Best coffee beans to buy online 2025, tested and reviewed

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Best coffee beans to buy online in 2025

Available from Grind – 227g (from £9), Waitrose – 200g (£5.50), Tesco – 200g (£5.50), Ocado – 200g (£6), Amazon – 1kg (£22.50)

Best supermarket coffee beans

Coffee type: blend
Sourcing details of coffee tested: Brazil, Colombia
Flavour notes: dark chocolate, almond, cherry, caramel
Recommended brew methods: pour-over, Aeropress, cafetière, moka pot, espresso

With 14 locations in London, including cafés, coffee shops and trucks, you can also find Grind whole coffee beans, grounds and coffee pods in most major UK supermarkets like Waitrose and Tesco.

The brand’s house blend is as simple and classy as it gets, and comes in a reusable pale pink tin that can be refilled at any of its locations. The coffee itself has an emphasis on big, sweet notes, with just enough acidity to keep things interesting.

With a medium roast, this will satisfy a range of coffee drinkers, as it doesn’t have the bitter or carbonic notes that we tasted in other house blends. We found it to be a solid all-rounder, performing well across different brew types and looking great while doing it.

Available from:

Kiss the Hippo – Nancy Pacas

Available from Kiss the Hippo (from £10.50)

Best coffee beans for pour-over

Coffee type: single origin
Sourcing details of coffee tested: La Paz, Honduras
Flavour notes: mandarin, black tea, milk chocolate
Recommended brew methods: pour-over, Aeropress, espresso

Kiss the Hippo was launched in 2018, but assembling a team of professionals with impressive coffee credentials has already helped it rocket to the top of many coffee lovers’ lists.

While its blends are a safe place to start, we love its single origin line-up, in particular the Nancy Pacas, which hails from La Paz in Honduras. It has a light, citrussy profile and makes for a fruit-forward pour-over with a bit of oomph, while the chocolaty notes bring a touch of sweetness.

We’ve also previously tested the classic Donna Blend, a darker roast sourced from Uganda and Brazil, which has notes of caramel, dark chocolate and walnut – perfect for a cafetière or moka pot.

Available from:

Pact Coffee – house blend

Available from Pact Coffee (from £8.95)

Best coffee beans for French press

Coffee type: blend
Sourcing details of coffee tested: multiple locations (not specified)
Flavour notes: milk chocolate, toffee
Recommended brew method: moka pot, French press/cafetière

Pact Coffee has been running since 2012 and has become one of the most visible coffee subscription services in the UK. It’s achieved B-Corp company status – its coffee bags can be recycled and it also offers coffee in recyclable aluminium pods designed to be compatible with coffee pod systems.

We enjoyed the House Coffee dark roast blend, which is sourced from multiple coffee farms and roasted at Pact Coffee’s HQ in Haslemere. This particular batch is smooth and sweet, with a hit of caramel at the front of the mouth from the first sip. As it’s low in acidity, it worked especially well with brewing methods that require longer contact time, such as cafetière/French press or moka pot.

Available from:

Origin Coffee Roasters – Resolute blend

Available from Origin Coffee (from £8.50 for 250g)

Best coffee beans for latte

Coffee type: blend
Sourcing details of coffee tested: Colombia, Nicaragua
Flavour notes: stone fruit, caramel, milk chocolate
Recommended brew method: espresso, pour-over, Aeropress, cafetière

From Cornwall to the bustling streets of Shoreditch, Origin Coffee has made a name for itself. Taking top awards in many of the UK’s coffee competitions, the team at Origin is made up of some of the country’s most well-respected baristas, roasters and wholesalers.

We tasted Origin’s Resolute beans, a medium-roast blend from Huila, Colombia and Jinotega, Nicaragua. Huila is a region known for producing bright, acidic coffee with fruit notes, while beans from Jinotega have a creamier profile reminiscent of chocolate, raisins and vanilla. Together, this makes for a dynamic, complex brew that sings in a latte, but works perfectly as a pour-over, too.

Available from:

Rounton Coffee Roasters – Granary blend

Available from Rounton Coffee Roasters – 250g (from £7.75), Amazon – 1kg (from £26.55)

Best medium-roast coffee beans

Coffee type: blend
Sourcing details of coffee tested: Brazil, El Salvador, Uganda
Flavour notes: chocolate, hazelnut, caramel
Recommended brew method: pour-over, cafetière/French press

North Yorkshire-based Rounton is working through a road map to sustainability. So far, its coffee bags are carbon neutral and fully recyclable, and it’s involved with long-term projects designed to help the communities that grow its coffee, like Agri Evolve’s ACE 2023 project, which supports farmers in Uganda.

Rounton’s Granary blend is named after the building in which the roaster is located and we thought it was a solid all-rounder with a nutty, chocolate base and smooth yet bold finish. It pairs well with milk but to appreciate its full complexity we recommend enjoying it black as a French press or pour-over.

Available from:

Assembly Coffee – house espresso

Available from Assembly Coffee (from £10)

Best coffee beans for espresso

Coffee type: single origin
Sourcing details of coffee tested: Risaralda, Colombia
Flavour notes: plum, brown sugar
Recommended brew method: espresso, moka pot, Aeropress

Brixton-based Assembly Roastery was founded in 2015 with a focus on quality, insights and innovation in the coffee industry. Passionate about premium coffee, you’ll find some very rare and exclusive coffee on its site.

It goes into great detail in the descriptions for each offering, so if you feel about coffee the way a sommelier does about wine, this brand will really appeal. As an example of its passion for premium coffee, the head roaster Claire Wallace won the 2022 United Kingdom Barista Championship before heading to the World Barista Championships in the same year, where she came third in the final.

For tasting, we enjoyed the house espresso from Risaralda, Caldas – one of Colombia’s most prolific coffee regions. We loved this coffee as an espresso, where its rich, full-bodied profile combined with sweet, syrupy notes of stone fruits and brown sugar – making for a perfectly balanced cup.

Available from:

Owens Organic Coffee – Coast blend

Available from Owens (£8.10)

Best organic coffee beans

Coffee type: arabica and robusta blend
Sourcing details of coffee tested: Honduras
Flavour notes: chocolate, cherry and clove
Recommended brew method: moka pot, cafetière, espresso

Based in Devon, Owens was the first organic coffee roaster in the South West and has been roasting coffee beans since 2010. Sustainability is a huge focus for the business – all of the beans are organically grown via Fairtrade practices and its coffee bags can be recycled in the plastic recycling facilities usually found in most supermarkets. Owens also uses a high-tech smoke-free roaster, which is powered by 80% less energy than traditional roasters.

There’s a range of whole beans, pre-ground coffee and pods to choose from, plus single-origin and house blends. We sampled one of its newest offerings, Coast, which blends arabica and robusta beans to produce a dark, rich brew. If you’re a fan of Italian coffee, which also typically uses robusta and is more bitter than acidic, this is an ideal pick – it’s earthy and intense, with notes of dark chocolate.

Available from:

Volcano Coffee Works – The Mount Blend

Available from Volcano Coffee Works (from £8)

Best all-rounder coffee beans

Coffee type: blend
Sourcing details of coffee tested: El Salvador, Columbia, Brazil
Flavour notes: Caramel, red grapes, milk chocolate
Recommended brew method: espresso, Aeropress, moka pot, cafetière, pour-over

Based in the suburbs of south London, Volcano Coffee Works was founded by Kurt Stewart in 2010. Bringing his experience of New Zealand coffee culture with him to the UK, the company is committed not only to coffee being not just good, but also sustainability and ethically traded. It’s working towards carbon-neutral status and pays its suppliers more than the Fairtrade rates for the coffee.

In the tasting we were impressed by The Mount Blend, which is a mixture of beans from El Salvador, Columbia and Brazil. As a blend, it has a more consistent flavour profile than a specific crop or specific harvest.

We picked up smooth sweetness of milk chocolate, plus even a playful note of candy floss with delicate acidity to keep everything in balance. Subtle sharpness came through as hints of lime zest and sherry vinegar, while a light bitterness reminded us of grape and plum skins. We found this incredibly versatile, showing itself well in all brew methods.

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Other coffee beans tried and tested

• Redemption Roasters – The Block, from £8
• Rave Coffee – Signature Blend, £6.95
• Small Batch Coffee Roasters – Papua New Guinea Kange, £15

How we tested coffee beans

Sweetness: Coffee contains naturally occurring sugars that are brought out by the roasting process. While some beans have higher concentrations than others, the roaster is typically responsible for the sweetness in a cup. We looked for coffees with plenty of sugary notes and coffees with more unusual types of sweetness, which scored higher than those with more common features.

Acidity: Most of us underestimate the importance of acidity in coffee but the level of acid signifies where a coffee is from, how it was processed and even at what altitude it was grown. Acidity, like sweetness, can range from simple to complex. We scored coffees with more complex or enjoyable forms of acidity higher in our blind taste test.

Bitterness: When coffee is roasted, some of its inherent bitterness is diminished, making it more palatable for human consumption. However, if roasted too dark, the roasting itself produces bitter flavours, most of which we perceive as unpleasant. We looked for coffees with a low-to-medium bitterness, and with no acrid or carbonic notes.

Balance: Much of what defines our favourite coffee experiences depends on our personal preferences. However, balance is a way of determining objective overall flavour. In our blind taste test, we defined balance as harmony across the three flavour categories. Combined with a good roast profile, these flavours work together to create a balanced cup.

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Can you recommend a brand of coffee beans? Leave a comment below…

This review was last updated in January 2025. If you have any questions, suggestions for future reviews or spot anything that has changed in price or availability please get in touch at goodfoodwebsite@immediate.co.uk.