12 best decaf coffees for serious flavour without the buzz

When we were testing this coffee, everyone who tried it let out a “mmm” sound – even those who are coffee aficionados. Because of this huge seal of approval, we’ve made it our best decaf coffee overall. The medium roast produces a mid-bodied coffee, that’s perfect to drink at any time of day. Yet it doesn’t lack flavour, with a rich spiced chocolate taste. We reckon you’d be able to pass off this decaf coffee as the caffeinated stuff, on flavour at least. While it’s not about packaging, we also enjoyed Rave’s brightly coloured bags and the tasting note card that came with it. Rave offers whole bean or ground for cafetiere, espresso or filter/aeropress.

Look, no judgement here. Sometimes you just need a quick coffee hit and can’t be doing with machines and scoops and water temperatures. For those occasions, good old M&S has come up trumps. This is a medium roast coffee, so it’s not going to blow you away with a rich, full body but neither is it going to be watery and light enough that “you might as well have made tea”. The perfect balance, if you will. The coffee is smooth. Is it going to set discerning palates alight? Probably not. But we did find ourselves reaching for it as convenience over other instant decaf coffees. Another plus point is that it’s Fairtrade certified.

This small roastery in Kent only started out in 2019 but has been making waves in the coffee world. Its decaf coffee is delicious. Made using the sugarcane method, there’s gentle sweetness to the flavour. As it’s a medium-dark roast coffee there is a full flavour and aroma without too much bitterness. Our tasters noted it had a good “tang” and was rounded and smooth. We reckon this makes a great everyday coffee and find it the ideal replacement for the caffeinated stuff first thing in the morning.

This coffee is available as whole beans or ground for cafetiere, filter or espresso machines.

Ozone is a big name in high-end coffee. This is its decaf offering, which doesn’t compromise anything on the flavour. It’s a very rich coffee, with a nutty molasses flavour that lingers and quite a heavy body. This Ozone coffee is absolutely one for those who deeply miss a huge coffee flavour hit. While in the morning we found this coffee too much of a sucker punch for us, it was perfect as an after-dinner coffee or in a decaf espresso Martini. With Ozone, you can select your grind to whatever device you use to make your coffee. It’s heartening to see Ozone is a Certified B Corporation, meaning it’s looking out for the people who make its coffee, and the planet as a whole.

If you love your coffee and want to keep things interesting, Batch coffee offers a coffee subscription service that has a decaf option. This means you’ll get different decaf coffees sent to you from independent UK roasters. In our box, we got Groundstate hipster Stan coffee (Groundstated8.com). Groundstate was set up by a scientist and a yogi – we love a good backstory – and it buys rare lots of single-origin coffee. This particular bean is grown in an organic biosphere reserve in Mexico. It’s a really interesting coffee, with heady flavours of chocolate and raisins. We reckon this subscription would be a wonderful gift for an adventurous fan of decaf coffee.

With a dark-chocolate tang, we had to double check whether this coffee was definitely decaf. There is also a sharp plum-like acidity to it, which created a rich and interesting taste. It’s a mid-roast blend, designed to be taken black or it can take milk too. Grind’s coffees are sustainably sourced, come in compostable bags and with a free coffee tin. You can also subscribe to deliveries or order as a one off, plus you can get them in coffee pods or as whole bean or ground.

Perky Blenders is on a mission to showcase decaf as decent coffee, and for that we love it. Its award-winning decaf was perfect for a less complex, sweeter coffee that pairs really well with milk. The medium roast also means it’s a bit thinner than some of the other richer blends in this round-up. The tasting notes are maple syrup and stewed apple – yum. It’s worth noting that Perky Blinders switches up its blends from time to time, so you might not get the same bag twice. As well as whole bean, this bag of coffee can come as seven different grinds, to make your perfect cup.

Having scoured the land for an easy-to-make instant decaf coffee that still tastes great, this Nescafe decaf is the best, in our opinion. This is the perfect gift for pregnant people and new mums as it’s so easy to make when you’re in a rush. The coffee is a powder rather than granules, which means you don’t get those nasty floaters and the taste is excellent – full bodied without any bitterness. We’d advise not pouring boiling water directly over the powder, but apart from that it makes an easy, tasty decaf coffee.

We liked the gentle roast on this anytime blend from premium department store, Fortnum & Mason. It’s a soft, chocolatey flavour that we found worked well in a delicious milky coffee during our 3pm slump – and we can drink it at that time as it’s decaf, after all. It comes in a cute Fortnum’s tin, and is ground for cafetieres, filters and percolators – so nothing fancy is required here, really.

Calm Coffee specialises in coffees for “the caffeine conscious” – we love that phrase. It feels like a lot of love and thought has gone into this medium-roast coffee. It’s nice to find that decaf isn’t just an afterthought for a brand, that they really want to make a decent decaf to be enjoyed rather than suffered. And they’ve succeeded with this fruity, bold coffee that felt like it had all of the body of coffee without the head rush from the caffeine. Big coffee lovers who are cutting down their caffeine intake are going to love this one.

On the darker side of the roasting spectrum, the 200 Degrees Coffee decaf manages to not tip over into bitter – perhaps thanks to the sugarcane decaffeination method the brand opts for. It’s definitely a punch of coffee though – full bodied with plenty of zing, its tasting notes are maple syrup, citrus and chocolate. You can get your beans ground the way you want them at 200 Degrees coffee, which is good news for coffee nerds. And we were amazed by the value for money, and had to check several times that the price was right.

For those with a pod machine, these Nespresso ristretto decaf pods are a solid option. They’re a darker roast – Nepsresso rates them a 10 on their 1-13 scale of intensity. And you definitely get a shot of coffee flavour with these little pods. During testing, some of our reported that the taste could veer into being too bitter, so we found them great – a splash of milk balanced it out perfectly for us.