I am looking for the best decaf, preferably dark and robust.
Are you looking for beans, ground or some speedified form?
For some reason, it is hard to find good decaf whole beans. You can occasionally find quality beans that have been de-leaded, but all too often the choices are rather ordinary Columbian and nineteen kinds of shudder flavored stuff.
We drink 50/50 as the house blend and for several years I’ve been happy with the organic Sumatran or Ethiopian and house-brand Columbian decaf from Costco or BJs.
It’s not the beans, it’s how you brew them.
Best possible way:
Peet’s Major Dickason’s Blend comes in decaf. Their French roast is good, too.
That’s like saying it’s not the beef, it’s how you cook it. There are most definitely different quality grades of bean, and widely varying flavors (making a 2-axis grid). Low-quality beans taste like crap no matter what you do with them. A flavor you don’t like will taste bad even if it’s from the best-quality beans of that type.
The rest of your post seems more spam than suggestion.
True and false stuff here.
Bean quality DOES matter. Yes. So does brewing method. Though I’m inclined to lean towards the latter half of the equation - I have some “Aeropress” widget that my sister got me a couple of years ago, and it basically only comes out for the old coffee beans, or the ones I decide I don’t like, because for whatever reason, that method produces a very smooth cup of coffee and tends to even out the rough edges.
For good, fresh coffee, it goes in the french press.
Cold brewing does produce delicious coffee (Though apparently also extra caffeinated coffee, which might be good or bad.) but there’s no reason to buy a fancy device for it. And honestly, I can’t imagine doing it for hot coffee. Reheating cold coffee cannot, in my mind, produce delicious coffee. I totally endorse it for iced coffee, but all you need is two containers, a funnel, and a coffee filter (ideally a reusable one.). I use mason jars. From spaghetti sauce, I think.
True, but my experience is that lots of coffee, even with good beans, is brewed to suck. People keep buying good beans and murdering them, and not understand why the coffee still sucks.
On the other hand, my experience with this system in the link is that even the cheapest stuff tastes pretty damn good.
So I’m saying the most important part is the brewing, not the bean.
It’s not really reheating cold coffee though.
As for buying a device, yeah, I wouldn’t buy a “fancy” one, but this is a cheap bucket with a thick felt reusable filter and hole that fits over a container to put in your refrigerator. It’s been well worth it for me. I could have made one, but this wasn’t that much more than the parts.
Another advantage is you can use it easily for iced coffee or baking, and make individual cups to your preferred level of strength. And it’s really fast to make (after you make the cold stuff).
Well, certainly, putting JBM or Kona in a twenty-dollar Mr. Coffee should be illegal, or at least punishable by public harassment.
Brewing cold and then heating coffee is not the best way to get taste - I believe I’ve seen tests that included cold-brewing alongside other systems and it comes up middle of the pack. Every reputable test I’ve seen concludes that brewing at EXACTLY the right temperature - about 198F, IIRC - extracts maximum flavor with minimum bitterness, and you have to control how long the water is in contact with the grounds. The Technivorm does it exactly right but is probably overpriced for most folks - there are some cheaper options that do a very, very good job.
I still disagree - you have to have good materials AND do a good job with them, and if either one is second-rate you’ll get inferior results. I have gotten better cups from good beans in a crap machine than from cheap coffee in even the best brewer. But *de gustibus *and all that.
Could we discuss the best way to brew coffee in another thread, please? This thread is about the coffee itself.
What’s te best decaf coffee? That’s like asking what’s the best nonalcoholic beer. Or the best dead cat.
Actually, there is a best dead cat.
I’m just going by my own taste buds, bud.
I disagree, and I explained why. I don’t think you can make that distinction.
But I will comply with your wishes if you want to get back to beans.