Your origin, decaffeinated in Massachusetts.
DeCafe is a proposed toll decaffeination service for specialty roasters and importers. Send as little as 250 pounds of green coffee and get it back roast-ready in about three weeks, with no chlorinated solvent anywhere near the bean. The caffeine we remove is recovered and sold, which is how small lots can make sense.
The proposed gel is molded around caffeine, so caffeine fits its pockets best and most other compounds flow past. Illustration of the intended mechanism, not measured data.
An 800-pound lot has nowhere to go.
Solvent-free decaf capacity for the U.S. sits in a few offshore plants built for full containers. A prized single-origin lot can be bought as generic decaf, but it cannot be decaffeinated on its own.
Today
800 lb- Below the roughly 10,000 lb customer-owned toll minimum published by the leading water processor
- Offshore processing and transit of about 6 to 14 weeks
- Over-buy, pool with competitors, accept a solvent process, or drop the origin
- Months of inventory in transit
With DeCafe
250 lb- Small-lot pricing with a setup fee, so your lot pays only its own way
- A target of 21 days door to door from Massachusetts
- Your origin, returned as a named single-origin decaf
- Weeks of inventory in transit, not months
Illustrative comparison. Minimums and turnaround vary by provider.
Hot extraction, cool capture, and a separate caffeine loop.
Select a step to see what happens to your coffee. Steps one to six follow your beans. Step seven happens offline, where the caffeine is recovered.
Designed to prefer caffeine
Gold dots mark the bonding points left where caffeine sat while the gel formed. It is a preference, not a perfect filter, which is why every lot is cupped before release.
Price your lot.
Setup fees cover receiving, changeover and release testing, which cost the same for any lot size. Proposed pricing, shown so you can judge the economics.
Lot tag
Ethiopia, washed- Lot size
- Tier
- Per-pound rate
- Setup fee
- All-in toll
- Effective price
- Back to you by
- Caffeine your lot gives up
Proposed pricing for a concept business. The recovered caffeine figure assumes 3.87 g of sellable caffeine per pound, an estimate that the pilot would measure.
Pilot validation
FreeA 50 lb lot of your own coffee, decaffeinated and returned for cupping during the pilot year. By invitation.
Access
$1.55/lb250 to 1,999 lb, plus a $95 setup fee. A 250 lb lot is $482.50 all in.
Standard
$1.35/lb2,000 to 9,999 lb, plus a $150 setup fee.
Importer contract
$1.10/lb10,000 lb and up on an annual agreement, for importers aggregating many roasters.
The pilot year, in the open.
Our material is new and untested at scale, so we are building in public. Each gate has a written threshold, and nothing is sold until a food-contact attorney confirms the legal pathway.
Months 1 to 3
Pilot line built. Imprinted and control gels made. Pilot roasters and one importer recruited.
Month 4 gate
The gel must show an imprinting factor of at least 1.5 against an un-imprinted control. If not, we try a fallback recipe or stop.
Months 4 to 9
Capacity and reuse measured by an outside lab. Free 50 lb validation lots cupped by roasters against their own coffee.
Months 10 to 14
Authorization in process. The first paid 250 lb lot runs on the same line, target Month 14.
Natural caffeine, traceable to the lot.
Every pound we decaffeinate gives up caffeine that the leading water process burns off. We plan to recover it, purify it, and sell it to beverage and nutrition makers who want caffeine from coffee rather than synthesis.
| Source | Green coffee, traceable to the origin lot it came from |
|---|---|
| Form | Crystalline powder |
| Purity | Set with each buyer to their food-grade specification |
| Residual solvent | Food-grade ethanol only, tested to USP <467> |
| Availability | Samples after pilot qualification |
Track a lot.
Every lot gets a code at intake. Enter one to see where it is. This tracker shows demo data.
Questions roasters ask.
Is DeCafe processing coffee today?
No. DeCafe is a proposed business. The plan starts with a pilot year on a single small line, and paid processing begins only after the science gates pass and the legal pathway is confirmed.
Is it really solvent-free?
No chlorinated solvent touches your coffee. The bean loop uses only water and green coffee extract. Food-grade ethanol is used offline to empty the columns, never on beans, and every regenerated column is rinsed and checked for residual solvent before it returns to service.
How do you keep my origin’s flavor separate?
We process one origin group per run with its own dedicated extract, and clean the vessel and change the extract between runs. Mesh baskets keep beans apart, but the liquid is what matters, so we do not share it. Blind cupping decides whether any lots may share a run.
Do I still own my coffee?
Yes. Toll processing means you send your own green coffee, pay a fee per pound, and get the same coffee back decaffeinated.
What happens to the caffeine?
It is recovered, purified and sold as a natural ingredient. That second product is what lets small lots be priced fairly. If the caffeine line were not viable, the toll service is designed to stand on its own.
Is the process FDA-approved?
Not yet. The gel’s ingredients are food ingredients, but the assembled gel needs its own clearance, and a food-contact attorney will determine the correct pathway. Nothing is sold until that authorization is in effect.
Why is the minimum only 250 pounds?
Our line is sized for origin lots, not containers. A setup fee covers the fixed work on each lot, so small lots pay their own way instead of being subsidized or refused.
Have a lot that is too small for everyone else?
Tell us about it. Pilot roasters cup their own coffee, decaffeinated, beside their control.