Everyone knows what caffeine is. In fact, many of us have it coursing through our bloodstreams right this minute. But how many of us know where our caffeine comes from?

Those who grind their own beans and steep their own tea leaves can answer this question without hesitation. Most caffeine in the world comes from obvious natural sources: coffee, green tea, yerba mate, and so on. But when our caffeine comes in a can, a pill, or a powder, the true origins of our favorite stimulant become a mystery. 

The Two Types of Caffeine

Perhaps you’ve held a caffeine pill in your hand before, and perhaps you’ve noticed that it looks nothing like a coffee bean (nor does it smell like one). So how in the world do chemists derive pure powdered concentrates of caffeine?

There are essentially two possible methods: 

Gathering up the caffeine extracted from plants like coffee and tea during the commercial decaffeination process.

So what we’re looking at here is a natural method of extracting caffeine and a synthetic method of building it with chemistry. 

(A fun fact for the brainiacs: synthetic caffeine is also known as ‘anhydrous’ - a fancy scientific way of saying ‘dehydrated’ - caffeine). 

 Natural Caffeine Extraction


The natural method is a pretty intuitive one. Given the great demand for decaffeinated versions of popular drinks like coffee and tea, beverage manufacturers have developed several methods of extracting caffeine from consumable plant material. In the case of green tea leaves, for example, the process can be as simple as soaking the leaves in water. 

Other labs may make use of chemical solvents, though many prefer supercritical carbon dioxide. And no, supercritical CO2 is not CO2 that puts you down on a bad hair day. While most CO2 appears in nature as either a solid or a gas, supercritical carbon dioxide is CO2 that is artificially held in a liquid state. Supercritical CO2 is a notoriously effective solvent, and is particularly good at extracting caffeine from plant matter. 

By the time the decaffeination process is over, any chemicals used have been cleaned from the treated leaves and the chemists are left with a sizable quantity of naturally sourced caffeine. This pure caffeine is then sold to soft drink and energy drink manufacturers - or at least, the ones with high standards and discerning taste (like Proper Wild, for example). 

The natural process of extracting caffeine is a win-win. Beverage makers who want to remove caffeine from their product win and beverage makers who want to add caffeine to their product win. Unfortunately, there is a problem: the global demand for caffeinated drinks and pure caffeine supplements more than eclipses the amount of caffeine extracted via the natural decaffeination process. 

Furthermore, anhydrous caffeine is less expensive than natural caffeine, especially as natural sources of caffeine become depleted in the face of ever-growing consumption. To meet the enormous global demand for their stimulating products, many of the companies that use caffeine in their beverages turn to purely synthetic lab-derived caffeine powder.