Hey, I'm Ben Bowlin.
And I'm Jonathan Strickland.
And today's question
is how do we
do is decaffeinate
coffee or tea?
Why would you want
to do such a thing?
Not everybody likes the
effects of caffeine.
Blasphemy.
But for those people, we
have to have a process
to extract caffeine from the
plant products in which it
occurs.
There are four methods of
extraction, which we primarily
use.
Let's see, there's brute
force, coercion, subversion,
and nuking from orbit because
it's the only way to be sure.
There are four real versions
used to extract caffeine.
The first would be methylene
chloride processing.
Then there's ethyl
acetate processing.
Not your Aunt Ethel.
I would hope not.
Then there's carbon
dioxide processing
and water processing.
Methylene chloride is a solvent
and is used to extract caffeine
from not just coffee, but
a lot of other materials.
So first, you soften the
material up, in a water bath
or by exposing it to steam.
That process of extraction
also extracts the oil
and the flavor,
all the good stuff.
So you would end up
with a really weak cup
of decaf coffee.
Yes.
Weak to the point of whackness.
So what's the solution?
It literally is a solution.
You take the solution
out of the extraction.
You expose that to
methylene chloride.
And the methylene chloride
removes the caffeine.
You put the solution
back with the material.
And you got your oils.
You got your flavorings.
But what you don't have is--?
Caffeine.
Ah, methylene chloride molecules
and caffeine molecules,
they bond.
They tend to make a connection.
Kind of like us.
Ethyl acetate is
a similar process.
In fact, it's exactly the same.
If you picture a Mad Lib version
of the methylene chloride
process, just write
in ethyl acetate.
So you should just rewind this
video by about 45 seconds,
watch it again, but just
mentally replace those words.
That's what we would do.
Ethyl acetate process
products are the ones
that you hear sold as (NEW AGE-Y
VOICE) naturally decaffeinated.
(NORMAL VOICE) It turns
out that ethyl acetate
is a chemical that
naturally occurs in fruits.
Right.
So this naturally
occurring chemical
is then applied to a very
unnatural process, giving us
natural decaffeination.
I'm sure there's an
asterisk in there somewhere.
The third way to
decaffeinate a material
is called carbon
dioxide processing.
You're essentially softening and
pressure cooking the material
with carbon dioxide.
Once you have the high pressure
and the high temperature,
carbon dioxide reaches
a super critical state,
meaning it functions both
as a liquid and a gas.
Last time I was in a
super critical state,
I was actually passing
through Nebraska.
[DRUMROLL]
It becomes a solvent
with its small nonpolar
molecules attracting the
small caffeine molecules.
Since flavor
molecules are larger,
they remain intact
in the material.
Water extraction might be
familiar to most people.
The material is
soaked in hot water,
then that water is moved
through a carbon filter.
The carbon filter grabs
the caffeine molecules
and holds on to them.
The water's then returned to
the beans for reabsorption
of the flavors and the oils.
If there's one thing I cannot
stand about decaffeinated
coffee, it's that has
no caffeine in it.
But there's two
things I can't stand,
it's when it's weak and just
doesn't have the flavor.
What we like to say
around the office
is if you lose the flavor--
You lose Strickland.
Caffeine is not
removed completely
by any of these methods.
Under Federal regulation
in the United States,
you can't call
something decaffeinated
unless it has less than 2.5%
of the original caffeine.
And you can't call
me at all unless I
have at least 2.5%
caffeine in my bloodstream.
So that's how
decaffeination works.
We hope you enjoyed
watching this video.
So if you want to write
to us with a suggestion--
A question.
--drop us a line or
send us an email.
Ooh, ooh, I actually have
a question right now.
Yup.
So we live in the
southeastern United States,
and there's such a thing
called unsweetened tea.
Now, does that actually mean
that they first sweeten the tea
and then have a process to
extract the sugar from the tea,
thus making it unsweetened tea?
Are we still rolling?
