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Brand review · 3 min readGrumpy Mule coffee review
What Grumpy Mule sells, what it costs against the rest of the market, and who should buy it.
Grumpy Mule sells 36 coffees in the UK and the cheapest comes out at 41p a cup, which is less than most of the whole bean coffee we track. Cheap coffee is easy to find and hard to trust, so the useful question is not whether it is cheap. It is what the range actually contains, and whether the bag doing the heavy lifting is the one you would want.
Short answer
Dark, punchy and low on acidity, and it is cheap.
Cheaper than 90% of the whole bean coffee we track
- Tastes
- Chocolatey and nutty, low acidity
- Strength
- Strong
- Best for
- Everyday milk coffee
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 5/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 5/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 4/5
Cheapest cup£0.41across 36 products
Against the market−36%vs the whole bean median
Two cups a day£5.67a week, £3.15 less than typical
Largest pack1.2kg£24.12 per kg
Buy it ifyou finish a 1.2kg bag inside six weeks
Skip it ifyou are chasing a named farm or origin
Grumpy Mule products we track
Cheapest per cup first, with live prices.
Prices are the last we fetched and can move. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. It never changes the order, which is always cheapest per cup first.
What kind of roaster this is
Grumpy Mule sells whole bean and ground in the UK, and we track 36 of their coffees, in 500g, 750g, 1kg and 1.2kg.
Expect blends here rather than named farms: 92% of the classified range is blended. The trade is a familiar one. You give up the story on the label and you get a cup that does not drift between orders. The buying reaches 9 countries across the range, which is a wide book for a brand this size. The roasting spans 5 of our five levels, so there is a genuine choice to make inside the range rather than one house style applied to everything. Bags come in both small and kilo sizes, and the gap between them per kilo is usually the largest saving available anywhere on this page.
Formats and origins
What Grumpy Mule sources and sells. Each one is a live filter across every brand we track.
What Grumpy Mule coffee costs
The range runs from 41p to 67p a cup across 36 products. That is a 1.7× spread inside a single brand, which is why "is Grumpy Mule expensive" is the wrong question; the right one is which bag you pick. The cheapest is Colombia Planadas Organic in the 500g, and the dearest is Easy Does It Swiss Water Organic in the 200g.
| Product | Format | Size | Per cup | Per kg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colombia Planadas Organic | whole bean | 500g | £0.41 | £22.50 |
| Machu Picchu Organic | whole bean | 750g | £0.41 | £22.87 |
| Cafédirect Fairtrade House Espresso | whole bean | 1kg | £0.43 | £24.00 |
| Sumatra Mount Gayo Organic | whole bean | 1.2kg | £0.43 | £24.12 |
| Cafédirect Espresso | whole bean | 1kg | £0.44 | £24.50 |
| Peru Café Feminino Organic | whole bean | 500g | £0.45 | £24.76 |
| Sumatra Mount Gayo Organic | whole bean | 500g | £0.45 | £25.06 |
| Honduras La Labor Organic | ground | 1.2kg | £0.46 | £25.63 |
| Colombia Planadas Organic | whole bean | 200g | £0.49 | £27.50 |
| Peru Café Feminino Organic | whole bean | 200g | £0.49 | £27.50 |
| Honduras La Labor Organic | ground | 200g | £0.49 | £27.50 |
| Top Notch Organic Blend | whole bean | 1kg | £0.50 | £27.60 |
Bags themselves run £5.50 to £30.75. Ignore that column. A bigger bag costs more and almost always costs less per cup, which is the only number that follows you home.
The one to buy
If you buy one thing from Grumpy Mule, buy Colombia Planadas Organic. At 41p a cup it comes in around 36% under the median for whole bean coffee, and that is measured against every brand in our catalogue rather than against Grumpy Mule's own list prices. Nothing else in the range gets close on that test.
What that costs over a year
How much coffee do you drink?
- Grumpy Mule£0.41 per cup£296
- Typical whole bean£0.63 per cup, our median£460
At 2 cups a day, Grumpy Mule costs £164 less a year than the typical whole bean coffee we track. That is the same coffee habit, bought better.
How Grumpy Mule tastes
We have not tasted Grumpy Mule, so we are not going to invent a tasting note. A flavour score we did not earn would be worth less than none, and this section would be the easiest place on the site to quietly make one up. What we can show you is measured: where every coffee in the range sits on our own five-point roast scale, and which origins go into it. Roast is the strongest single predictor of whether a cup arrives bright and fruity or dark and chocolatey, so it is the closest honest answer to what this brand is like to drink.
How Grumpy Mule roasts
Every coffee standardised onto our own five-point scale rather than the roaster's. Read these as tendencies: origin, process and how you brew all move the cup.
Who it suits
- People who found something they like and want it to taste the same next year, which is what a blend is for.
- Anyone whose real comparison is supermarket own-brand, judged per cup rather than by the label.
- People who want to choose their own roast rather than take the roaster's word for it, since the range covers 5 of our five levels.
Is it good value?
Our test is simple, and it is the same one we apply to everything: cost per cup against the median for the same format. Grumpy Mule clears it comfortably on at least one product, which more brands fail than pass. Worth knowing that the saving is concentrated in the larger bags rather than spread evenly, so buying the small size gives most of it back.
What else to consider
No brand is worth buying without knowing what sits next to it on price. These are the closest whole bean coffees we track to Grumpy Mule, and the comparison hubs will put all of them on the same per-cup basis if you want to go wider.
Coffees priced like Grumpy Mule
The closest whole bean coffees on price per cup, from brands we also track. If one of these is cheaper for the same thing, that is worth knowing before you order.
Compare against the market
Keep reading
PricesGrumpy Mule price guideEvery bag priced per cup and per kilo, with the cheapest route to each one.BrandAll Grumpy Mule pricesLive prices on all 36 products, cheapest cup first.CompareEvery whole bean coffeeAll 812 of them on one per-cup basis, filterable by roast and origin.ReviewCaffè Nero reviewThe closest brand to Grumpy Mule on price, at 41p a cup.OffersToday's best valueEverything currently priced well under the median for its own format.