The best decaf Nespresso pod is the one that still tastes like the coffee

Most decaf pods are made from coffee nobody particularly wanted to drink with the caffeine still in it.

That isn't a slight on the people making them. It's the economics. Decaffeination adds cost and a processing step, and the industry has long assumed that anyone choosing decaf has already accepted a compromise. Buy cheap green coffee, strip the caffeine, roast it dark enough to cover what the process took away. The result is the flat, hollow cup that made "decaf" a punchline.

We started from the other end. We choose the decaf the way we choose everything else — by finding an exceptional producer first, and worrying about the caffeine second.

At a glance. Difference Coffee's decaf is a single-estate coffee from Daterra Estate in Minas Gerais, Brazil. It is decaffeinated using the Swiss Water Process, which removes 99.9 per cent of caffeine without solvents, and roasted specifically for sweetness. The pods are compatible with Nespresso Original machines, not Vertuo. The current coffee has notes of dark chocolate, caramel and citrus zest, and was awarded Gold at the Aurora Challenge 2026. £25 for 25 pods, or £22.50 on subscription.

How it started

When I started Difference Coffee, I never thought about decaf. For most coffee companies it is an afterthought, and for a while it was mine too.

Then I wanted to share my first samples with my mum, and she told me she only drinks decaf.

I knew I'd missed something. The afterthought became a mission: find an estate that produces the best decaf in the world, and put that in a pod. That was when I learned that decaffeination is not one process but several, and that the differences between them are large enough to taste — and when I discovered Swiss Water. Over the years I have sourced decaf from many estates. It is Daterra now, because of their pedigree.

Four common ways to remove caffeine

Solvent decaffeination uses methylene chloride or a similar chemical to strip caffeine directly from the bean. It is the cheapest method and by far the most common, and it is effective. In lower-quality decaf it can contribute to the muted flavour people associate with conventional decaffeinated coffee — particularly when the green coffee was undistinguished to begin with.

Sugarcane, or EA uses ethyl acetate derived from fermented sugarcane. It is a solvent process, though the solvent has a plant origin, and in careful hands it produces genuinely good coffee — a lot of the best specialty decaf on the market is processed this way. It does leave a characteristic sweetness, which some roasters actively want and others would rather avoid.

CO₂ decaffeination uses pressurised carbon dioxide. It works well and treats the coffee gently. It also requires industrial-scale equipment, which makes it less common for small, single-estate lots.

Swiss Water uses no chemical solvents. Green coffee is immersed in Green Coffee Extract — water already saturated with the soluble compounds naturally found in green coffee, but without caffeine. Because the water is full, there is nothing for the flavour compounds to diffuse into — only the caffeine moves, and it is drawn off through carbon filtration. The process removes 99.9 per cent of the caffeine.

Difference Coffee's Daterra decaf is processed using the Swiss Water Process.

We name the method because it can be checked. In a category where nearly every producer reaches for words like gentle and natural, a named, verifiable process is the only claim that means anything.

How we choose it

Every season we cup somewhere between ten and twenty decaf lots before deciding on one. Most are perfectly drinkable. Very few are interesting.

The rule we apply is the same one we apply to every coffee we sell: it has to come from a single, exceptional estate. Not a region, not a cooperative blend, not "Brazilian origin" — one farm, with a name, that we can visit. Our whole philosophy rests on working with producers at the top of their craft, and decaf doesn't get an exemption from that.

The other half of the rule is that we work with those producers for a long time. That is not sentiment. Long-term relationships are how you get allocations of lots that other buyers never see, and it is the honest answer to why our decaf tastes better than most: we are starting from better green coffee than most decaf ever gets made from.

We have released decaf editions from Panama and from Guatemala before this one. Both sold out; the Guatemalan holds a Great Taste star of its own. Difference Coffee's current Swiss Water Decaf comes from Daterra Estate in Minas Gerais, Brazil — a farm we already knew well, because it grows our Brazil Yellow Bourbon, which holds two Great Taste stars for 2026. When we cupped their decaf lot it was not close. From time to time we release a second decaf in small quantities, so it is worth keeping an eye on what's new.

I went to see it

I don't buy coffee from farms I haven't stood on. In June 2025 I visited Daterra Estate in Minas Gerais with Mark Donald of The Glenturret Lalique in Crieff, Scotland, and Aktar Islam of Opheem in Birmingham — two Michelin stars each. Both restaurants serve Difference Coffee's decaf.

Daterra is a remarkable place — enormous by the standards of the estates we usually work with, and run with a level of precision that is unusual anywhere. I brought the chefs partly because I wanted them to see where their after-dinner coffee comes from, and partly because chefs ask better questions of a farmer than I do.

What you drink comes from the current season's crop, sourced through that ongoing relationship — not a decaffeinated lot that has been sitting in a warehouse waiting for a buyer.

Roasting for sweetness

Decaffeinated green coffee roasts differently from the same coffee with its caffeine intact — the process opens up the structure of the bean, and it takes colour faster. It is easy to get wrong in both directions.

Too light, and it tastes flat and acidic. The sweetness never develops.

Too dark, and it tastes bitter and astringent. Dark roasting can mask some of the character lost during processing, which is one reason it became so associated with conventional decaf. With Swiss Water there is less to mask, and a dark roast just throws away the reason you chose the process.

In the middle is where the delicate flavours get exposed. That is where we roast it, and "roasting for sweetness" is the only honest description of what we're doing.

The result is big-bodied and well balanced, with a long, sweet finish and notes of dark chocolate, caramel and a subtle citrus zest. Strength 7. It was awarded Gold at the Aurora International Taste Challenge 2026.

What it costs

£25 for 25 pods. £1 a cup. On subscription, £22.50 — 90p a cup.

Worth saying directly, because our range runs to £6 a capsule and it would be reasonable to assume the decaf is priced the same way. It isn't. At £1 it sits alongside the specialty pod brands rather than above them — and below a flat white almost anywhere in London.

Who drinks it

This is the decaf in more than a hundred of the world's best Michelin-starred restaurants and luxury hotels — among them Moor Hall in Lancashire, Sketch in London and Piazza Duomo in Alba, all three-star, alongside The Glenturret Lalique and Opheem. Not a separate line kept for guests who ask — the same pod, on the same pass, held to the same standard as the coffee that follows a tasting menu.

The reaction we hear most often comes from the chefs themselves, tasting it before they decide whether to put it on.

"I couldn't believe it was decaf."
One Michelin star chef Andrea Incerti Vezzani, Ca' Matilde Restaurant, Italy

Which is a low bar, and also the whole point. Decaffeinated coffee has spent decades being the thing you settle for after eight o'clock. It doesn't have to be.

Questions we get asked

Does Swiss Water use chemical solvents?
No. It uses Green Coffee Extract, water, temperature, time and carbon filtration — no methylene chloride, no ethyl acetate.

How much caffeine is left?
The Swiss Water Process removes 99.9 per cent of the caffeine using Green Coffee Extract, water, temperature, time and carbon filtration — without chemical solvents.

Why do many specialty roasters use sugarcane processing?
It is faster and less expensive than Swiss Water, and it is done close to origin in several producing countries, which simplifies logistics. It makes good coffee. The difference is that it is a solvent process — ethyl acetate — and Swiss Water is not, which is usually what people mean when they ask.

Which machines do these fit?
Nespresso Original — Pixie, Citiz, Essenza, Inissia, Lattissima, and the rest of the drop-through range.

Can I use them in a Vertuo machine?
No. Vertuo uses a different capsule format and reads a barcode on each capsule, so Nespresso Original-compatible pods — including ours — do not work in Vertuo machines.

How should I brew it?
Two adjustments, both worth making. Run a blank shot of water through the machine first: the thermal block is rarely at temperature for the first coffee of the day, and lighter roasts show it more than dark ones. Then pull it short — twenty-five to thirty millilitres rather than the factory forty. Decaffeinated coffee extracts a little faster than the same coffee with its caffeine intact, so a shorter pull keeps it in balance. If you want a longer drink, add hot water afterwards rather than pushing more through the capsule. Most of what people dislike about pod coffee is over-extraction, and it is the easiest thing in the world to fix.

Does Swiss Water decaf taste different from regular coffee?
It can taste remarkably close. The process is designed to remove caffeine while preserving the soluble compounds responsible for much of a coffee's origin character, so the tasting notes in a Swiss Water decaf are largely the tasting notes of the coffee it was made from. Chefs who serve ours tell us their guests often can't tell.

What is the best decaf pod for a Nespresso Original machine?
We can't objectively call our own coffee the best, and we'd be suspicious of anyone who did. What we can tell you is what to look for: specialty-grade coffee from a named estate rather than a region; a decaffeination method that preserves origin character; a roast developed for the decaf rather than borrowed from the caffeinated version; and a pod built for the Original system. That is how ours is made.

Is decaf worth drinking at all?
If the coffee was worth drinking before the caffeine came out, yes. That is the entire proposition.

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Brazil Swiss-Water Decaf — £25 for 25 pods, £22.50 on subscription