The next was ready for presentation in the cRc Pesach Seminar held at Congregation K.I.N.S. in Chicago on March 31, 2008.
What is within tea and coffee that may make sure they are unacceptable for Pesach? Although espresso beans and tea foliage is inherently kosher for Pesach,1 we notice you will find three processes completed to the beans or leaves which potentially raise Pesach concerns, namely decaffeination, drying, and flavoring. Before we discuss individuals processes, it’s useful to go over the 2 other processes which all coffee beans must undergo to produce their flavor, i.e. roasting and brewing. [Our discussion will concentrate on coffee, and tea is going to be discussed in the finish want to know ,.
The procedure for roasting espresso beans changes their color from eco-friendly to brown and helps get the flavor brewing the (ground) beans then discharges the taste in to the water. Almost all coffee offered in shops has already been roasted, and a great deal of coffee is made within the factory and offered as “instant coffee”. Instant coffee is created by taking out the liquid area of the made coffee to produce particles of solidified coffee these particles could be diluted in water to produce a cup of instant coffee. The roasting and brewing steps don’t present a Pesach concern.
Note: Whichever kind of coffee you utilize for Pesach, whether it’s the kind which requires special Pesach supervision or even the type that you can use without special certification for Pesach (as described in the following paragraphs), one should not make use of the same jar/canister that has been used all year round. A brand new jar/canister ought to be purchased to be used throughout Pesach. For those who have set aside a Pesach-designated jar/canister in the finish from the previous Pesach and haven’t tried on the extender throughout the year, you can utilize it again in this year’s Pesach season.
We currently turn to another three processes.
Decaffeination
For that lots of people who benefit from the taste of coffee but don’t want the stimulation supplied by the caffeine, companies allow us a couple of ways of removing caffeine in the beans prior to being roasted. The most popular denominator between your different methods would be that the beans are exposed to a (hot) liquid which attracts the caffeine from the bean.
The liquid employed for decaffeination might be water, a compound solvent (i.e. ethyl acetate, methylene chloride, co2), or a mix of the 2 (i.e. water extracts the caffeine in the beans, and so the solvent can be used to extract the caffeine for that water prior to the water is reused). In instances where caffeine solvent has direct connection with the beans, the beans are frequently drenched in serious trouble or steam to melt them prior to the solvent is used.
The Pesach difficulties with these processes are that (a) ethyl acetate might be produced from chametz and (b) water used along the way may also be purified (hot) on the carbon bed, that is consequently purified with hot ethyl alcohol, which can be produced from chametz.2 Because of these concerns, caffeine free coffee is just suggested on Pesach whether it bears a dependable kosher certification, which guarantees the decaffeination process doesn’t have traces of chametz or kitnios.
Drying
As noted, instant coffee is made within the factory and so the liquid coffee is “dried” into particles that the consumer reconstitutes with warm water. The roasting,3 brewing, and drying equipment employed for coffee is usually assumed to become focused on processing pure coffee and for that reason there’s no real concern that it absolutely was employed for chametz.
A couple of years back it had been learned that some companies add maltodextrin towards the liquid coffee before they dry it, and they’re not needed to list out that additive around the component panel. Maltodextrin might be chametz (or kitnios or innocuous), and and so the discovery that it could maintain coffee made people think that all instant coffee requires Pesach hashgachah. However, after more cautious, it grew to become obvious this restriction might be modified somewhat, in line with the two ways of drying instant coffee – spray drying and freeze-drying.
Spray-drying is an easy process where small particles of liquid coffee are sprayed right into a chamber that is so hot that all the water instantly boils from the coffee. Spray-drying can be used in lots of industries and it is relatively cheap and straightforward. However, freeze-drying is definitely an costly and time-consuming process which gradually removes moisture from frozen coffee under vacuum using “sublimation” which enables the liquid to visit from being frozen to vapor without ever finding yourself in a liquid form.
So, why would anybody spend a lot money and take 24 hrs to freeze-dry their coffee whether they can just spray-dry it? The reply is that freeze-dried coffee has a lot of original flavor and hydrates more rapidly than spray-dried coffee. As pertains to Pesach there’s also another difference maltodextrin is helpful in preparing spray-dried coffee but wouldn’t be utilized in freeze-dried coffee. Therefore, we are able to clarify the restriction noted above to become that spray-dried instant coffee shouldn’t be used without Pesach hashgachah.
Can there be in whatever way to understand whether a specific make of instant coffee is spray-dried or freeze-dried? The surprising response is it’s really fairly simple. As possible observed in the images, freeze-dried coffee comes from the drier in (small) chunks while spray-dried coffee is really a powder. A lot of companies make use of a second process referred to as agglomeration around the spray-dried coffee to obtain the particles to clump together (so that they will appear a lot more like costly freeze-dried chunks and they also will hydrate faster), but if a person squeezes the agglomerated clump between their fingers the clumps will immediately go back to their powdered form. As a result, anybody who experiments having a couple of examples of coffee can certainly learn how to separate freeze-dried instant coffee (which doesn’t pose a Pesach concern) and spray-dried (that ought to simply be combined with Pesach certification).
Flavoring
A fair quantity of flavor sheds once the espresso beans are caffeine free, roasted, made, and dried. For many years, coffee companies make special efforts to capture the getting away flavor and reintroduce it towards the end product, as well as in that sense, almost all coffee is “flavored”. However, this kind of flavoring is assumed to not pose a Pesach concern, because we assume how the information mill just producing coffee and little else of significance.
To the other hands, recently, the idea of (truly) flavored coffee has be popular, and something can buy coffee flavored to taste like cinnamon, almonds, pumpkin, hazelnut as well as Vienna Strudel! The taste is usually added right before packaging and could be located in most types of coffee including regular, caffeine free, freshly ground, and instant.
A general rule in kashrus is the fact that anything that is flavored requires kosher certification if the flavor is called natural or artificial, and flavored coffee isn’t any exception towards the rule.
As one example of this, I checked out the formulas for French Vanilla coffee flavor produced by two different flavor companies. One company were built with a easy formula featuring its just two ingredients, one of these includes a carrier which may be chametz but wouldn’t be a problem b’dieved, and yet another that is probably not chametz. The 2nd company’s formula contained 12 ingredients in addition to sub-formula which contained 26 ingredients along with a sub-sub-formula which contained yet another 12 ingredients! From the 50 ingredients within this formula, I identified 9 that lead flavor and can be fermented from wheat, a whisky consequence, or created from grain alcohol.
Summary
The chart at right summarizes the 3 issues you have to consider before utilizing a coffee for Pesach.
Tea for Pesach
Black, eco-friendly, white-colored, yellow, oolong, and jasmine tea are inherently kosher for Pesach. the problems with decaffeination and flavoring affect tea in the same manner they affect coffee. For your reason all caffeine free tea and all sorts of flavored tea (including most herbal teas) must only be utilized on Pesach when they bear a suitable Pesach certification.
1 See Sha’arei Teshuvah 453:1 (citing Responsa Shvus Yaakov II:5) and Pri Megadim (M.Z.) 453:1 which condition that espresso beans and tea foliage is not kitnios.
2 In reality, the priority that ethyl acetate utilized in decaffeination might render the beans forbidden for Pesach experience a b -’dieved level is not obvious, the following: Ethyl acetate is unusual in that it’s toxic in the levels employed for decaffeination but when it’s utilized in small amounts (ppm) it’s safe and it is a comparatively common flavor component which qualifies like a milsah d’avidah lit’amah. Because of the danger (and taste) of ethyl acetate, the coffee company ensures to get rid of all traces from it in the beans. As a result, once the ethyl acetate reaches high proportions it’s inedible/poison and can’t make the beans to become forbidden. The Pesach problem is that the organization might have just removed enough ethyl acetate to prevent danger but left enough to become nosein ta’am within the beans. The reason why not to be worried about this are that (a) the businesses possess a strong incentive to get rid of all ethyl acetate and claim that they can just do that, (b) a milsah d’avidah lit’amah could be batel if it’s so diluted in order to not be nosein ta’am, quite likely in our situation where it’s mixed into coffee (that is very flavorful), and (c) it’s only a safek when the ethyl acetate is chametz.
Ethyl alcohol isn’t harmful and then the companies don’t have the strong incentive to get rid of all traces from it in the beans (or water), however in practice the information mill careful to get rid of all traces in the end product (which is really a easy process). As a result, the reason why noted above regarding ethyl acetate would seem to use to ethyl alcohol too. There’s even the additional component that in small proportions ethyl alcohol isn’t an avidah lit’amah and could be batel b’shishim.
Around the other hands, Rav Schachter highlights that there’s grounds to become machmir regarding beans which had direct connection with the ethyl acetate (or ethyl alcohol) according to Magen Avraham 447:38 who shows that food which absorbed chametz should l’chatchilah ‘t be eaten on Pesach even when all of the absorbed chametz is taken away (although there’s no ChaNaN on chametz before Pesach). It’s not obvious if Magen Avraham applies within our situation where (a) there’s likely only a fleeting second once the beans have absorbed exactly the quantity of ethyl acetate that is safe and nosein ta’am concurrently, and (b) the ethyl acetate is just safek chametz. [See also Mishnah Berurah 447:89 who doesn’t completely accept Magen Avraham].
Regardless from the questions elevated whether the decaffeination process causes the coffee to get forbidden, the written text claims that one should avoid using caffeine free coffee without Pesach supervision, as it is advisable to avoid any chance of chametz finding yourself in one’s Pesach food.
3 We view there are Pesach difficulties with caffeine free coffee beans, along with a question continues to be elevated why the roasting equipment is assumed never to be utilized for chametz, if it’s employed for roasting individuals beans. One answer recommended is that ethyl acetate continues to be taken off the beans before they achieve the roaster, so that it may be proper to not make use of the caffeine free beans themselves, however the beans cannot possibly make the roaster itself to get forbidden. However, this answer might not be correct, because it seems that it’s the heat from the roasting which evaporates the ethyl acetate from the beans, so that the beans enter into the roaster laden with ethyl acetate and just lose the ethyl acetate once the roaster will get hotter than 170° F. [Yet this answer may be justified in line with the rationales outlined in the last footnote regarding why the caffeine free coffee itself might be allowed on Pesach].
Rabbi Mordechai Kuber recommended a less complicated answer – the espresso beans aren’t inherently chametz but have just absorbed chametz (i.e. ethyl acetate), and there’s a principle that absorbed tastes cannot transfer from the food to some utensil with no liquid medium between your food and utensil (אין הבלוע יוצא מאוכל לכלי בלי רוטב ) (see Taz 105:16 yet others). Therefore, within our situation in which the caffeine free beans are dry-roasted, there’s not a way for that absorbed chametz to transfer in to the roaster.
Can there be in whatever way to understand whether a specific make of instant coffee is spray-dried or freeze-dried? The surprising response is it’s really fairly simple. As possible observed in the images, freeze-dried coffee comes from the drier in (small) chunks while spray-dried coffee is really a powder. A lot of companies make use of a second process referred to as agglomeration around the spray-dried coffee to obtain the particles to clump together (so that they will appear a lot more like costly freeze-dried chunks and they also will hydrate faster), but if a person squeezes the agglomerated clump between their fingers the clumps will immediately go back to their powdered form. As a result, anybody who experiments having a couple of examples of coffee can certainly learn how to separate freeze-dried instant coffee (which doesn’t pose a Pesach concern) and spray-dried (that ought to simply be combined with Pesach certification).
