Low Acid Coffee - Puroast Coffee – A Kinder, Gentler Coffee?

Puroast Coffee – A Kinder, Gentler Coffee?

Puroast Coffee boasts that it has rediscovered a method of roasting coffee beans that results in great tasting coffee with 50% less acid than most major U.S. coffee brands. The company uses a special process of slow-roasting green coffee beans that results in roasted coffee with a smooth flavor and lower levels of two kinds of acid that are thought to cause acid reflux.

According to the company founder, Kerry Sachs, it wasn’t his intent to develop low acid coffee when he first started roasting and selling Puroast. While working in Venezuela, he learned about a method of slow-roasting coffee that resulted in coffee that he thought tasted better than most supermarket coffees.
It was only after the company’s Puroast coffee hit the shelves in Kroger’s markets in California that customer feedback alerted them that their coffee was kinder to stomachs. Intrigued, Sachs approached a chemist at the University of California-Davis to analyze his coffee and find out why Puroast coffee didn’t seem to cause stomach problems and heartburn.

The chemist, Dr. Takayuki Shibamoto, is a professor and researcher at the University of California at Davis. His specialties include food toxicology and the study of how different foods affect the body. He analyzed samples of Puroast coffee and several other brands of coffee and later published his findings in a paper. His results showed that Puroast coffee contained up to a third lower concentrations of the acids that make other brewed coffee bitter, as well as lower concentrations of other acids that may be responsible for causing stomach discomfort.

In addition to the research conducted by Dr. Shibamoto, Puroast has also conduced numerous surveys about their customers’ experiences when switching from regular coffee to Puroast coffee. They’ve found that among those who respond to their survey, over 48% reported at least partial relief of their gastrointestinal symptoms, and another 27.6% found that their stomach pain, acid reflux and heartburn completely disappeared after they started drinking Puroast low acid coffee.

The secret to Puroast’s low acid coffee is in a patented proprietary roasting method that approximated the “Lost Art of Roasting” that Sachs learned about in Venezuela. Most coffees are roasted at high temperatures in convection roasters. Puroast roasts their coffee beans at lower temperatures for a longer time in conduction roasters. As a result, the beans don’t develop the same bitter acids that coffees roasted at high temperatures do.

But what about the taste? The reviews have been great, and that’s not just according to Puroast’s own research. Back in 2006, both Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal conducted independent taste tests of several low acid coffees, including Folger’s Simply Smooth low acid coffee. In both tests, Puroast’s coffee took the top spot for taste. Newsweek saluted Puroast’s nutty flavor and aroma as giving the coffee high marks.

Puroast Coffee is available at select grocers and supermarkets around the country. For more information about Puroast Low Acid Coffee, visit www.puroast.com.