I got a message this morning that my mother was in the hospital. She woke up very dizzy, with a blood pressure over 200. She was just getting over meningitus, so my sister took her in to the ER. Turned out to be Flu B (which she had just been tested for, so we figured she caught it during last visit). She still has high BP though, so I told her that if she quits her daily coffee IV drip I’ll do the same.
Ghoddammit, I love coffee! I need good leads on high quality decaf, and I don’t mean "Well, I guess if I have to I can choke down some I Can’t Believe It’s Not Caffinated" or “I hear this hot soy beverage reminds you of coffee if you put some oat milk in it and sprinkle carob shreds on top” bullshit. I want surprising good decaf. Does it exist?
My wife is addicted to coffee and only drinks decaf and after searching for many years somehow stumbled across Peet’s Decaf, Dark Roast, Water Process, Major Dickason’s Blend which I think she found at Costco. I occasionally drink coffee and have to admit it has the best flavor of any coffee she has ever brought home. Worth a try.
I’ve been buying the decaf from Cometeer. It’s very low in caffeine (unlike Dunkin donuts decaf) and it… tastes like coffee. Like good coffee.
It’s also pretty expensive. And it is sold with an annoying subscription model.
When we had a Peets in town i bought the Major Dickason decaf. But back then i was drinking tea, so i didn’t make it very often. My recollection is that it wasn’t bad when it was fresh. (But it wasn’t very good when it had been sitting in the freezer for a few months.) If you’ll be making coffee every day, I’d give that a try.
But the Cometeer is better, and keeps really well in the freezer. If you do decide to try Cometeer, send me a DM because they give discounts for leads.
Oh, and taper down your caffeine intake slowly, or you’ll be sad. At least, dropping my caffeine intake sharply makes me very sad.
Best choice I’ve found for generally available and affordable decaf is Gevalia’s decaf medium. I won’t say its best in the world, but given the above criterea, it’s good value for money.
I’m sure others will give you the better quality options, but never forget ease of access as well.
And I’ll second @puzzlegal’s advice. Taper. Or you may find yourself sleepy, easily irked, and with massive headaches.
As a non coffee drinker, I’ve always wondered if the taste is obvious between the two.
I guess I have my answer.
I’m a pretty heavy coffee drinker and I can’t tell the difference in taste between regular and decaf.
It’s not so much that the caffeine changes the flavor much as it is that removing the caffeine often removes a lot of the other things you want to keep.
The Major Dickason’s comes in regular, too, which is better than the decaf, fwiw. That’s a really good coffee.
The best decaf I’ve had is the Trader Joe’s house brand whole bean. It’s the only one I ever tried that tastes like real coffee. It’s been years since I last bought it (or any decaf) so I’m not sure they still sell it.
I think it begs the question. I loved my mother very much, but quitting coffee?? Let’s be realistic!
I’m also curious to hear about the taste issues. Can you have someone help you do a blind taste test - one cup decaf, one cup caffeinated - and see how much of the taste difference you can actually identify? That might be useful info.
The other thing it might help to know is - how addicted to caffeine are you? Forget taste - what if you went cold turkey and didn’t drink anything remotely related to caffeine? Would you experience side effects?
Apparently reactions to caffeine vary significantly among people - there are (or so I have read) slow metabolizers and fast metabolizers. One group experiences a strong caffeine jolt, the other, not so much.
I don’t know which is which, but I am sure I am whichever group (slow or fast) that doesn’t get the jolt. I like coffee and drink a lot of it every day, but I don’t get anything out of it physiologically, just psychologically (it is a pleasing part of my morning routine that helps center me.) I can easily go without coffee and feel no headaches, extra tiredness, or other side effects.
Probably I am fairly extreme in my lack of response. But it would be good to know where you fall.
I was just going to suggest this. I thought it tasted fine. If I hadn’t known it was decaf, nothing would have rung alarm bells.
It does.
I’ve been buying coffee from this outfit for the past 40 years:
I remember their first tiny store front. The original owner was a coffee nut who started the company because he was bored in retirement. When we visited, he spent two hours showing off his place, his techniques, his amazing roaster – it scented the entire neighborhood each morning as he roasted. He really knew his stuff!
I watched his little retirement company grow through the years and now the guy’s kids run the place.
My brew of choice is their whole bean French roast. It’s delicious!
I also order their decaf whole bean French roast for friends who are watching caffeine intake. When I make it for them, I drink it, too.
I can’t tell the difference between the leaded and unleaded versions. At all.
Good luck!
Or just taper. I’m extreme in the other direction. I can tell if the restaurant accidentally served me regular because i feel the caffeine after maybe a quarter cup. (Also, i drink coffee slowly.) And when i was drinking two cups of tea in the morning, it took me a week to taper to nothing, and that was good enough to avoid headaches, but i still felt really slooow for a couple of weeks. But i can taper without any major problems.
I’m jealous of that, I think. I’d have to experience it for myself to be sure. But it is a bit frustrating to witness other people drinking coffee for a pick-me-up, and realize that for me it is completely ineffective.
My experience, now several decades ago, was when I went from a high caf diet (say 6-8 such beverages a day) to zero or one a day. I was home from college, and had been hitting caf pretty hard during finals, then packing, then getting home for winter break. My folks house had tea, but pretty much nothing else, and I wanted to cut down anyway because by the end I’d been feeling ill from overdoing it.
The result? Well, the first day, I just felt exhausted, but chalked that up to, you know, finals and the like, slept 12 hours. For the next 4 days, though, I was headachy, irritable, and simultaneously felt like I couldn’t stay awake. Slept 10-12 hours a day each day even though I didn’t feel tired. And I had stuff I wanted to do. Around day 6 though, started feeling more normal, but I was also back to drinking 1-2 mugs of tea a day.
These days, much older, I stick to an average of 2 caf beverages a day. Rarely I’ll do 3. I will notice the difference if I do more, both for good (more wakeful) and ill (generally feel flushed) especially in conjunction with the extra sugar. But that’s normally for travelling, because I feel the need on long car drives, like the one coming up at the end of the month.
I’m guessing that is fairly typical.
I guess I’m at a tail end of the bell curve. During my max coffee-drinking habit, I would consume about 12 cups a day - but occasionally I would have no coffee at all for a day or two. I remember my PCP querying me about my caffeine consumption, and being very surprised that I could drop from 12 cups of coffee to zero with no side effects. AFAIK this is neither a good nor a bad thing, health-wise - just an illustration of the variability of human physiology.
I had a 20 ounce tumbler of Death Wish Gingerdead coffee for lunch today.
I saw this as ‘Defecate Me’.
Sorry. No Shit.
And how did it affect you? Were you more alert/productive? Less tired than you would have been otherwise? Overstimulated and twitchy? Or you didn’t feel any different than you would have felt if you hadn’t had the Death Wish?