For decaffeination, is "Mountain Water Process" the same as "Swiss Water Process"?
A sales person said the "Mountain" process is better, because it uses mountain water. (I wonder where they think Switzerland is.)
The two like the same thing to me. (If so, is there a generic term for the process?)
Sales people will do what sales people do - try to sell you stuff. Both processes are identical, using caffeine depleted green coffee extract (GCE) as a base for their extraction, trying to match the concentration of soluble material inside the coffee beans in the GCE. As you correctly stated the mountain process uses mountain water and that's about where the differences stop.
The only difference between mountain water and tap water is the concentration of minerals. Perhaps less minerals are beneficial for a better extraction (in which case, why not use demineralised water instead of mountain water?) but in essence the processes are the same and I have yet to find a reputable Q-Grader that claims mountain water makes the coffee better in any way which can not be achieved with the regular water process.
