Meridian

Journal

What decaf really means now

Category: From the roastery

9/17/2026From the roastery

Decaf has a reputation it earned thirty years ago, when the process used solvents and the coffee going in was whatever nobody else wanted.

The Swiss Water process uses only water, temperature and activated carbon. Green coffee soaks in a solution already saturated with everything except caffeine, so caffeine is the only thing that leaves. It removes 99.9% of it and very little flavour.

We buy the same grade of Colombian for our decaf as for our single origin. It is the coffee we drink after four in the afternoon, and nobody at the roastery treats it as a compromise.