Category: Advice

Can’t Find Decaf Coffee Beans in Tesco? Here Are Some Alternatives

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You’ve come to right place:

If you’re looking for decaf coffee beans in Tesco, you’re out of luck. Supermarkets don’t tend to stock good decaf coffee. But that doesn’t mean you have to give up on your caffeine-free dreams! I Love Decaf have a range of delicious decaf coffees that will make your taste buds happy.

1. Why you can’t find decaf coffee beans in Tesco

Supermarkets like Tesco don’t typically stock good decaf coffee beans. This is because there is a lower demand for decaf coffee, so it’s not as profitable for supermarkets to carry them. That’s not to say that you can’t find decaf coffee beans anywhere – you just might have to look a little harder. Specialty coffee shops and online retailers are more likely to carry a wider variety of decaf coffee beans. If you’re looking for a good cup of decaf coffee, your best bet is to search for a small, independent cafe or store that specializes in selling high-quality coffee beans.

2. What are your options when it comes to decaf in Tesco

Supermarket chains like Tesco do not stock good decaf coffee. If you are looking for a good cup of decaf, your best option is to go to a specialty coffee shop. These shops usually have a wider selection of decaf coffees, and they are roasted in-house, which means they will taste fresher. You can also order decaf coffee beans online. There are a number of online retailers that sell high-quality decaf beans, and many of them offer free shipping.

3. Where you can find decaf coffee online

If you’re looking for a good decaf coffee, your best bet is to go online. There are a lot of great websites that sell decaf coffee beans, and you’re sure to find a flavor that you love. Some of our favourites include I Love Decaf and… I Love Decaf. We have a lovely selection of decaf beans, and we offer great prices and quick shipping within the UK. So if you’re looking for a great cup of decaf coffee, be sure to check us out.

4. Flavoursome decaf and non-caff drinks

At I Love Decaf, we understand that not everyone wants to drink caffeinated drinks. That’s why we’ve created a range of superior decaffeinated and non-caffeinated drinks that are full of flavour. Whether you’re looking for a decaf coffee that tastes just like the real thing, or a non-caff tea that still has all the flavour of your favourite blend, we’ve got you covered. Our Mexican Holy Water Decaf Coffee is one of our most popular drinks, and it’s sure to become your new favourite too!

5. Why choosing decaf doesn’t mean sacrificing taste

Decaf coffee lovers, rejoice! You don’t have to sacrifice taste when choosing to cut down on caffeine. In fact, I Love Decaf offers a wide range of delicious decaf drinks that taste just as good as their caffeinated counterparts. From smooth Mexican Holy Water Decaf Coffee to our flagship Luxe Organic Honduran Decaf Coffee, there’s something for everyone. So don’t despair if you can’t find decaf beans in your local Tesco, here are some great alternatives that will make you feel right at home.

What Kind of Coffee Grind Do I Need?

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Ground decaf coffee comes in such a broad range of different forms, the labels display a hot barrow-load of information from decaf method to body, roast and origin. You’re willing to believe the coffee ‘does exactly what it says on the packet’, if only you could work out exactly what it does say on the packet. As well as body and roast, one of the most important bits of information is how fine or coarse the grind is. 

How does grind affect my coffee?

Grind is a measurement of how ground the coffee is. That wasn’t a surprise, was it? What might be new information is how much grind affects the taste of the coffee you drink. As well as the coffee you absolutely refuse to drink because it came out with notes of battery acid, warning claxons and flashing lights. If you’ve had one of those cups of decaf recently, you’ve either just come out of Costabucks, or you have got your brew all wrong and that may have something to do with putting the wrong grind in your coffee-making equipment.

Different coffee-making machines and makers make coffee in different ways and at different speeds. To work its magic, your chosen weapon of decaffeination needs a specific size and grade of ground coffee. 

Espresso fine grind

Espresso machines, for example, extract all of that yummy super quick – in usually less than 30 seconds. The same goes for pods and capsules. The hot water is in contact with the coffee for such a short time, it needs to extract flavour quickly. A fine grind presents more surface area than a coarse grind and the high-pressure water squeezes more of the flavour out. Using a coarse ground in an espresso machine will lead to a sour cup of under-extracted decaf.

French press coarse grind

A French press, by comparison has minutes to work its magic as you steep the grounds for much longer. Brewing fine grounds in a cafetière for minutes on end will over-extract flavour and lead to a bitter brew.

Between the two extremes, you’ll find that medium ground works best with auto-drip filter machines or pour-over coffee makers, like those that come with a jug or carafe.

Match your machine with grind

It is very important to match the decaf grind you buy with the coffee-making gear you already have. If you suffer from disappointing cups of home-brewed decaf, it could be something as simple as buying the right coffee for your machine.

We try to make this as straightforward as possible at I Love Decaf. Our coffees come in different grinds for different methods of coffee-making. Rather than tell you on the bag the grind is medium-fine, we state what kind of machine the grind is suitable for. Sometimes, to save label space, we use a letter instead.

B Beans (not ground at all)

These are unground beans – perfect if you own a bean-to-cup coffee machine or you grind your own beans separately (perhaps you have a Moka pot and a French press and want to control the grind for optimum results in each piece of equipment). 

C Cafetiere/French Press

A cafetiere or French press is a tall jug with a plunger that holds back the grounds from your brewed coffee. You fill it with very hot (not boiling) water and let it steep. When the brew is done you push the plunger slowly down to compress all the grounds out of suspension behind a metal screen.

E Espresso

Espresso machines in the barista-style have become more popular over time, but espresso was originally brewed in Moka pots – stove-top percolators in which you boil water under pressure forcing steam and water through coffee grinds. When the grinds are saturated, the pressure forces brewed coffee up a funnel through a filter to the top chamber. When you hear the characteristic gurgling your coffee is ready. Whatever kind of espresso making equipment you have, this grind is the optimum for brewing your coffee.

P Pods/Capsules

Some modern coffee machines use a sealed pod system to make your coffee. The idea is you throw away each pod after you have used it once and the environmental cost gets picked up in a third world country steadily filling up with aluminium and plastic capsules. Not good enough. Fortunately, you can get refillable pods and systems for most of the proprietary coffee makers. We sell one of these on ilovedecaf, but others are available elsewhere.

F Filter/Aeropress

The simplest method of making coffee is to drip feed or pour very hot water over ground coffee which sits in a cone of filter paper held over a large jug. There are many variations of this technique from pour-over to the new Aeropress machine which can even make espresso-like coffee on the go.

Why the Best Supermarket Decaf Coffee is not as Good as Ours (I Love Decaf)

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You know how it is; every time you go to the supermarket, you look at the decaf coffee on offer and feel enthusiasm being sucked from your soul. If that sounds like you, then you have tried most of the own-brand decafs already and have come to the conclusion, as we have, that really good decaf is really hard to find in a supermarket. 

Many people – cofficianados and consumers alike – criticize own-brand decaf coffee for its lack of flavour, but the real problem is that it has lots of flavours, just not necessarily any pleasant ones. Even the packets remind us of that bloated feeling you get after bad coffee with its flavour notes of cat piddle and warm tyres. 

There isn’t a superstore decaf that doesn’t call to mind a warm evening in a fertiliser silo – not one that we’ve discovered yet, anyway.

In fact, if we were supermarket coffee buyers, we wouldn’t go to extreme lengths to preserve the taste. We wouldn’t stick it in foiled bags with re-sealable strips. Why bother maintaining a vacuum when leaving it on the porch in an open jar would at least let the fumes escape?

Our decaf is best

We started I Love Decaf to make the best decaf coffee you can’t buy in a supermarket. We believe that some kinds of decaffeinated coffee are less like a pleasing drink and more like a punishment and we wanted to do something to set it straight. It’s not just the supermarket own-brands either; many major brand coffees miss the mark on their decaffeinated spin-offs.

That’s why asking for the best supermarket decaf coffee is like asking for the most comfortable barbed wire shirt. Just because it’s the only shirt on offer doesn’t mean you should buy it.

Why the Best Supermarket Decaf Coffee is not as Good as Ours
Our decaf is best. We started I Love Decaf to make the best decaf coffee you can’t buy in a supermarket.

You can’t get I Love Decaf in the supermarket

To be honest, we can’t imagine even having a meeting at any of the big supermarket chains, and that’s not just because our MD Mr Roy Bosch (he is also a part-time alligator wrestler and balloon entertainer of some note) has anger management issues with idiots, it’s because we don’t want to sit in their soulless offices drinking their horrible supermarket decaf. It’s best for all concerned if we don’t. That’s not the kind of publicity we need.

Check out these superior decafs from the I Love Decaf range.

The Best Instant Decaf Coffee is the One You Don’t Have to Drink

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Approximately half of the coffee grown in the world is produced to make instant coffee. It’s tempting to believe that this fact may be at the root of all the world’s misery, not least because instant coffee, decaf and caffeinated, is both an abomination and an affront to the senses. 

An early version of instant, known as Essence of Coffee, was produced briefly for soldiers during the American Civil War and was said to have had the consistency of axle grease. As the French – who can tell you a thing or two about coffee, often without being asked – would say plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more that things change, the more they stay the same. Essence of Coffee was rapidly discontinued, owing to popular demand. It probably helped that its customers were heavily armed.

Less than a century later, during the Second World War, instant coffee had become ever-so-slightly less revolting, and it was American GIs who popularised it wherever they were stationed. The upshot is that, in Britain, instant accounts for three quarters of all coffee sold. That compares to 10% in the US and France and just 1% in Italy.

Fast forward another 80 years and you would think that, with all the advances in drinks tech over the decades, the best decaf instant coffee would at least be passable, but no.

Best Decaf Instant I Love Decaf

Instant decaffeinated is best avoided

When you consider the pains that the growers, the roasters and blenders go to in selecting varieties of beans to grow and methods of roasting, fine-balancing tastes and textures along the way, it does seem absurd to then throw all of that into an industrial process that values quantity over quality. The best instant decaf is bound to be a shadow of its former self. 

Another thing to consider is that instant coffee production is more carbon intensive than simple ground coffee, a fact that the multinational food companies that control almost all the instant coffee market, conveniently omit from their green-wash eco-babble. Ignore all the Aztec and Mayan imagery and sustainability messages printed on plasticized labels and just drink better coffee instead.

Kick the instant habit

In a world where everything seems to be on-demand and instant, we have got used to streaming music and entertainment almost instantly. We’ve gained a lot of convenience but lost some of what makes music and film so special. In the case of coffee, deferred gratification is always better. Serious academic papers have felled a few trees to conclude that the ability to delay gratification can improve a host of other positive outcomes, including academic success, physical health, psychological health, and social competence. It turns out that patience is a virtue, after all. In other words, a simple cafetiere or pour-over reusable filter is not only easy to use but gets you the best decaf coffee and gets it quick. It may not be instant, but considering the care, craft and ability of the growers, roasters and blenders, three minutes of brewing in your kitchen is not only more sustainable, better for your wellbeing and tastier, but also pretty damn quick.

Does Decaffeinating Your Life Make It Better?

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Decaffeinating your life is one of many approaches and strategies you can try on a journey to better health. Broadly, it’s an element of ‘detox’ – while caffeine is a mild stimulant in moderation, your body and brain still get used to it being in your blood stream. Your brain, in particular, does not tolerate chemical change well and this is where withdrawal comes in. Fortunately, the most common symptom of caffeine withdrawal is a minor tension headache, and the cravings are quick to subside.

With decaffeinated tea and coffee you can even mask some of the cravings and continue to enjoy the same tastes and aromas you have become accustomed to.

So: so far, a small amount of sacrifice to decaf your body, but can it make your life better in a meaningful way? 

The narrative of detox is intertwined with lifestyle woo-woo. That’s a term we just made up to describe a big wicker basket of good-intention ideas like veganism, holistic spirituality and Eastern systems of thought. Nothing wrong with any of it, but decaffeinating your life is about restoring a chemical, not spiritual, balance in your body.

You know us – we are hardly the type of people to go all yoga-crystal-dreamcatcher-mindful-woo-woo on you. As far as we are aware, we have no chakras and feng-shui is not so much a way of life but more of a storage solution. Neither do we store our socks to the west of a lucky rabbit’s foot. Think about that for a moment: It wasn’t so lucky for the rabbit, was it?

Trust us when we say, we have no woo-woo.

Your body doesn’t need caffeine

The best reason for drinking less or no caffeine is that your body doesn’t need it. Like nicotine, heroin and strong painkillers, your body has just got used to it being around. Caffeinistas claim that it helps attention and focus, and they are both right and wrong at the same time. Scientific trials have concluded that, at best, caffeine helps attention and focus get back to where it was before you became withdrawn. And that’s what caffeine withdrawal looks like – a craving for a big mug of coffee in the morning to escape the tug of withdrawal and restore the world to where it should have been. It’s not restoring the world; it’s restoring your brain chemistry. Your brain in this instance is acting like a wilful, truculent teenager. It’s refusing to get its act together until you do something nice for them. Your teen asks you for money, chocolate or the latest tech before they clean their room. Your brain won’t move until it gets a chemical leg-up. Like your teen, your brain is lazy and used to the good life of drip-fed feel-good. The good news is that the brain has its own feel-good chemistry, caffeine is a cheat code that robs it of achieving its own balance.

Your brain is the most complicated thing you own. Indeed, it is among the most complex things in the known universe. It is capable of extraordinary calculation and every minute of your waking day, it perceives, renders and constructs your entire world. Throwing additional stimulants into the sentient bucket of porridge that exists between your ears is like lighting a campfire in an art gallery.

Decaffeinating your life is one part of restoring the natural balance of this most sensitive instrument. Once the minor withdrawals are over it will make your life better simply by re-establishing its unaided potential.

Does Coffee Have More Caffeine Than Tea?

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We’ve all heard the old chestnut that tea contains more caffeine than coffee, but is it true or false? The answer is that it is both true and false at the same time. We should explain.

Before it is brewed, a tea leaf typically contains about 2-3 times as much caffeine as a coffee bean. Once you compare the average caffeine content of a cup of tea and a cup of coffee, however, coffee wins hands down with approximately twice the amount of caffeine than black tea. 

What about different kinds of tea and coffee, eh, eh?

Keep your knickers on, tiger. Perhaps you should be cutting down on caffeine. Not all coffee is created equal. Fine ground coffee as you might use in a high-pressure espresso machine will yield five times more caffeine per ml than coarse ground coffee from a French press. But, unless you double-shot your way through the day, your caffeine intake from a 30ml espresso will be less than a full mug of French press brew.

tea gauge

There are differences, also, in tea brews – from the cup of tea that your partner drinks, where, ideally, a tea bag is wafted over the cup in a less-than-vigorous fashion, to Yorkshire builders’ tea that looks as though it has been drained from the engine of a rusty Transit van.

The secret of soap opera tea

Whenever there’s a soap opera crisis brewing, the aftermath will always feature a pot of tea. There’s a lot of truth in the observation that a nice, hot cup of tea will put the world to rights. Tea contains its own stimulant, L-theanine, said to help ease stress and anxiety as well as reduce insomnia. Sipping on a fresh cuppa really can be relaxing.  A study even found that people who experienced higher blood pressure discovered L-theanine helped reduce the increase in blood pressure. And because L-theanine stimulates without raising cortisol, the body’s natural stress hormone, the way that coffee does, tea can even help you sleep more soundly. The welcome surprise is that tea’s L-theanine is not removed by decaffeination. Decaf can still be used to dramatic effect after your pub landlord has gone postal with a baseball bat, the hospital has exploded, or there has been a murder or similar feature-length episode of festive trauma and ill-will.

Apart from L-theanine, your decaf cuppa also contains plenty of antioxidants which may well lower the risk of diabetes and strokes, as well as combat free radicals and slow the wear and tear on your DNA. Any tea is a healthy choice because of its antioxidants, but herbal teas that are naturally uncaffeinated are the best choice of all. As far as drinks are concerned, only tea made from the leaves of the tea plant camelia sinensis contain L-theanine, but a cup of chamomile is a great aid for restful sleep, well known, as it is, for its relaxing effects. 

To find out more about I Love Decaf’s teas and herbal teas, look around our online shop.

Does Decaf Coffee Contain Caffeine?

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While the answer to ‘Is decaf coffee free from caffeine?’ may seem obvious, the reality is more nuanced than that. The short answer is ‘yes’, the correct answer is ‘the absolute minimum’. In legal terms, to be considered decaf, at least 97% of the caffeine must be removed. Some decaf coffees, however, can improve on that and remove up to 99.99% of the original caffeine present like in one of our decaf coffees, Luxe Organic Honduran Decaf Coffee.

In short, you can’t change a leopard’s spots, but you can remove its teeth. The upshot is that you’ll be a lot calmer than either drinking a lot of caffeine or attempting dental work on a leopard.*

So, the answer is yes, decaf coffee does contain caffeine, albeit tiny amounts of the stuff.

Does Decaf Coffee Contain Caffeine?
The upshot is that you’ll be a lot calmer than either drinking a lot of caffeine or attempting dental work on a leopard.

Decaf, half-caf

There are also coffee blends that contain reduced caffeine, like our Frankenstein Monster 50/50 blend of regular and decaf. Our monster blend is a bit of a beast, to be fair, so if you’re worried about just how much caffeine remains in decaf, it’s probably not for you. If you fancy a more gradual approach to decaffeinating yourself, it might suit you as a halfway house to 99% decaffeination. Our Frankenstein Monster 50/50 has delicious notes of cocoa, praline and orange that permeate its hybrid blend. Handpicked coffee beans from the Nicaraguan Jinotega estate augment Swiss Water decaffeinated Honduran beans. It’s a great coffee with either less of the caffeine for those of you that don’t want to go all the way or more of the caffeine if you think you’ve gone too far. 

This is all a long way from the very first decaffeination in history performed just over 200 years ago by German chemist Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, after being challenged to do so by German poet Goethe. Runge did not take it to the next level and do anything productive, however, being content to note the caffeine’s potential for gardening. 

“After Goethe had expressed to me his greatest satisfaction regarding the account of the man whom I’d rescued … he handed me a carton of coffee beans, which a Greek had sent him as a delicacy. “You can also use these in your investigations,” said Goethe. He was right; for soon thereafter I discovered therein caffeine, which became so famous on account of its high nitrogen content.”

Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge

Germany: the world’s first decaffei-nation

Over 80 years later in 1906, a chance discovery of a decaffeination by another German – coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius – ended in a patent and the foundation of the world’s first decaffeinated coffee brand, Kaffee Hag, subsequently named Café Hag. Roselius was later implicated in a 1943 plot to blow up Hitler on his flight back to Berlin from the East. Once again, decaf is on the side of good, though we are not so sure about Café Hag.

*Please do not attempt at-home dentistry on a leopard or any other animal with a British Standards competency certificate in mauling people.