Yule Love This

Rudolph likes this coffee in every device, but Santa thinks an espresso machine, Moka Pot and AeroPress are especially good.

Head over to our brew guides for making coffee for more.

Christmas comes but once a year, and when it comes it brings… limited-edition coffee! Unlike our regular coffees, which change every 8 to 12 months, our limited editions are only available for a few months. Why? Because these coffees are super-exclusive! We select interesting, uniquely flavoured beans to roast for our limited editions. A farmer might be trialling a new processing method or experimenting with different varietals to create small lots bursting with taste!

This coffee is pure Christmas magic. Something this good must come from Santa’s workshop, right? Nope! We source this festive-flavoured coffee from the Isale region of North-Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Isale perches on the edge of Virunga National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site home to a third of the world’s endangered mountain gorillas. If it’s a haven for apes, it’s a haven for arabica coffee too! All coffee plants have plentiful rainfall, high altitude and rich volcanic soils on their Christmas list, and North-Kivu offers them in abundance!

Smallholder farms in the region work directly with the Virunga Coffee Company. This sustainability-minded team has been developing partnerships with Kivu farmers since 2011. They aim to take care of the region’s smallholder farmers and boost their organic coffee production. What’s more, they work personally with locals to train farmers and increase development opportunities. Construction is another priority – they’re currently building roads and bridges!

When it comes to coffee, we like to think of speciality as the Nice List. Only top coffees make the grade: those picked by hand and awarded 80 points or more by certified Q Graders.

Then, there’s the Naughty List (that’s commodity coffee). These low-grade coffees might contain bitter beans or be stripped from the plants rather than hand picked and hand sorted. Commodity coffee is the stuff you’ll find in most instant blends and chain café cups. It tastes well, mehh…

Selecting the finest beans means we never have to over-roast our coffees. Speciality beans are always picked by hand when perfectly ripe, meaning you don’t get any bitter-tasting underripe beans. Ripe coffee cherries, just like any fruit, are naturally sweet and beautifully flavourful. Coffee elf Andy roasts with these flavours in mind and creates bespoke roasting recipes for each coffee. The result? Coffee so good you’ll want to wrap it up and give it to yourself on Christmas morning… surprise!

Roast Style: Medium/Dark

Location: Lubero, Isale, North Kivu

Varietal(s): Bourbon

Processing: Washed

Altitude: 1500-1900 metres above sea level

Country: Democratic Republic of Congo

Certification: Speciality and Organic

Speciality Score: 87

What does this all mean? Check out our Jargon Buster.

Choosing to drink speciality coffee is an easy (and delicious) way of supporting real people. We go beyond Fairtrade standards to pay between 30 and 150% more than the going rate, ensuring the producers always receive a fair price for their quality goods. We source as directly as possible, too, by purchasing our unroasted beans through ethical importers. Keeping the chain short means even more makes it to the farmers, which is where it belongs.

There’s so much to like about Christmas. The silly socks, the Monopoly marathon, the tree decorations designed as gherkins (why??)… But Christmas special coffee from Two Chimps? Yule LOVE it!