Decaf Is a Dirty Hack

Decaf coffee is a hack, and not the good kind. It’s a kludge, a workaround for a problem we weren’t supposed to have in the first place. Caffeine is the soul of coffee, the thing that makes it worth the effort. Strip that out, and what’s left? Something broken—held together with chemicals, compromises, and corporate trickery.

The industry doesn’t want you to know this, but decaf coffee starts its life as real coffee. Before it’s stripped of its identity, before it’s drowned in solvents, before it’s put through high-pressure CO₂ chambers like some dystopian sci-fi experiment, it’s just normal coffee. But then we get greedy. We want the ritual without the bite, the habit without the consequence. And so, we brute-force a solution.

The most common method? Methylene chloride, a chemical also used in paint stripper. The "natural" method? Ethyl acetate, derived from fruit but chemically identical to nail polish remover. Even the Swiss Water Process—touted as the cleanest—leaches out flavor like a lazy thief and tries to patch it back together with a caffeine-infused soak.

But the real kicker? Decaf isn’t actually caffeine-free. The FDA lets coffee companies leave up to 3% of the original caffeine in there. A "decaf" espresso still has enough stimulant to disrupt your sleep if you're sensitive. So what was the point? If you’re drinking decaf because you think it’s a clean break from caffeine, you’re playing yourself.

Decaf exists because we refuse to make hard choices. Can’t handle caffeine? Drink something else. But don’t take coffee, gut it, and pretend it’s still coffee. That’s like taking the engine out of a Porsche and pretending it’s still a sports car. It’s not. It’s just an empty shell rolling downhill, pretending it still knows how to drive.