Editorial Team
Coffee Alternatives
When our roundups, side-by-side comparisons, and broader buying guides are group efforts — which they usually are — we byline them together.
A piece under “Editorial Team” means at least two of our writers contributed significant tasting notes, research, or copy. We flag individual authorship on anything that’s clearly one person’s voice.
Articles by Editorial
Best caffeine-free coffee pods and K-Cups for a Keurig: what actually exists, and the traps to skip
There’s a specific frustration we hear constantly from readers leaving coffee: they own a Keurig, they don’t want to abandon it, and the pod aisle is almost ...
Best instant coffee alternatives, ranked: what actually dissolves and tastes like something
There’s a particular reader we think about a lot: someone who has decided to get off coffee but who is never, realistically, going to stand at the stove with...
The best coffee alternatives at the grocery store: what's actually on the shelf tonight
We get a particular kind of email more than any other: someone has decided to quit coffee, they want to start tonight, and they don’t want to wait two days f...
Chicory coffee vs dandelion coffee: the honest head-to-head between the two roasted roots
Two roots keep showing up at the top of every “what can I drink instead of coffee” list: chicory and dandelion. They look almost identical in the mug — dark,...
The best cold-brew coffee alternative: which caffeine-free options actually survive cold water
Every May we get a wave of the same email: it is warming up, the reader has happily given up coffee, and now they want a cold-brew version of whatever they h...
Teeccino vs Dandy Blend: a fair head-to-head from people who drink both
Every few weeks a reader emails us some version of the same question: “I’m trying to quit coffee — should I get Teeccino or Dandy Blend?” Both names come up ...
Is Four Sigmatic worth it? An honest review of the mushroom-coffee mainstay
Four Sigmatic has been around long enough that it’s no longer the underdog. When we started covering mushroom coffee, Four Sigmatic was the brand readers had...
Mushroom coffee vs regular coffee: the honest head-to-head
We get this question a lot: is mushroom coffee actually better than regular coffee, or is it a trend with good marketing? The answer, like a lot of things, i...
The Best Caffeine-Free Coffee Alternatives in 2026
If you’ve landed here, you’ve probably already figured out that “caffeine-free” is a bigger tent than it sounds. It includes the herbal blends that try to ta...
The Best Herbal Coffee in 2026: Caffeine-Free Picks That Actually Taste Like Coffee
Somewhere in year two of drinking herbal coffee daily, it stops being a substitute and starts being the thing itself. You stop comparing it to coffee. You st...
The Best Chicory Coffee in 2026: Tested and Ranked
Chicory coffee is one of those drinks that feels new to a lot of Americans and is, in fact, two centuries old. It was the workaround during the Continental B...
The Best Mushroom Coffee in 2026: An Honest Roundup
Somewhere between the third LinkedIn post about “brain fog” and the fourth Instagram ad for adaptogens, most of us have heard the pitch for mushroom coffee. ...
Ryze Mushroom Coffee review: lower caffeine, real mushrooms, fair price
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...
MUD\WTR Rise review: the best-tasting mushroom coffee we've tried
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 ...