Coffee Steep Bags, Explained: Real Low-Acid Organic Coffee in a Tea Bag

Every few weeks someone emails us the same question, usually from an airport: "Do you make anything I can take with me?" We do, and most people have never heard of it. Our coffee steep bags are real ground coffee in a filter bag. You steep one in a mug of hot water the way you'd steep tea, and three minutes later you're drinking the same coffee you drink at home.

That last part is the one I want to be clear about, because "coffee in a tea bag" sounds like a gimmick until you've had one. It isn't instant. It isn't a pod that needs a machine. It's 13 grams of our organic, convection-roasted, low-acid coffee, which is a full scoop, sealed up so it's ready wherever you are.

What's actually in the bag

Each bag is a fine mesh filter made from sugarcane-based PLA, tied off with a cotton string and a little paper tag. There's no glue holding it together. Inside is 0.46 oz of freshly ground coffee. For comparison, that's a bit more than most pods hold.

Every bag comes in its own sealed foil packet. Jon, our roaster, packs the coffee right after roasting, while it's still releasing CO2, and that gas pushes the oxygen out of the packet. So the last bag in the box tastes like the first one did, even if the box has been in your desk drawer since October.

How it compares to instant and pods

I get asked this a lot, so here's the honest version.

Instant coffee is coffee that was brewed, then dehydrated into crystals. It's convenient, but you can taste what the process takes out. A steep bag has never been brewed; you're brewing it. It tastes like a French press cup because that's essentially what it is.

Pods make good coffee (we sell them too), but they need a machine, and the machine is never where you are at 6 a.m. in a hotel. A box of ten steep bags is flat, weighs a few ounces, and works with any source of hot water.

If you drink coffee for the taste and not just the caffeine, this is the travel option that doesn't feel like settling.

Why I care about low acid on the road especially

Travel is rough on a sensitive stomach. Early flights, airport food, a hotel breakfast you didn't choose, and then whatever coffee is sitting on the hot plate. That coffee is almost always drum-roasted and high in acid, and for a lot of our customers it's the exact moment the heartburn starts.

The coffee in our steep bags is the same coffee that's in our bags and pods. It's 100% organic Arabica, roasted with hot air instead of a hot steel drum, with a slow, lower-temperature finish that breaks down more of the chlorogenic acids that cause the trouble. We send every roast to an independent lab and publish the numbers on our lab results page. The steep bag doesn't change any of that. It just changes where you can drink it.

How to make one

1. Tear open the packet and drop the bag in your mug, tag hanging out.
2. Pour in 6 to 10 oz of hot water, just off the boil. Make sure the whole bag gets wet.
3. Give it at least 3 minutes. Dunk it a few times while you wait.
4. Pull the bag out. It'll be hot, so grab the tag.

Less water (6 to 8 oz) and a few extra dunks gets you a bolder cup. More water (9 to 10 oz) and a 4-minute steep gets you a smoother one. For iced coffee, brew with 6 oz and pour it over a full glass of ice. For cold brew, drop a bag in 10 oz of cold water and leave it in the fridge overnight.

Where people end up using them

• Hotel rooms, with the in-room kettle or the coffee maker run with water only.
• On the plane. Ask for a cup of hot water. The flight attendants have seen it before.
• At the office, in the desk drawer, because the breakroom pot is the breakroom pot.
• Camping and road trips, where there's nothing to wash afterward.
• Guest rooms. The relative who drinks decaf can make their own cup without you brewing a second pot.
• After surgery or during a reset, when a single measured serving is exactly what you want.

The four roasts

• Rise & Shine, our medium roast. Dark chocolate, plum, a little honey.
• French Roast, dark and full-bodied without the burnt edge.
• Half Caff, about 50 mg of caffeine, roughly half a normal cup.
• Decaf, decaffeinated with the Mountain Water Process, no solvents.

Ten bags to a box. If you want to try one before buying a box, we sell single bags for $1.99, and everything we make comes with a 30-day guarantee.

Questions we get

Can I take these on a plane? Yes. They're dry and sealed, and TSA has never had a problem with them.

Can I use a bag twice? You can, but the second cup will be weak. For a big travel mug, use two bags.

Are they compostable? The bag itself is, in an industrial compost program. It's not certified, and the foil wrapper is not compostable, so check what your local program accepts.

Is it really the same coffee as the 12 oz bags? Yes. Same beans, same roast, same lab tests. We didn't make a cheaper coffee for the travel version.

You can shop all four steep bags here. And if you travel a lot, our earlier post on coffee for people who are never home has a few more ideas.