What's With the Shift Towards Decaf Coffee? A Conversation with Calm Coffee Roastery and Decaf Nation
"Is this definitely decaf?" It's one of Decaf Nation's favourite reactions from customers - and it says everything about the reputation problem decaf has had to shake off. Decaf has long carried a reputation problem - dismissed as a compromise for people who can't have caffeine, and treated as an afterthought by roasters. That narrative is starting to shift. As quality and range improve, more roasters are offering serious decaf and low-caf options, and some - like Calm Coffee Roastery and Decaf Nation - have built their entire focus around it. We've seen the same pull here at the Green Coffee Collective, with a steady stream of requests for more experimental, out-there decaf coffees. We spoke to Will from Calm Coffee Roastery and Jacob from Decaf Nation to find out what's really going on with the shift towards decaf.
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Who's drinking it, and why the stigma persists
Who drinks decaf is changing. It's no longer limited to people who can't have caffeine - increasingly, it's coffee lovers switching by choice, mixing and matching between decaf and caffeinated depending on the time of day. Those who can't have caffeine are still a big part of the customer base, says Jacob at Decaf Nation, and they're glad to finally have a genuinely great-tasting option. Plenty of newcomers, too, arrive expecting a repeat of a bad experience years ago - and are surprised by how far the quality has come.
Will at Calm Coffee Roastery points to a rise in more experimental decaf coffees as part of the shift - adventurous options for specialty customers chasing something exciting to drink later in the day or evening, whether they're longtime decaf drinkers or trying it for the first time.
Two misconceptions still do most of the damage. The first: that decaf is packed with chemicals. Some traditional processes did rely on chemical solvents, and cheaper decaf can still use lower-cost methods - that history left a lot of drinkers wary. But modern, specialty-grade decaf is a different product. Decaf Nation buys green coffee decaffeinated using natural processes, which also does a better job of preserving flavour. It's a question Calm Coffee Roastery still gets asked regularly, too: do you decaffeinate your own coffee? Most drinkers have no idea how specialised - and how far from the roastery - that process actually is.
The second misconception is about taste. Decaf has long been treated as an afterthought - poorly roasted to mask bad green coffee, pushed dark enough to hide any trace of processing or terroir. But done properly, it can taste just as complex, smooth, sweet, fruity, nutty, or chocolatey as any caffeinated coffee.
Where it's actually made
The traditional decaf supply chain looks like this: green coffee is grown at origin, just like any other coffee, then shipped to one of a handful of decaffeination plants - mainly in Germany, Canada, and Mexico - before being shipped onward again to roasters. But as with the quality of decaf itself, this part of the value chain is starting to shift.
More decaffeination is now happening in origin countries. Will points to a growing preference among specialty roasters and consumers for Colombian coffees decaffeinated at Descafecol, using the Ethyl Acetate (or "sugarcane") method. Descamex, meanwhile, runs a water-based decaffeination plant in Mexico and has recently opened a new facility in Brazil. According to Will, this slow move toward origin decaffeination makes sense on every level - for coffee quality, for the environment, and for keeping more of the value chain in producing countries.
But he's cautious about the pace: the size and cost of building new decaffeination facilities means most decaf will still be processed outside origin, in hubs like Germany and Canada, for some time yet. Jacob, from Decaf Nation, is similarly measured. "I think we will see more farms take on the process," he says, "but it may take a while to take effect, as for many places the infrastructure just isn't there yet."
It's not a straightforward story of an industry relocating overnight - it's a slow, contested shift that even people working in decaf every day don't fully agree on the pace of.
How it's actually roasted
One of the main questions we get at the Green Coffee Collective is how to roast decaf coffee. The most common mistakes come from treating decaf like regular coffee, or roasting it too dark - which destroys the more subtle flavour compounds decaf relies on. Decaf needs more care, not less, than caffeinated coffee. Jacob points out that it scorches far more easily, especially when water-processed, and needs gentler heat and more experimentation per lot, since not every decaf roasts the same way. Will adds that raw decaf looks darker than it actually tastes, so roasting it calls for a lower charge temperature and a shorter overall roast - and that first crack is too muted to rely on the way it can with caffeinated coffee.
Where it's heading
So where is decaf heading next? Jacob would like to see chemical decaffeination methods disappear from the industry altogether, leaving natural processes - Swiss Water, sugarcane, and CO2 - as the standard. He'd also like to see more diversity in roast level: Decaf Nation already offers a lighter, filter-focused decaf (Yemen Anis) alongside a medium/dark espresso option (Peru Alto Mayo), and believes decaf needs the same range of profiles caffeinated coffee gets, rather than one dark roast covering every use case. Half-caf is part of that picture too - Decaf Nation launched its own hybrid blend in 2025 after demand at coffee festivals, letting customers dial down caffeine without giving it up entirely.
Will's excitement is split between two things. First, more origin decaffeination beyond Colombia - Brazil, in particular, given Descamex's new facility there. Second, coffee species that are naturally lower in caffeine to begin with. Excelsa is the one he's watching most closely: more resilient to a changing climate than arabica, and naturally lower-caffeine as a bonus. Calm Coffee Roastery recently started stocking an Excelsa from South Sudan, via the Green Coffee Collective - an origin with its own story, and a flavour profile Will describes as genuinely unusual.
Jacob points to Nogales, a specialty farm in Colombia, as a name worth watching - they've developed their own decaf process, experimented widely with regular coffee too, and picked up multiple awards for their decaf last year.
The upshot
Talk to Will and Jacob for long enough and a pattern starts to emerge: decaf isn't catching up to regular coffee, it's just being taken as seriously. Better beans. More careful roasting. Processing that's slowly moving closer to where the coffee is grown. None of that is a compromise - it's just what happens when an industry stops treating something as an afterthought.
Saskia Chapman Gibbs
Marketing & Sustainability, Green Coffee Collective
