How can a coffee taste naturally festive?

Every year, when August rolls around, it’s time for us to put our festive hat on and start tasting some samples for our Christmas coffee. (And yes, trying to taste Christmassy notes in August is a challenge!) To us, a ‘festive flavour’ can be anything from a marzipan sweetness to spiced dried fruit, but it all comes down to what we think would taste the best when roasted to our desired style.

At Two Chimps, we never roast our coffee to a pure dark level—after all, why would anyone want to burn speciality Arabica beans? The darkest roast we offer is a medium/dark style, which is typically how we roast our Christmas Coffee, as this tends to be the most popular roast style among our customers. This is due to its rich coffee flavour, which people love, and more caramelised notes.

The roast style doesn’t determine all the flavours, though. That also comes down to the natural notes the beans have been given through growing conditions, plant variety and processing methods.

Say hello to our festive coffee 2024!

This year, we have sourced our amazing Christmas Coffee, Have you bean nice? from Southern Malawi. Grown by Sable Farm, a small producer who has been cultivating coffee for over 30 years, they have mastered the art of growing top-notch beans.

Grown at a high altitude of 1150 – 1300 metres above sea level, this coffee has enjoyed a prolonged ripening period, which gives the beans more time to absorb all the incredible flavours from the cherry flesh.

Therefore, even though this coffee has been processed using a washed method, the beans themselves have more flavour than a typically washed brew. Combined with being freshly roasted to perfection by our roaster, these beans have become the best they can be!

Read more!

What flavours can you expect from our Christmas Coffee?

When we first sampled this coffee, the thing that gave it the edge for us was this amazing orange acidity which lingers at the end. Alongside a rich dark chocolate base, smooth hazelnut praline, and a drizzle of toffee apple, it offered all those traditional Christmas flavours that go perfectly with a mince pie (or two!)

How did we roast this coffee?

We knew we wanted a darker roast style but wanted to enhance that orange acidity. Therefore our artisan roaster, Jordyn roasted these beans for a shorter amount of time to stop the acidity from caramelising but increased the temperature to ensure it had that darker roast style.

After a sample roasting and some more cupping, he cracked the code and our top-secret roasting profile for Have You Bean Nice was born!