Yes, it is true! Decaf coffee goes through a process (in this description, “the Swiss Water Process”) that extracts the flavor and caffeine, and then through another process that adds back the flavor. Because of these processes, some of the flavor is lost, so producers do not want to submit their highest quality coffee to those processes.
These processes involve soaking the pre-roasted green coffee in hot water. In a sense, its a pre-heating of the coffee which causes the coffee to be partially cooked. This is why decaf coffee is a brown color even before it is roasted, whereas non- decaffeinated coffee is green before it is roasted.
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