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Many of us drink coffee on a daily basis, but not everyone wants the caffeine boost that goes with it. These days decaf options are everywhere, even in posh coffees and with rare bean varieties, but many people are concerned that the methods used to remove the caffeine could be bad for our health.

Coffee naturally contains caffeine (as do tea, chocolate and lots of other plants) so to make decaf you’ve got to take the caffeine out of the coffee bean. The difficulty is removing the caffeine without removing all the flavour, which is why decaf has historically developed a bad reputation for the quality of its taste.

There are three main ways to decaffeinate coffee and they all start with the green, or unroasted, coffee bean. The first step is to get the caffeine out and this is usually done by soaking the beans in water which allows the caffeine, along with lots of the flavour, to dissolve out.

At this point chemical solvents - methylene chloride or ethyl acetate - can be used to remove the caffeine from the water. This can be done either by adding the solvent to the coffee/water mix (the so-called direct method) or by removing the water from the beans, and then adding the solvent to it (the indirect method).

In either case, the solvent with its dissolved caffeine is then removed from the water. At this point the flavours remaining in the water need to be returned to the beans, and that’s done by evaporating the water away to leave the flavours behind.

Some people worry that because the chemical solvents are toxic, these methods must be bad for you. But the level of solvent remaining after the process is over is vanishingly small, and below the level deemed safe by European regulations.

Another method uses a charcoal filter to remove the caffeine from the water. This is sometimes called the “Swiss Water Process.” A third method uses ‘supercritical’ carbon dioxide – CO2 at extremely high pressures – to dissolve the caffeine.

Some people prefer the idea of the charcoal filter or CO2 methods as they avoid the chemical solvents, but there’s no evidence that one method is safer than another. Some producers choose to label their decaf coffee with the method used to make it, but there’s no legal requirement for them to do so.

Our advice is that if you do choose decaf, let your taste buds be your guide and don’t worry too much about how it was made.