Mushroom coffees, chicory, herbal roasts, matcha, and everything people try when regular coffee stops working for them. We test every drink, read the studies, and won't tell you your favorite brand is best if it isn't.
Start here →AI-generated photograph · image policy
A few weeks ago I wrote up caffeine-free tiramisu, which is the hard one — a dessert where the espresso is load-bearing, where you have to think about egg safety and gluten and an overnight chill, and where getting the soak wrong means you serve sweet cream...
Walk down the functional-drink aisle and count how many packages say the word cortisol. Mushroom coffees, evening blends, “stress support” lattes, adaptogen ...
We’ve now covered nearly every shelf in the caffeine-free aisle. Instant powders. Pods and K-Cups. Cans and bottles you grab and go. Brewable grounds for a p...
I’ve written about most of the places caffeine ambushes you. The office pot and the 3pm coffee run. The airport at 6am. The kitchen ten feet from your desk w...
I have reviewed a lot of herbal coffees. Most of them disappoint in the same way: they’re reasonable herbal drinks, but they taste nothing like coffee, and m...
Ryze is currently the best-selling direct-to-consumer mushroom coffee in the US. It’s worth evaluating on its own terms rather than on the marketing-adjacent...
We tested MUD\WTR Rise against three other mushroom coffees (Ryze, Four Sigmatic, Om) in a blind taste panel. MUD\WTR won on taste by a clear margin. It was ...
Most of us end up on a coffee-alternatives search because something changed: a bad night of sleep, a new medication, a pregnancy, a health scare, or just the creeping sense that the fourth cup isn't doing what the first one used to. The web has plenty of listicles selling the alternatives — far fewer that help you understand them.
We write for the reader in the middle of it: tired, curious, a little skeptical, looking for someone who's actually tried the thing and can say whether it lives up to the claims. We include the products we think are worth trying, we disclose the ones we earn a commission on, and we never rank something first because of a payout.
No email list yet — we'd rather not take your address until we can actually use it. New articles go out on the RSS feed.