Coffee beans are the seeds of the coffee cherry, which makes them totally vegan in their natural state. However, some practices involving animals or animal products make certain coffees non-vegan.
We’ll run through our top five vegan-friendly coffees and do a deep dive into vegan coffee and ethical coffee farming.
Top 5 Best Vegan-Friendly Coffees
These are our top recommendations for some of the most delicious vegan coffees on the market. They are all entirely vegan and contain no animal products or byproducts.
Naturally, we’ve also selected these options in particular because of their great flavors, rich history, and high quality.
1. DaLat Coffee (100% Arabica)
This 100% arabica coffee is a beautifully delicate mixture of artisanally roasted beans, combined in such a way as to represent the most gentle and modern elements of Vietnamese coffee culture. The Da Lat region of Vietnam is really gorgeous, with rolling hills and flourishing coffee estates — that’s what we had in mind when making this roast. Each cup is super smooth, with some light fruity and floral flavors that stand out among darker undertones.
We source arabica beans from high in the mountains to ensure their acid content is just a touch higher than other Vietnamese beans. This ensures the blend’s unique stone fruit and citrus flavors that will linger delicately on your tongue.
2. Vietnamese Coffee 2.0 (Instant Coconut Latte)
This rich, sweet drink gives you a decadent experience with every mouthful. The authentic taste of the instant coffee itself is traditionally Vietnamese — dark and bold, thanks to the carefully selected robusta beans. This is balanced by coconut and oat milk powders, combined with a natural sweetener in the form of monk fruit to create a smooth and light drink with a delicately sweet flavor.
The flavor isn’t the only thing going for this easy-to-prepare vegan treat — we’ve also included some impressive adaptogens to ensure that each cup gives you a boost in your health as well as your caffeine levels. L-theanine and Korean ginseng are present in each cup, and they have been shown to boost brain power and focus.
3. DaNang Coffee (Arabica x Robusta)
This coffee is a tribute to the coffee culture and vibrancy of Da Nang City — it’s made up of a carefully curated blend of arabica and robusta beans. The flavor strikes a balance of dark bitterness and sharp fruity tones to give you the experience of a great cup of coffee from the heart of Da Nang.
This coffee is also totally vegan, which is different from some other Vietnamese coffees. Because of the intense flavor of robusta beans, some traditional Vietnamese roasters mix their beans with butter and sugar before roasting. This is a choice we deliberately avoided with this blend, opting to give drinkers a taste of the artisanal, delicate, and unadulterated flavors of great Vietnamese coffee, no matter their dietary needs.
4. BanMe Coffee (100% Peaberry Robusta)
Our BanMe coffee is the strongest coffee in the world — every single bean in the bag is peaberry robusta. Robusta beans are naturally more caffeinated than arabica beans are, and this is dialed up yet again with peaberry.
Peaberry coffee beans are the result of a rare mutation in the coffee plant — instead of two seeds forming at the center of the coffee cherry, only one does. It’s a little smaller and rounder than a regular bean, and the plant concentrates nutrients (caffeine included) into that one bean more intensely than when it shares them between a pair.
Aside from the caffeine content, these beans are delicious and impressive. Being entirely robusta-comprised, they have a rich and dark flavor that gives any cup a strong base. After dialing into the flavor, which can be a little bit of a surprise for some, you’re sure to experience a depth of roast unrivaled by other blends.
5. HaNoi Coffee (100% Robusta)
This final coffee on our list is another 100% robusta offering, meaning that each sip is overflowing with earthy, rich, and dark flavor notes.
These particular beans boast a supremely dark roast that caramelizes some of the natural sugars that are formed on the outside of the coffee bean. This means that the flavors of this coffee come through a little sweeter than you might expect, with a lingering malty note in every sip that makes for a truly moreish mouthfeel.
Just like the city of Ha Noi likes its coffee, we’ve aimed to create a drink that’s potent and sharp while also being a treat for the palate. This coffee makes for a powerful and delicious cup.
What Is Non-Vegan Coffee?
The majority of the coffee on the market today is vegan. However, there are occasions where coffee is made non-vegan, from the obvious, like a dairy-milk latte, to the more subtle, like the Vietnamese process of butter roasting coffee beans.
Let’s talk about a couple of these methods you may not be aware of.
Butter-Roast Coffee
It’s a common Vietnamese tradition to roast coffee beans in butter to draw out more of the flavors, particularly robusta beans.
The reason that this works so well is that coffee undergoes something called the Maillard reaction during roasting, which is where oils, sugars, and other compounds fuse together to create new flavor compounds. Butter also does this, so when butter and coffee are combined before roasting, they work together to produce more rounded, finished flavors.
The coffee is then roasted to a very dark level, which lends itself to very fine grinding. This finely ground coffee is then typically brewed with a phin filter — a traditional Vietnamese drip brewing tool. This combination of techniques is said to produce a coffee with a smooth, rounded, and velvety flavor. Naturally, because of the use of butter, this is not vegan.
Bulletproof Coffee
Bulletproof coffee is a trend that gained popularity in the mid-2010s. It’s not vegan, in the same way a dairy milk latte is: it contains animal products.
Essentially, the concept is simple — it’s a cup of black coffee mixed with unsalted dairy butter and some kind of medium-chain triglyceride (MCT). The science behind MCTs is, pardon the pun, not entirely bulletproof. However, there have been some studies that have shown that MCT intake may help lower calorie intake and thereby reduce body weight.
Kopi Luwak (Weasel Coffee)
Kopi luwak is a type of coffee that has been eaten and pooped out by the Asian palm civet. The animal can digest the fruit of the coffee cherry but not the seed, so those seeds can be collected, cleaned, and roasted into a premium coffee product.
Obviously, this is not a vegan process — an animal is directly involved. Although some farmers work as ethically as they can with these animals, sadly, because kopi luwak can sell for very high prices, the incentive to carry out intensive battery farming is high. This results in force-feeding of coffee cherries along with isolation, small cages, and a high mortality rate.
That being said, some companies have managed to mimic the chemical processes that take place within the civet’s digestive tract to make animal-free coffee. So, if you are interested in the unique taste of kopi luwak, try doing some research into potentially vegan-friendly options.
Honey-processed Coffee
We’ve only included this coffee option in the list because it may be liable to trick you! Honey-processed coffee is actually entirely vegan and contains no honey whatsoever.
In traditional coffee manufacturing, beans are either washed or dry-processed. Washed coffee is where the beans are removed from the cherries entirely before being soaked, washed clean of any fruit, and dried. Dry process coffee, also called natural process, is where the cherries are left to dry in the sun with the beans still inside. Fermentation occurs due to the sugars in the cherries, adding flavors to the beans, which are eventually removed from the fruit, roasted, ground, and brewed.
Honey-processed coffee is essentially halfway between these two extremes. Some of the fruit is left on the beans when they are washed, but not all of it. This allows some level of fermentation but not as much as the natural process. The remaining fruit pulp that’s on the beans can look and smell (thanks to the sugar content) a bit like honey, which is where the process gets its name. After drying, the beans are then removed from the fruit before being roasted, ground, and brewed.
The advantage of the honey process is that it typically uses less water than the washed process. The main reason for this is that the dried-on fruit can be removed during the milling process (where coffee beans are extracted from their husks) rather than needing to be meticulously washed away.
This method can be a great, sustainable way to create some delicious flavors in the final cup of coffee.
Vegan Coffee & Ethical Farming
Thankfully, most coffee out there in the world is vegan, and it’s rare to come across any coffee beans that have a notable addition to make them unsuitable for a vegan diet. However, it’s worth considering veganism less as a black-and-white binary and more as a philosophy to use when thinking about buying items.
Worker Welfare & Fairtrade Practices
For example, even the most beautifully grown, totally vegan coffee beans might be picked and harvested by people who aren’t treated fairly. This is especially the case when you consider that many coffee-producing countries are in the developing world. In situations where there is a lot of inequality, exploitation can be more common since people need money more intensely.
This is one of the reasons why Fairtrade coffee is important. One of the first missions of the Fairtrade organization was to ensure farmers could always receive a fair and stable price for their coffee production. For a vegan product that’s also kind to the people who grow it, always look for Fairtrade labels wherever you can.
Coffee for Charity
You could also consider donating to different charities that help people who grow and process coffee. For instance, Cafely donates a portion of all profits to eco-conscious causes that protect our planet. Furthermore, we invest in community development funds and support smaller farmers by offering them a guaranteed minimum price.
Consider looking for a coffee charity in your favorite coffee-growing region: you may be able to help those most intensely affected by unethical production standards and low wages.
FAQs: Vegan Coffee
So, now that we've done a deep dive into the veganism of coffee let's talk about some core questions that were asked.
1. Is Coffee Vegan?
Yes, coffee is vegan most of the time because coffee beans themselves are grown from a plant. However, if animal products or byproducts are added to the coffee at any point between growth and drinking, the coffee may no longer be vegan.
2. When Is Coffee Not Vegan?
The most common way coffee is made non-vegan is by adding dairy milk or animal-derived sweeteners like honey to the final drink. However, animal products can be added at an earlier point, such as in butter-roasted coffee.
3. Is Coffee Sustainable?
Most of the time, yes, coffee is sustainable. It can be farmed unsustainably, however, and with cruelty to workers taking place. This can happen because a lot of coffee is grown in the developing world, where inequality can be more extreme.
4. How Can I Make Sure I’m Buying Sustainable Coffee?
The best way to ensure your coffee is sustainable is to look for the Fairtrade symbol on the coffee that you buy. One of the first missions of the Fairtrade organization was to ensure fairness to coffee farmers so you can be assured of the efficacy of their work.
5. How Can I Make Sure Instant Coffee Is Vegan?
As with all products, the best way to ensure the coffee is vegan is to look for a vegan-safe disclaimer on the packaging. This can be trickier with an instant latte or instant cappuccino sachet: they can contain milk powder, which may not immediately be recognizable as non-vegan. Look for any milk ingredients, as the source of the milk should be specific on most packaging, whether dairy, oat, soy, or something else.
