Blocked

How much caffeine is actually left in this decaf?

ALS-COFFEE-1.2-DECAF-003

This question matters to a buyer and CANNOT be answered from a public product page today. What would be required is stated in full.

Why this cannot be run

Blocked by G-03, G-06.

Assertion

residual_caffeine matches_format a quantity with a stated basis

Applicability

applies when
the product is decaffeinated coffee
signal
undecidable_from_public_data

Accepted evidence

  • product_description — a residual-caffeine figure with its basis stated — a percentage of original caffeine, or a mass on a stated dry-weight or per-serving basis with the dose and volume named

Explicitly insufficient evidence

What does not count, and why. Published because the omission is where a check quietly becomes a claim.

  • "caffeine free" or "naturally caffeine-free"
    Decaffeinated coffee is never caffeine free under any construction, and a mainstream trade body puts the residue in the low milligrams per cup.
  • "99.9% caffeine free" with no basis
    A percentage of what — the original caffeine, the bean mass, the brewed cup — changes the meaning by orders of magnitude, and the number looks well-formed either way.
  • a milligram figure with no dose, water volume or brew method
    Without the inputs the number is not reproducible by the buyer and states nothing checkable.
  • a percentage threshold quoted as a legal requirement
    There is no US standard of identity for decaffeinated roasted coffee and the commonly quoted removal figure originates with a trade association rather than a regulation, so citing it as law is wrong.
  • "meets FDA standards"
    The applicable federal provision caps a solvent residue rather than caffeine content, so the phrase reassures about a different question than the one asked.
  • an EU threshold for coffee extract applied to whole beans
    That limit governs a different product, and applying it to roasted beans is a jurisdiction and product-scope error.

Conflict rules

  • When a percentage and a milligram figure both appear — then record both with their bases; the standard reports the stated figures rather than converting between them

Discrimination

Authored expectation: no prediction, confidence low. The numeric band this standard used to carry is not published at this grammar version.

Almost no retail decaf page publishes a residual figure with a basis, so this would fail for nearly everyone. It is published as blocked because the question is real and current, not because the assertion would be worth running as written.

The numeric fail-rate band this reasoning was authored with is NOT carried at grammar 1.2 and is not reproduced here. Authored bands held 1 of 10 against this category's own sample and every miss was HIGH, so a direction derived from the band would inherit the error that condemned it (SCHEMA.md §9.3 step 3). The band survives in ALS-COFFEE v1.1 (standard_hash f8ec2780f60c38931913e5b6cd37506500c8462709209de7180ba6691d6137e7), which is byte-frozen and still served.

For a shopper

Decaf is not caffeine free, and how much remains varies. Any figure without its basis — per what dose, in what volume, measured how — cannot be reproduced or compared, which is why most stated numbers tell you nothing.

For a merchant

If you have a laboratory result, publish the residual caffeine with its basis and the analysis date; otherwise state plainly that decaffeinated coffee retains a small amount rather than implying none.

Grounding

  • National Coffee Association (trade_body)
    that decaffeinated coffee retains a small measurable quantity of caffeine rather than none, which is the fact that makes caffeine-free wording on a decaf page false
  • Independent refuting pass, live search-intent retrieval (internal_measurement)
    that whether decaf is really decaf, whether it is caffeine free, and whether it is safe in pregnancy are all live autocomplete completions, placing residual caffeine inside the verified shopper-driven decaf cluster