eli5 How exactly does one “de-caffeinate” coffee? Are they actually removing the chemical?
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Yes. Decaffeination is usually done before the coffee beans are treated in any way. They use a variety of chemicals to literally wash out the caffeine from the coffee beans, then they just treat the beans as they normally would. Brew the resulting ground and you have coffee without caffeine. The very first method involved steaming the raw coffee beans with an acid, then washing them with benzene. The benzene dissolved the caffeine and carried it away.
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