared off by the latter.
Honestly I don’t touch Swiss Water at all. Don’t like the chemicals used in this process at all. CO2 is the only process I buy.
@@AnonGoogleuser what chemicals are used in Swiss Water?
@@AnonGoogleuser Water is also a chemical.
This whole Decaffe project is AMAZING!
I'm excited.
Thank you for all the decalf content. I oedered a sample kit and look forward to trying it.
The quality and production value of this video are outstanding.
making a campaign on impacting the research and educating people on decaf is amazing, i am all in on this journey, thanks james! btw its a pitty there is no argentinian coffe roasters/shops that have your decaf sampling kit, but still I will enjoy the big finale.
Really interesting video!
Never found a decaf I've been able to drink, but the process is indeed fascinating!
Watching this while drinking tea at 12am. Would love to finally have ‘good’ decaf coffee.
Very interesting video, thank you James (and CR3 for letting him tour it)! So excited to taste this process soon!
Great video! Absolutely fascinating! As an avid drinker of decaf due to a heart condition, I’ve always wanted to get eyes on the manufacturing process of decaf. Thanks James and team! Now looking forward to Swiss water process as that is what I drink. My personal favorite is Batdorf & Bronson’s Whirling Dervish . Sipping on it right this moment ❤
Wow! I didn’t realize the extensive process it takes to remove caffeine. So no wonder de-caf is more expensive. Thanks James for this video. You’re a wealth of information.
This is astounding in scale
Fascinating stuff James... what a process! Even though there's still another 2 processing methods to go, I'm looking forward to the receiving the tasting kit and trying it all out. Thanks James.
It was fun to watch from a chemist's perspective. Thanks!
Thanks for investigating and explaining about the processes of decaf. Been trying to wrap my head around head of the processes to be able to explain to customers about the coffees I pick, choose and sell, including decaf. It is a pity that the CO2 (CR3) decaf is extremely hard to hunt down here in Australia, especially for wholesale use
Excellent video James. More of this! Keep up the great work.
Thanks! I love things like this! I've never seen how coffee is decaffeinated. Half way through I was wondering what they would do with all that caffeinated water. I guess there are things that have caffeine added. Neat.
This was awesome. I can't believe it takes so long, but the whole operation is so cool.
Thx. James a lot for that video! 😊👌 I learned so much from you and the past videos! I drink also decaf at the evening in the morning and lunch I drink a lot of normal Espresso.
Have been waiting for these videos with great anticipation. Totally agree that specialty decaf would be an amazing thing to sweep the scene; I drink both caf and decaf throughout the day but find it really tough to find any really reallly tasty decaf (rural UK)
Amazing video !! Decaf lovers are also coffee lovers
I love the bigger focus on specialty decaf lately, I really hope it continues!
Thank you a lot! That is even more than I asked for!
Thanks James for posting; I love my decaf!
as a decaf coffee fan (caffeine makes me tired), this video was very intriguing! thank you
It's very intriguing that caffeine makes you tired, it's technically supposed to do exactly the opposite.
caffeine does the same thing with me
Fun fact, that's often a sign of ADHD!
Seriously impressive German pronunciation, and the smooth switch from English had my jaw drop a little
Amazing explainer video. Loved the graphics, so helpful!
I feel like the quality of the video and information provided is really proven as my uni addled brain wanted to start taking notes about the whole process.
At our roastery we use Atunkaa Decaf from Colombia, initially a naturaly processed, then the sugar cane method was used. The unroasted coffee is much more darker in colour and smells like berry jam and rye bread :D. SO youm! And many of my friend-roasters choose the same process. I live in czech republic.
Bravo, very well written and produced short documentary! Such an interesting process.
This sort of thing is so interesting!
Thanks for sharing
Happy birthday, James! 🎂☕
Incredibly interesting. Thank you for the education. Love it.
For some reason I thought it was a post-roast process but this makes a lot of sense. Love the technical details, excited for the next couple of videos!
As always, fantastic content that was well written, well produced, informative and straight to the point. Something I learned from this video that I hadn’t thought about was the pure caffeine being sold. That really peaks my interest, and I’m curious how that affects profit / what the revenue breakdown is. It’s always awesome to see ways to increase business in sustainable ways via reducing waste.
Very informative video on the process. Having now experienced the different processes, the CO2 process is the stand- out for me in terms of being virtually hard to tell apart from the Caffinated (Control) coffee.
Honestly I don't drink coffee that much but this is just an excellent technical explainer - extremely clear and engaging about something that's common in everyday life but you wouldn't stop to think about otherwise. Great work, and kudos to CR3 for giving you the access necessary to produce something so well-rounded!
This was so cool to see! What an amazing place.
Great video, thanks for the insight into decaf. I have been waiting for this for a long time. Looking forward to the next ones
I love this kinda stuff, Thanks James
Great video, made it really easy to understand. I'm baffled by the amount of energy and resources that go into something so simple.
Loved this! So stoked to see the deep dives into the other two processes
I roast my coffee at home and I've tried a couple of decaf coffees (SWP only) and I must admit I have not enjoyed the results. I need to get some of this CO2 processed coffee! This is so interesting James! 🥰🥰
Love this video. Have been drinking specialty decaf processed at CR3 (CO2 method) for a while and the great taste changed by coffee habits completely. Was always wondering how it works.
Wonderful video! I'm so excited for the tasting.
So cool. Glad you are doing this series!
Holly shit! This is a HELL of an Engineering masterpiece, no wonder why a German company could pull this off! Hats off to all the engineers who made this happen! 🎉
This is a very informative video. Keep them coming James!
Love learning more about the decaffeination process leading up to the decaf coffee tasting
James is like Indiana Jones for coffee except he hates loud noises instead of snakes
Thanks professor Hoffmann (Great video👍)Cheers from Calgary Alberta
I missed out on the last tasting you did. Happy to say I was able to order a kit this time.
now i cant wait for the next one :) great video as always ❤