We get questions all the time about the issue of mold in coffee. Frequently, these questions come from roasters who are being asked by their wholesale or retail customers. Caught without a good answer, those roasters bring the question to us.
Personally, the mold myth is one of my professional pet peeves. At the specialty level, rigorous quality standards essentially eliminate the health risks of mold in green coffee. When coffee companies make claims that their coffee is mold-free, they're hoping the fear of mold will help them sell more bags. It implies that other roasters' coffee contains mold, and theirs doesn't. It's like saying your coffee is free of ghosts or soot gremlins.
The language around mold in specialty-grade coffee is largely a marketing tactic that does a disservice to everyone in our industry. To put it bluntly, mold in specialty-grade coffee is not an issue. Of course, mold can occur in many agricultural products and can certainly be found in lower-grade commodity coffees that aren't held to such a high standard. But for 'our people' (a term we use to refer to folks roasting on our machines, learning in our classes, and shopping on our greens page), the risk is negligible.
Coffee drying experiments at the Banexport warehouse in Bogotá, Colombia
Broadly speaking, specialty coffee purchased from reputable importers in the US has almost zero risk of mold. All coffee imported into the USA is inspected for defects, including mold. Specialty coffee is held to a very high standard, and green coffee must fall within the acceptable range of moisture content (below the threshold of where mold would occur) to earn a specialty grade.
Over the past few years, many other smart and well-researched coffee professionals have written about this topic. I'll share a few links to posts from them that I have found helpful, in the hopes that readers of this blog may feel the same way. Feel free to share these with your concerned customers whenever they ask.
Mycotoxin, My Condolences by Chris Korman, published on the Royal Coffee blog June, 2025. << Chris is Royal Coffee's director of education and an author of a book about green coffee. He's been researching and writing about mold in green coffee for over ten years.
Are There Really Mycotoxins in My Coffee? by Liz Clayton, published by Sprudge July, 2023. << Liz goes into detail about the health risks of mold, discusses whether buying organic is better, and takes a holistic perspective on this topic. She also writes, "Being worried is a personal choice", which is a great sentence and a better life motto.
On the Unfounded Fears of Coffee Contamination by Fionn Pooler, published on The Pourover in April, 2026. << The Pourover is a wonderful blog full of closely examined articles on coffee. Fionn's lengthy deep-dive covers a ton of information and is a great read.
Mycotoxins in Coffee: What You Actually Need to Know by Evan Kluender, published on the Royal NY blog in May, 2026. << This is a helpful and easy-to-read article with a nice infographic showing how much coffee you would have to drink to be negatively impacted by mold.
Coffee in burlap at Banexport
