Sometimes, it is. Pesticide, herbicide, and fertiliser residues. Mould toxins. Fillers. Too faint to taste in one cup. But coffee is not one cup. It is every morning, for years, and what you take daily is worth knowing.
Here is what can end up in your cup, and how we keep it out.
Not every coffee. But on the cheapest shelf, more often than anyone prints.
Coffee is one of the more heavily sprayed crops in the world, and among the more heavily fertilised. Well-managed farms control and monitor what they use. The cheapest lots, the ones bound for unmarked blends, are bought by the tonne, and nobody is checking bag by bag.
Green coffee that sits in humid warehouses can develop moulds that produce ochratoxin A, a contaminant the EU regulates strictly enough to turn whole shipments away. Regulation catches what is tested. Storage decides what is there.
Instant mixes are mostly not coffee. Non-dairy creamer, sugar, flavourings, stabilisers, anti-caking agents, then coffee, somewhere near the end of the list. Read a sachet once. That is the whole argument.
None of this means coffee is dangerous. It means the shelf is asking for trust it has not earned.
The most heavily used weedkiller in farming history, and a regular on industrial coffee plantations, sprayed between the rows to keep the ground bare, season after season.
On industrial farms, glyphosate is the cheapest way to keep weeds down, several passes a year, year after year. It settles into the soil, washes toward the roots, and trace residues have been reported in green coffee the same way they turn up in cereals and pulses.
Roasting breaks some of it down. Not all. And the lots bought by the tonne for unmarked blends are the lots nobody is testing for it.
One cup's residue is small. Ten thousand mornings are not.
The WHO's cancer agency, IARC, gave glyphosate that classification in 2015. Studies of heavy, sustained occupational exposure have associated it with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Glyphosate works by blocking an enzyme pathway. Human cells do not have it, but many gut bacteria do, and research has linked chronic low doses to shifts in that ecosystem.
Long-term animal studies report stress markers in both organs at chronic low doses. Animal findings do not transfer directly to people, but they are why the question stays open.
Regulators disagree. Some hold current residue limits safe, others have moved to restrict it. We are not the ones to settle that argument.
The answer to glyphosate is not a test, it is the farming. Our Arabica range is certified organic, and organic certification prohibits glyphosate outright. Each published lot is also screened against a multi-residue pesticide and herbicide panel before roasting, covering several hundred molecules by LC-MS/MS and GC-MS/MS.
Glyphosate needs its own dedicated assay, and it is not part of that panel. We would rather tell you that than imply a number we do not have. You can read every report on the lab-results ledger.
We make no medical claims.
Our mother is a doctor. We grew up reading labels because of it, and we grew up on organic food. Then we went looking for coffee held to that same standard and could not find it.
So we built it, the way she would have wanted it. One ingredient, tested, and nothing in the cup we would not pour for her.
Arabica or Liberica, from named farms. No flavourings, no coatings, no processing aids. Nothing to disclose, because nothing is added.
Lots are screened at independent laboratories accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 for pesticide and herbicide residues and mould toxins, before roasting. Each report is published as its lot clears, on the lab-results ledger.
The roast date comes with every order, not a best-before two years out. Beans leave us within days of the roast, not months.
“Not disclosed” is not an accusation, it is the point. You should not have to guess.
Single farms, single lots, each screened before roasting and each with its report published. No blends. Choose your morning.
Every origin ships as 100 g whole beans, screened before roasting, and roasted to order.
Shop the roast →A standard only means something if it is specific. This is ours, the same for every origin and every batch we roast.
Lots are tested at independent laboratories accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 for pesticide and herbicide residues and mould toxins, including ochratoxin A, before roasting. Each report is published on the lab-results ledger as its lot clears.
Developed to a fixed ceiling and no further. We roast for flavour and stop there, never pushing to char to mask a tired bean.
The roast date comes with every order, not a best-before years out. Beans leave us within days of roasting, not months.
One ingredient, from a named farm and lot. Every order carries a batch code, and the report for that lot is published as it clears.
The first lots we screened were never meant for a shelf. They were for our own kitchen.
Every order we send is roasted from the same lots we brew for the people at our own table, every morning. The standard was set for them, and it has not loosened since we started selling. If a lot would not pass in our kitchen, it does not go out.
In many homes, coffee is the thing poured most often after water. When something taken daily gets cleaner, the baseline moves with it. Clean coffee should not be a privilege for people who read lab reports. It should be the ordinary option, one pantry at a time.
All coffee is chemistry. Hundreds of naturally occurring compounds are what make it taste like anything at all. The honest concern is the unwanted ones: spray residues, storage moulds, and additives. Those are avoidable. They are what we screen for, and what we leave out.
Mould toxins, including ochratoxin A and the aflatoxins, plus a multi-residue pesticide and herbicide panel covering several hundred molecules by LC-MS/MS and GC-MS/MS. All on the green bean, before roasting, at independent laboratories accredited to ISO/IEC 17025. Each report is published on the lab-results ledger as its lot clears.
Not directly, and we will not pretend otherwise. Glyphosate is a polar compound that needs its own dedicated assay; it is not covered by the multi-residue panel our lots are screened against. What we rely on instead is the farming: our Arabica range is certified organic, and organic certification prohibits glyphosate outright.
No. One ingredient: coffee. Arabica across most of the range, and two Malaysian Liberica lots. No flavourings, no coatings, no processing aids.
We roast to order in small batches and post within two working days. The roast date comes with every order, and most coffee brews best from about three days to four weeks after it.
To 46 countries by DHL or FedEx, typically three to five days. Options, rates and times are shown at checkout.
The question was never whether to drink coffee. It is whether you know what is in the cup.
Shop the roast →We make no health or medical claims. Lot screening is about transparency. Coffee should be coffee, and nothing else.
An occasional note on origin, roast, and the work behind the bag. Sent rarely. Read slowly.
