[ibmthrowaway218]

> Personally though, I love the taste and enjoy the experience of "waking up" with a cup of coffee over the course of the first 20 minutes of the day.

Yep, which is why I switched to decaf. Still the same taste (there are ok decaf coffees out there) but none of the bad effects of excessive caffeine.

(Most decaf still has ~10% of the caffeine of regular coffee, but even with 4 or 5 cups of decaf a day it's not enough for dependency; I get no withdrawal symptoms if I stop for any length of time).

I still drink the odd normal coffee (if someone/somewhere doesn't have decaf) but a maximum of one a day otherwise it will affect my sleep that night; it also gives me a proper coffee buzz for the short period after drinking it.

[mcculley]

I had read that the process of decaffeinating coffee involves solvents that are bad for you, so I've avoided that. Maybe I should look into that closer because I certainly do enjoy the taste of good coffee.

[maxerickson]

It's frequently done with liquid CO2. It doesn't leave any residue (and it anyway is not toxic). So you could source beans that use that process.

The roasting process is probably introducing some nice awful compounds into the mix anyway.