What goes into every bag.
What stays out, and why we bother. The short version is printed on the label. This page is the long version.
Most coffee is never tested for the two compounds most likely to be in it.
Ochratoxin A and aflatoxins are mycotoxins. By-products of moulds that settle on green coffee during drying, transit, and storage. Small amounts, commonly present, rarely mentioned, and almost never measured at the roaster level. The warmer and more humid the route, the higher the risk.
So we send every batch to independent laboratories accredited to ISO/IEC 17025, before it is roasted, and we publish the result against the bag. Not because regulation requires it of a roaster our size. It does not. But because we drink this coffee too.
Every batch, sent out.
Every lot of green beans is tested for ochratoxin A and aflatoxins B1, B2, G1, and G2. The five mycotoxins most commonly found in coffee. They are produced by Aspergillus and Penicillium moulds that colonise beans between harvest and warehouse, and Southeast Asian supply routes are particularly exposed.
Testing is done by independent laboratories accredited to ISO/IEC 17025. We do not test in-house, and we do not self-certify. Certificates are published as each batch clears, on the coffee's page and the lab-results ledger.
One farm, one lot, one harvest.
Every coffee we sell is single origin. One country, one region, one farm. We do not blend. Blending is useful for consistency and useless for traceability. If we cannot tell you exactly where a coffee came from, we cannot tell you what was done to it on the way here.
We buy directly where the relationship allows it. Where it does not, we buy through importers who share the paperwork. The chain from tree to bag should be readable, not a matter of trust.
A constraint, not a badge.
Our Arabica range is certified organic. The certification is not a marketing decision. It is a sourcing constraint that costs more and narrows what we can buy. The constraint is the point. It means the farm was audited, the soil was tested, and the absence of pesticides was documented rather than assumed.
We read labels. For oats, for olive oil, for everything we put in our bodies. It seemed strange that the drink we reach for first each morning had the thinnest labelling of all.
Our Malaysian Liberica is not formally certified. The farms in Taiping and Sarawak grow without chemicals, but certification is prohibitively costly for small Malaysian estates. Organic by practice is not the same as organic by certificate, and we will not blur the line.
Named, numbered, dated.
We roast in-house in Cheras, in small batches, each one named and numbered. Coffee is roasted to order, within 48 hours of dispatch, unless stated.
Every bag carries a roast date. Not a best-before, not a packed-on. The date the beans met the drum. Freshness is not a promise. It is a number you can check.
We roast light to medium across the range, never past second crack. The origin is the subject, and over-roasting buries it.
Made to be used twice.
The packaging has one job, protect the coffee, and then it should get out of the way. Everything we pack in is chosen to be reused or recycled, and we would rather you do the first before the second.
The print is minimal by design. What you need to read: origin, roast date, batch number, lab result. And nothing you need to peel off before the bin will take it.
The full account of what we pack in, and why, is on Sustainability.
Three refusals.
No decaf. Not yet.
Decaffeination that preserves quality and meets our standard exists, but not at a scale we can access affordably. When we find the right partner, we will offer it.
No flavoured beans.
No hazelnut, no vanilla, no pumpkin spice. The coffee is the flavour.
No gas-flushed stock.
We do not roast in advance and seal bags with nitrogen to stretch shelf life. If a bag is on our site, it was roasted this week.
