Decaffeinated coffee

Decaffeinated coffee emerged because a storm-soaked cargo hold inadvertently demonstrated that caffeine could be extracted from coffee beans without destroying flavor—and a grieving son recognized the commercial potential.

Ludwig Roselius (1874-1943) was a prosperous Bremen coffee merchant whose father died at 59. The family physician attributed the early death to excessive coffee consumption. This personal tragedy became professional obsession: Roselius wanted coffee without the compound he believed had killed his father.

The breakthrough came by accident in 1903. A shipment of green coffee beans from Latin America arrived at Bremen sodden from seawater that had flooded the cargo hold during a turbulent Atlantic crossing. Rather than discard the ruined cargo, Roselius sent samples for analysis. The results astonished him: the seawater had extracted most of the caffeine while the beans retained their flavor compounds.

Roselius worked with his chief chemist Karl Wimmer and chemistry student Friedrich Meyer to systematize what the ocean had stumbled upon. The 'Roselius Process' steamed raw beans at temperatures of 20-100 degrees Celsius for up to five hours until they swelled, then repeatedly rinsed them with benzene to extract caffeine. They patented the process as Deutsches Reich Patentschrift 198279 in 1905.

Flush with success, Roselius founded Kaffee-Handels-Aktiengesellschaft (Kaffee HAG) on June 21, 1906. The company commissioned architect Hugo Wagner to design a pioneering reinforced concrete factory in Bremen between 1906 and 1907—Europe's first dedicated coffee processing plant. By 1908, Kaffee HAG advertised with slogans like 'Always harmless, always digestible,' pioneering marketing in silent film cinemas.

The brand expanded internationally as Sanka in France (from 'sans cafeine') and Dekafa in the United States. Roselius proved that a substantial market existed for coffee's ritual and taste separated from its stimulant effects.

The benzene process is no longer used—the solvent is now recognized as carcinogenic. Modern decaffeination employs ethyl acetate, carbon dioxide, or the Swiss Water Process. But the fundamental insight from that storm-damaged cargo hold endures: caffeine is extractable without destroying what makes coffee desirable.