Decaffeinated coffee

Coffee has always been kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, there are some things about it that are good for you. It has natural antidepressants, and taking the time to drink a cup and relax in the morning can help you have a more happy and productive day. On the other hand, it is acidic and has loads of caffeine. This is not good for your stomach, or for your blood pressure.

I used to be a serious coffee drinker, and thought that I would never switch to decaffeinated coffee. For a coffee junkie like me, decaf coffee is almost a sin. As a matter of fact, most of the serious coffee drinkers that I've known have switched to tea, or given up hot morning beverages altogether, just to avoid drinking the dreaded decaf. It's like coffee with none of the bang. I always felt that it would be better to just drink instant coffee than to drink the finest brewed decaffinated coffee. Boy, was I wrong!

Once I got over my prejudices against decaffeinated  coffee, I found out that it was very nearly as good as regular coffee. Not only that, but nowadays there are decaf coffee equivalence of almost any kind of coffee bean you can buy. You can get free trade coffee, French roast coffee – whatever you like. It all comes in decaffeinated coffee as well as in regular.

Of course, it can be a drag to give up caffeine entirely. It is always nice to have a pick me up in the morning, even if it is not as strong as a traditional cup of coffee.  You might not know it, but there is an alternative to decaffeinated coffee. You can actually get low caffeine content coffee. It has all the taste of regular coffee, but lower caffeine content, and lower acidity. It is not artificially decaffeinated through some chemical process, but instead bred to have a lower caffeine content. To me, unless you're really into a particular flavor, this stuff tastes much better than decaffeinated coffee. It certainly is worth a try at least!

This is a mistake, and it leads to the belief that decaffeinated coffee tastes much worse than normal coffee. Nothing could be farther from the truth! The biggest mistake that people make when switching to decaffeinated coffee, is to switch to lower quality coffee. They will use flavor crystals, when before they used to drink brewed fresh coffee.