Editorial Policy

What we publish

Coffee & Tea Culture publishes reference guides about coffee and tea — origins, varieties, brewing methods, preparation, and the culture around both drinks. Our guides are informational. They are not medical, dietary, or professional advice, and nothing here should be treated as a substitute for a qualified opinion.

How our guides are researched and written

We are open about our process. Our guides are produced by a small editorial operation that uses AI assistance during research and drafting, followed by human checking before and after publication. We think readers are entitled to know that, so we are saying it plainly rather than burying it.

What that means in practice:

• Research: Each guide starts from published sources — producer and trade bodies, academic and botanical literature, government and industry data, and primary reporting. Where a guide leans on specific sources, we list them in a References section at the foot of the page.
• Drafting: Drafts are produced with AI assistance working from that research. AI is a writing tool here, not an authority: it does not decide what is true, and a draft is never the finished article.
• Checking: Drafts go through an editorial pass that checks factual claims against sources, removes unsupported figures and invented attributions, and cuts claims we cannot stand behind. Guides that have additionally been fact-checked by a named human reviewer carry that person's name and a link to their profile.

What human review means here

Where a guide names a reviewer, that person has read the guide and checked its factual claims against sources before it went live. A byline on this site is a statement about work that was actually done — we do not credit a reviewer to a guide they have not read.

We are rolling named review out across our catalogue rather than all at once, starting with the guides that get the most readers and those touching health-adjacent topics such as caffeine content. Guides without a named reviewer have been through our editorial checking but have not yet had an individual sign-off. You can always tell which is which by looking at the byline.

Accuracy, uncertainty and corrections

Some of what we write about is genuinely uncertain — small or undocumented origins, contested history, botanical classifications that specialists disagree on. Where the evidence is thin or conflicting, we say so in the guide instead of picking a confident-sounding answer. We would rather tell you what is not known than invent it.

If you find something wrong, please tell us. We correct errors of fact when they are reported and verified. Substantive corrections update the guide and its last-updated date.

How we date our guides

The last-updated date on a guide reflects a real edit to that guide. We do not re-date pages to make them look fresher than they are, and routine technical redeployments do not change the date shown.

Independence

Our guides are written to be useful to readers, not to serve a commercial relationship. Where that ever changes — sponsorship, affiliate arrangements, or gifted product — we will disclose it on the affected page. If a guide carries no such disclosure, no such arrangement exists.

Contact us

Spotted an error, or want to know more about how a particular guide was put together? Reach us through our contact page.