Whole bean review · 4 min readGrumpy Mule Kick-Ass House Blend review: the name oversells the coffee
Fairtrade beans from Brazil and Honduras, roasted in West Yorkshire, in a 500g bag at 24p a cup. Punchy branding, smooth coffee.
The name promises a fight and the coffee doesn't pick one. Kick-Ass House Blend is a caramel and milk chocolate blend of Brazilian and Honduran arabica, Fairtrade certified, roasted in Meltham in West Yorkshire, and rated 4 out of 5 for strength by the roaster rather than 5. Smooth and moreish is Grumpy Mule's own description, and the small pool of buyer feedback echoes it back rather than arguing with it. Buy it for the sourcing and the bag size, not for the swagger.
A Fairtrade Brazilian and Honduran blend at 24p a cup, smooth and sweet-leaning despite the aggressive name, in a 500g bag you will actually finish.
- Tastes
- Caramel, milk chocolate, smooth, sweet-leaning
- Strength
- Medium to strong
- Best for
- First proper bag of beans
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 5/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 4/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 5/5
Buy it ifYou want certified sourcing you can actually check, rather than a vague sustainability line.
Skip it ifPrice per kilo is the only number you care about, because this is dearer per kilo than the supermarket bags.
Live prices, sizes and retailers for this coffee sit on its product page. This review is the analysis alongside it. See prices →
What the roaster publishes, and who the roaster now is
Caramel and milk chocolate are the published notes. The beans are speciality grade from high-altitude farms in Brazil and Honduras, the blend is Fairtrade certified, and Grumpy Mule rate it 4 out of 5 on their own strength scale. It comes in 200g, 500g and 1kg, whole bean or ground.
The ownership story matters here, because it's part of what you're buying. Grumpy Mule started in Meltham, West Yorkshire in 2006, went to Bewley's in 2013, and was bought by Cafédirect in June 2023 when Cafédirect took over Bewley's UK operation. Roasting stayed in Meltham. Cafédirect is a B Corp and a social enterprise, so a Fairtrade blend out of that group is about as well documented as ethical sourcing gets at this price. If that's why you're here, you can stop checking.
| Published notes | Caramel and milk chocolate |
|---|---|
| Origins | Brazil and Honduras, speciality grade |
| Strength | 4 out of 5, the roaster's own scale |
| Roast colour | Not published |
| Certification | Fairtrade |
| Roasted | Meltham, West Yorkshire |
| Pack sizes | 200g, 500g and 1kg |
Grumpy Mule do not publish an arabica or robusta figure for this blend. Two independent UK retailers describe it as 100% arabica, which is consistent with speciality-grade sourcing from Brazil and Honduras, but it is a retailer claim rather than the roaster's.
What it tastes like, and how much we can honestly say
Straight answer first: the review pool for this blend is small, a couple of dozen entries across every channel, and most of them sit on the roaster's own site. That isn't enough to call a consensus. It's enough to say nobody is contradicting the label, and you should weigh what follows accordingly.
The phrase that keeps recurring is strong but not bitter, with buyers going out of their way to mention the absence of a bitter aftertaste. Smooth, rich and full-bodied are the other repeats, and the caramel and chocolate framing comes back echoed rather than challenged. Take from that a sweet-leaning, medium-strong house blend, not something austere.
And ignore the name, because it doesn't describe the coffee. Grumpy Mule tie it to their own mule story about beans coming down the mountain, not to a strength claim, and 4 out of 5 alongside caramel and milk chocolate is not the profile of a punishing dark roast. Kick-Ass is house style, not a warning label.
The 500g bag is the point
Every other coffee reviewed here comes as a kilo. This one comes as 500g, and for most households that is the better format. Beans are past their best around four to six weeks after roasting, which means a kilo is a race against staling for anybody drinking two or three cups a day. Half a kilo is a bag you finish while it is still good.
The storage instruction on the bag asks you to squeeze the air out, seal it and finish within two weeks of opening, which implies a resealable closure. Grumpy Mule do not publish whether there is a one-way degassing valve, so if that matters to you, check the bag when it arrives.
What it costs against everything else
24p a cup, or about £13.30 a kilo, which is a little over a third of the £0.63 whole bean median. That is the surprise here. A Fairtrade, speciality-grade, UK-roasted blend in a small bag would normally cost you a good deal more per kilo than a supermarket kilo, and at this price it does not. Buy it in the 500g rather than the 200g, though; small bags are always the most expensive way to buy coffee.
What that costs over a year
- Grumpy Mule Kick-Ass House Blend£0.24 per cup£175
- Typical whole bean£0.63 per cup, our median£460
At 2 cups a day, Grumpy Mule Kick-Ass House Blend costs £285 less a year than the typical whole bean coffee we track. That is the same coffee habit, bought better.
Who should skip it, and what to buy instead
Skip it if you want a dark, smoky, robusta-backed espresso, because the name will mislead you and the coffee will not. Skip it if you buy on price per kilo alone and are happy with an anonymous blend. And skip it if you want the reassurance of hundreds of reviews before you spend anything, because this blend does not have them; it is well liked by a small number of people rather than proven at scale.
- Cheaper Brazilian: by Amazon Brazilian at 23p a cup, though without the certification or the roast date proximity.
- Also UK roasted: Planet Java 100% Arabica House Blend at 31p a cup, in a kilo.
- More body and crema: Lavazza Qualità Rossa at 29p a cup, which uses robusta to get there.