Home / Our Story
Founder story

I Spent 15+ Years Tasting the Best Coffee. Then Mould Exposure Changed Everything.

Mould completely knocked me sideways. This is how it changed the way I live, and why I insist on sending Balance Coffee to an independent lab and publishing the report online for our customers to see.

James Bellis holding freshly picked coffee cherries on a drying bed at a coffee farm at sunset
James BellisFounder, Balance Coffee
"Tried, tested, and voted the UK's best healthy coffee.""Biohack your mornings with the cleanest coffee.""Best coffee for focus, energy and cognitive function.""The healthy coffee upgrade to better energy levels"
James Bellis behind an espresso machine, holding a portafilter
Before

I Was the Coffee Guy.

I worked in the heart of the specialty coffee industry for over 15 years.

My work was in espresso machines. That meant working closely with more than 60 of the very best UK coffee roasters.

I've stood on farms alongside the growers, pulling ripe red cherries off the plant with my own hands. I've watched the beans spread out to dry in the sun, then packed into sacks for the long trip to a roaster.

Coffee was my job, my hobby and my morning.

But then I was exposed to mould, and everything changed.

After

Tired, Foggy, Zero Energy. And Calling It Normal.

I stopped feeling like me. I woke up tired. I went to bed wired.

I struggled to work. I struggled to focus. For someone whose whole life ran on coffee and a sharp head, that was the part that scared me.

Clip to come: James hitting the wall
  • I couldn't focusI'd lose the thread halfway through a task.
  • I had brain fogCotton wool by mid-morning. I'd forget a page by the bottom.
  • I was tired and wiredExhausted when I woke, alert at midnight.
  • My sleep brokeAwake in the small hours, most nights.
  • I had headachesMost days, with no obvious cause.
  • Low mood and energyNo motivation. Even things I loved felt like a chore.
  • I was easily overloadedLoud rooms and bright screens wore me out.
  • I had a persistent coughIt just wouldn't clear.

UK government guidance links damp and mould to coughs, wheezing, asthma, sore eyes, itchy skin and anxiety. For me it hit hardest in my head. The fog. The lack of concentration. Some days I couldn't function.

I didn't know mould was behind it. I put it down to long hours. Then to age. Then to stress. I'd normalised it.

It went on like that for far too long.

“I woke up tired. I went to bed wired. I called it normal.”James Bellis

Source: UK Health Security Agency and DHLUC, Understanding and addressing the health risks of damp and mould in the home (gov.uk, 2023).

The mission

So I went looking for answers.

When I found the cause, it was somewhere I never looked.

It was growing in my accommodation.

I started reading everything I could find. Mould doesn't only live on walls. Some moulds produce toxins called mycotoxins. They can form on crops while they dry and sit in storage. Some of the biggest culprits are grains, nuts, dried fruit, spices and coffee. That's a different thing from damp at home, and I'm not saying coffee caused any of it. It made me want to know what was in my cup.

I also learned about toxic load. Every day we're exposed to toxins in our food, our drink and the air at home.

The problem?

Your liver does most of the work of clearing them. But it can't process the amount we're exposed to in modern life.

So the goal became simple. Keep my toxic load as low as I could, across what I eat, what I drink and where I live.

So I made changes. I moved out of the damp. I cut back on drinking. I changed what I ate. I started reading labels. I chose organic food. I ate at restaurants that cook without seed oils. I built sauna into my routine alongside my training, four or five sessions a week, and I still do it now.

Then I looked at caffeine. It acts on your nervous system, and I'd been leaning on it to push through the fog. So I learned to manage it. Fewer cups, earlier in the day, and nothing that left me wired at night.

I got fussy about the coffee itself, too. Speciality grade. Clean. Lab-tested, so I knew exactly what was in my cup.

I started paying attention to my nervous system as a whole. How I slept. How I came down after a busy day. What calmed me, and what kept me switched on.

It took months. Then it clicked. My energy came back. My focus sharpened. I could concentrate for hours again, and I had a peace of mind I hadn't felt in years. I felt amazing.

It wasn't just the coffee. It was every change compounding. The food, the drink, the caffeine, the sauna, the training, where I lived. And one habit stuck for good. I questioned what was in everything I ate and drank. Sooner or later, that had to include my morning coffee.

James Bellis, founder of Balance Coffee
“It wasn't the coffee alone that changed my life. It was a shift to a toxin-free lifestyle. Balance is part of that.”James Bellis
Why coffee?

The One Drink Nobody Asked About.

Here's the uncomfortable bit. I'd spent over 15 years in coffee and never once thought to choose a clean one.

Weeks
Drying in the open

Coffee cherries get picked, then dried, often for weeks. Warmth and moisture give mould a chance to grow. Roasting kills the mould. It removes some of the toxins it leaves behind, sometimes most, but never reliably all.

Months
In sacks and containers

The beans then sit in sacks and shipping containers for months. Temperatures swing from scorching heat to cold nights, and moisture condenses inside. That warm, damp air gives mould another chance to grow.

By law
A legal limit, not zero

Ochratoxin A turns up often enough in coffee that UK and EU law set a maximum for it. A limit tells you the ceiling, not what's in your cup.

See the science →

Ochratoxin A maximum levels: Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/915 (EU and Northern Ireland); retained Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 (Great Britain). EFSA CONTAM Panel, Scientific opinion on ochratoxin A in food, EFSA Journal 2020.

Building it

I Built the Coffee I Wanted to Drink.

I didn't want to give up coffee. I love it too much. It's my perfect everyday morning ritual.

So in April 2020, in the middle of Covid, I launched Balance. Independently lab-tested for mould and toxins, with a guarantee people could trust. Clean came first. Great taste had to come with it.

That was half of it. The other half was how coffee makes you feel: a calm energy boost, with no jitters and no crash. That's why the range has lower-caffeine options. Calm has half the caffeine, Lion's Mane Coffee has 20% less, and Halcyon is fully decaf.

Focus was the first thing the fog took from me. It's why Lion's Mane sits at the heart of our range. There's 1,800mg in every cup of Lion's Mane Coffee, and four health-boosting mushroom elixirs you can add to any coffee.

James holding green coffee beans in front of stacked coffee sacks
“I built the coffee I wanted to drink. Clean first, with great taste to match.”James Bellis
What we do differently

Four Things We Do Differently.

James on a coffee farm1
Sourcing

Speciality-Grade Farms

We source from the top 5% of coffee farms worldwide and pay 25% more for the best quality. We check quality and health protocols before we buy.

Top 5% of farms25% more to farmers
Green coffee beans in front of stacked sacks2
Storage

We Control the Journey

From the moment the beans land, we control the conditions. Climate-controlled storage before roasting keeps them away from the warmth and damp mould needs.

Climate-controlled
Freshly roasted beans turning in a roaster drum3
Roasting

We Roast It Fresh

Small weekly roasts, so the bag you open tastes the way it should. Our roasting style retains the maximum antioxidant level, for greater wellbeing.

Small weekly roastsWhole bean or ground
First page of the independent lab report4
Lab testing

Independent, Third-Party Lab

We send it to an independent, third-party lab. Accredited to ISO/IEC 17025, it screens for mould, mycotoxins, lead, cadmium, arsenic and 600+ pesticide compounds. We publish the full report, so you can read every line.

ISO/IEC 17025 labReport published

Backed by a Nutritionist.

Clemmie Rose, nutritionist

Clemmie Rose

Nutritionist

Clemmie has worked with Harrods and Google. She helped shape how we source and roast. Her advice changed decisions we'd otherwise have made differently.

Read Clemmie’s full bio →
First page of lab report 26-LA45200 for Balance Coffee beans and ground sample
The lab

We Don't Ask You to Take Our Word for It.

We send the coffee to an independent lab and publish what comes back. Our latest report comes from an ISO/IEC 17025 accredited lab, part of the TÜV SÜD Group.

MouldNo detectable level.
Mycotoxins (ochratoxin A, aflatoxins)No detectable level.
Heavy metals (lead, cadmium, arsenic)No detectable level.
600+ pesticide compounds screenedAll within legal limits.
See the full lab report →

Read every line of it yourself.

A note from me

I'm not a doctor. I can't tell you what's behind how you feel.

I can tell you what happened to me. I felt awful for a long time and blamed everything but the obvious. When I found the cause, I changed a lot of things. One of them was asking what was in my coffee.

Balance isn't perfect. We'll get things wrong and we'll fix them. I can't test every farm in the world. What I can do is test what I sell and show you the result.

If you've ever looked at your morning cup and wondered what's in it, you're the reason this exists.

JamesJames Bellis, Founder
Your turn

Start with the Coffee I Drink Every Morning.

Speciality grade. Freshly roasted. No detectable mould or mycotoxins in our latest lab report.

Shop the coffee → Read the lab report
Rated 4.7 from 2,000+ reviews
Try Balance →