6 Best Green Coffee Beans You Can Buy Unroasted

You’ve mastered all of your home coffee-brewing process variables. Now what? There’s one more challenge left to tackle: roasting your beans. Not only will you have the freshest roast coffee possible, but you could also experiment with roasting levels on the same beans.

Your roasting journey starts with getting the best green coffee beans. Read on for some of our favourite brands and how to deal with them.

Where to Buy the Best Green Coffee Beans for Roasting in 2023

Don’t expect to find green coffee beans at all the same places you buy your regular coffee. To help you on your way, we’ve tracked down some of the best green coffee bean suppliers online.

image	product	details
Best Overall Best Overall	Rounton Coffee Roasters Brazil	Brazilian origin Catuai, Caturra Natural processed	SEE ON AMAZON
Budget Pick Budget Pick	Rave Coffee Indian Monsoon Malabar	India origin Arabica Monsooned processed	SEE ON AMAZON
Best Value For Money Best Value For Money	Redber Colombia Excelso Huila	Colombian origin Caturra, Typica, Bourbon Wash processed	SEE ON AMAZON
Best Organic Best Organic	Rohebohnen Arabica Ethiopia Maji	Ethiopian origin Heirloom Arabica Wash processed	SEE ON AMAZON
Best Low Acid Best Low Acid	Adems Djimmah Ethiopian	Ethiopian origin Heirloom Arabica Naturally processed	SEE ON AMAZON
Best Sample Pack Best Sample Pack	Martini Coffee Roasters Sampler	Costa Rica, Guatemala, Tanzania, Uganda Arabica Washed methods	SEE ON AMAZON

1. Rounton Coffee Roasters Brazil – Best Overall

• Origin: Brazil

• Bean: Catuai, Caturra
• Process: Natural
• Package size: 1 kg

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Rounton is a small-batch coffee roaster based in New York, USA. Because they deal in small volumes, they prioritize working directly with producers to source only the best coffee. 

These unroasted Brazilian beans are Specialty Grade 1, which means they are well-processed and defect-free. They were grown in the state of Minas Gerais on a group of farms belonging to a sixth-generation farmer, Pedro Gabarra Teixeira. Teixeira emphasizes sustainability on his farms, dedicating less than a third of his land to coffee production while the rest retains the natural biodiversity.

This coffee is a versatile blend of Catuai and Caturra varietals. It is a great starting point if you’re new to home roasting, as it is delicious at a variety of roast levels. A light or medium roast will showcase sweet milk chocolate and nut flavors, while a darker roast produces a bolder coffee with notes of dark chocolate and caramel.

2. Rave Coffee Indian Monsoon Malabar – Budget Pick

• Origin: India

• Bean: Arabica
• Process: Monsooned
• Package size: 500 g

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Rave Coffee stands out for its bold packaging and low prices, but rest assured there’s more to this roastery than meets the eye. They source only beans that score well on the SCA scale for quality, with a minimum of 82 for blends and 84 for single origins, believing that everyone should be able to afford good coffee.

Indian Monsoon Malabar is an unusual coffee with a fascinating history. Legend has it that the first monsooned beans were produced by accident when Arabica coffee on ships was exposed to the constant humidity and high winds of a long ocean journey. This exposure caused them to swell in size and change their texture, colour, and flavour.

Today, monsooning is done in a much more controlled setting, but the results are similar. This Indian Monsoon Malabar coffee has bold chocolatey and earthy flavours with very low acidity and a creamy mouthfeel. We’d recommend roasting to medium or darker for this one.

3. Redber Colombia Excelso Huila – Best Value for Money

• Origin: Colombia

• Bean: Caturra, Typica, Bourbon
• Process: Washed
• Package size: 250g, 1kg

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If you want a good selection of beans, it’s hard to go past Redber Coffee. The Guildford roastery offers more than 40 single-origin Arabicas, as well as blends and decaf. The extensive range extends to their unroasted beans too, with more than 20 options from the world’s best coffee growing regions, such as Huila, Colombia.

The Huila growing region produces the most coffee in the country, and thankfully, the quality matches the quantity. Coffees grown here tend to be sweet and aromatic with a bright acidity. Redber’s Colombia Excelso Huila delivers acidity and sweetness with fresh notes of orange, which develops into a rounder aftertaste with velvety chocolate notes.

These beans will happily suit anything from a medium through to an extra dark roast. When roasted and brewed as espresso, it’s an excellent base for milk drinks like cappuccinos and flat whites. 

4. Rohebohnen Arabica Ethiopia Maji – Best Organic

• Origin: Ethiopia

• Bean: Heirloom Arabica
• Process: Washed
• Package size: 500g, 1kg

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German coffee specialists Rohebohnen sell only green coffee, with a wide range of speciality beans from Africa, Asia and South America. But their Organic Ethiopia Maji stands out as something special. 

What’s interesting here is the growing method. Coffee is not planted but allowed to self-sow and grow wild under the shade of the forest. Plants might be thinned to increase their health and yield, but the natural structure of the ecosystem is always maintained. Only around 10% of Ethiopian coffee is produced this way. 

Maji beans are not as well known as other Ethiopian coffees, but they share similar traits with those from Sidamo. It’s big on floral and spice aromatics, with tangy fruit flavours at the first sip. Rohebohnen suggests a medium roast and brewing as a filter coffee, served without milk.

5. Adems Djimmah Ethiopian – Best Low Acid

• Origin: Ethiopia

• Bean: Heirloom Arabica
• Process: Natural
• Package size: 1kg

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Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and here you’ll still find both traditional growing methods and heirloom varieties of coffee. The coffee grown in the Djimmah region, near Kaffa in the country’s southwest, is often considered to be the closest to the original wild coffee plant.

Adems Djimma beans have been naturally processed, but aren’t quite as fruit-heavy as other unwashed African beans. What you’ll get is a very clean cup with a grassy aroma. Initial tastes are of bright lemon, with a light berry flavour and a hint of cinnamon. The mouthfeel is smooth and creamy. These beans are naturally low-acid, which makes them ideal for coffee lovers with sensitive stomachs or digestive issues. 

Adems sell some of the most popular coffee, tea and chocolate brands, but also have a small selection of their own green and roasted beans.

Related: Natural vs Washed Coffee Processing: What’s the Difference?

6. Martini Coffee Roasters Sampler – Best Sampler Pack

• Origin: Costa Rica, Guatemala, Tanzania, Uganda

• Bean: Arabica
• Process: Washed
• Package size: 454g x 4

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You’ve probably noticed that green unroasted coffee beans tend to be sold in much larger packages. So if you’re just trying your hand at roasting, a sample pack might be a better option. This bean variety box from Martini Coffee roasters gives coffee drinkers a broad spread of coffee styles that will help to experiment with different roast profiles.

The company sources from all over the world, and this box shows off the best of the best. The exact selection may change with seasonal availability, but you can always expect high-quality Arabicas.

The current sampler showcases two Central American coffees and two from Africa. The Costa Rica Tarrazu and Guatemala Atitlan make an interesting comparison as both feature flavours of chocolate and citrus. The Tanzanian coffee is a bright and exciting bean, with flavours of sugar cane, grapefruit, and lime. Uganda is known as the home of Robusta coffee, but this specialty Arabica blend is a nice example of where the industry is headed.

Factors To Consider When Buying Green Coffee Beans

If you’re used to buying roast coffee beans, you know that fresh is best, but does the same apply when buying high-quality green beans? Here’s what you need to look for, and how to deal with your unroasted coffee beans.

What to look for in unroasted green coffee beans?

Consistency is the key in so many things to do with making coffee, including shopping for green beans. Beans with variable sizes will not roast at the same speed, meaning smaller beans could end up at a darker roast level–not ideal for brewing a good cup of coffee.

Your raw coffee beans won’t have a roast date listed, but ideally, they should indicate the harvest date. You don’t want to be buying beans that have been sitting in a warehouse for a year.

You’ll also need to make sure that the bean flavours will be suitable for the roast level that you plan to use, but more on that below…

How to store green coffee beans?

The good news is that when you buy green coffee beans, they last much longer than freshly roasted beans. While it’s best to use roasted beans within a month, unroasted coffee beans can stay fresh for up to a year under the right conditions. This is why you’ll notice that roasters sell green unroasted coffee beans in much larger packages.

You need to protect your green beans from sunlight, humidity, and direct heat. You also want to avoid any sudden changes in temperature, which can create condensation, leading to mould. If your beans come in an airtight package with a one-way valve, that’s a good place for short-term storage. You might want to consider a jar or other container that allows for more airflow between the beans in the long term.

Jute or burlap bags are what you probably most associate with unroasted beans. But unless you’re buying in huge quantities, this isn’t going to be your usual storage method. We use Jute to increase breathability, but it does leave beans vulnerable to pests (2).

Roasting at home

You might be wary about home roasting simply due to the equipment that’s required, especially if you’ve seen the size of some commercial roasters. However, there are plenty of coffee roasters for home use made for small-scale batches and are also affordable and easy to use. If you want to test the waters before making any investment, you can perform some DIY coffee roasting with the equipment you already have at home.

Determining roast level

Part of the joy of home roasters is that you get complete control of your roasting levels. But you still want to make sure you’re going to get the best flavour out of your purchase. The trick is to consider both the characteristics of the bean type you’re using and the brewing method.

For example, single-origin green coffee beans with a delicate taste are often given light to medium roast, which will help retain the subtle natural taste of the beans. But light roasts aren’t suitable for all brewing methods and tend to work better with pour-over. So the best green coffee beans for espresso would be those that stand up well to a dark roast, which provides the best extraction in an espresso machine.

The Verdict

Unroasted green coffee beans aren’t always as easy to track down, but we hope this list has shown you that there’s still plenty of variety on offer. All of the green beans on our list are worth a try, but we think Rounton Coffee Roasters Brazil is a great place to start.