Darker Mornings, Better Coffee: Why Your Autumn Cuppa Might Be Working Against You

When the clocks go back on 25 October, the school run suddenly starts in the dark, and another coffee can feel like the only way to get through it. One coffee expert says that drinking more is rarely the answer. Paying closer attention to when you drink coffee, how much you drink and what is actually in your cup could make those gloomy weeks much easier to manage.

For parents and carers juggling packed lunches, missing shoes and a commute in the half light, coffee is often what keeps the whole household moving. James Bellis, the British founder of wellness-focused speciality coffee brand Balance Coffee, believes many of us get our autumn routine wrong by thinking about quantity rather than quality and timing. He has spent more than 15 years in the coffee industry, including a spell with Italian espresso machine maker Sanremo, where he covered the UK from Scotland to Devon and visited nearly 300 roasteries.

“Most people answer the dark with more coffee,” he says. “In my experience the answer is better coffee, at the right time.”

These are his suggestions for a coffee routine that helps rather than hinders this season.

Know when to stop

According to James, the afternoon cup is far more likely to cause problems than the first one of the day. Long, dark evenings make the afternoon drag, so a pick-me-up is tempting. A poor night’s sleep then leaves you wanting even more caffeine the next morning, and the cycle carries on. The European Food Safety Authority notes that a single 100mg dose of caffeine may affect sleep in some adults, particularly when it is taken close to bedtime.

His advice is to keep full-strength coffee for the morning and to choose a cut-off time and keep to it. If you really enjoy an afternoon coffee, a half-caf version is a gentler option. Balance Coffee is launching its own half-caf blend in November, which contains half the caffeine of its regular coffee.

Count your cups

“Three rushed cups won’t fix a short night’s sleep,” says James. The European Food Safety Authority’s guidance is that up to 400mg of caffeine a day, spread across the day, raises no safety concerns for healthy adults, with the exception of pregnant women. Because the amount of caffeine varies widely from one cup and one coffee shop to the next, James suggests that if you find yourself on your fourth coffee before lunch, it is worth cutting down the number of cups rather than looking for a stronger one.

Read the packet

Many parents already check food labels in the supermarket, and James reads coffee packaging in much the same way. He looks for four things: a roast date to show the coffee is fresh, 100% Arabica beans, a named country of origin and an independent lab test. The first three, he explains, suggest the coffee will taste good, while the fourth tells you what is not in it.

Look for testing

Coffee is a crop like any other. It is grown, dried, stored and shipped, and mould can get in at any stage. Global reviews of published studies have found ochratoxin A, a toxin produced by mould, in more than half of the coffee samples tested. UK law limits how much is allowed in roasted coffee, but there is no requirement for anyone to check. Roasting destroys most of it, though not all, which is why James’s brand sends its coffee to an independent laboratory. The brand says the lab tested for five mould toxins and could not detect any of them, and the full report is published online.

Give pods another chance

James admits he used to think pods meant lower quality coffee, until a three-time UK Barista Champion handed him a speciality capsule in Bath in 2018 and it turned out to be one of the best coffees he had tasted. That moment shaped Balance’s Clean Coffee Pods, which work with Nespresso Original Line machines and hold speciality-grade, 100% Arabica coffee sealed in recyclable aluminium. The brand says its coffee is sourced from the top 5% of farms in Mexico and Uganda and is independently tested for mould toxins, heavy metals and more than 600 pesticides.

“On a dark, rushed morning, the easy cup should also be the clean one,” says James.

Alongside the pods, the Balance Coffee range includes speciality beans, ground coffee and liquid Mushroom Elixirs designed to be added to an existing coffee routine. Find out more at balancecoffee.co.uk.

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