Whistling at Wolves

While this coffee tastes awesome in every device, our favourites are a filter, Chemex or cafetiere.

If you want to know more, see our brew guides for making coffee.

The Yirgacheffe area has a great reputation for excellent coffee thanks to its high altitudes, nutrient-rich soil and plentiful rainfall. Coffee cultivation in this area has a long history, allowing farming communities to pass down valuable knowledge and techniques over generations.

This coffee has been fully washed at the Konga Sede washing station, which is owned and operated by Frehiwot and Gisaw Mekonnen. This station has 10 fermentation tanks and 210 drying beds, making it one of the largest washing stations in the region.

Once the cherries are harvested, they are brought here to be de-pulped and fermented for 36-48 hours. They are then washed in clean water grading channels to remove any remaining mucilage. The beans are then moved to the raised drying beds to sun dry for 12-15 days, depending on the weather conditions.

Upon reaching the correct moisture level, the beans are transported to Addis Ababa for dry-milling, sorting and grading before being bagged and shipped to our Rutland Roastery!

Cupping is the process used to allocate any coffee its ‘quality’ score. Here at Two Chimps, we only source and roast speciality coffee. Speciality coffee must have a score of 80 points or higher. If it doesn’t get the score, it doesn’t make the grade. See here if you want to know more about coffee cupping, or want to try it at home yourself.

When it comes to Roasting, we never ‘over roast’ any of our coffees, because we never need to. We use the roasting process to highlight some of the amazing flavours and aromas that can be found within the coffee naturally. Roasting coffee too dark hides these wonderful flavours and creates a coffee which is bitter and burnt. Because the coffee we source is of a very high quality, we can roast to highlight flavours, rather than to hide them. Our coffee is never bitter or burnt. Instead, our coffees are naturally sweet (not like two sugars sweet, just naturally sweet) and bursting with character.

Each coffee we source is amazingly individual. Some are more acidic, some chocolatey, some are even fruity. The farmers and workers across the globe work hard to produce a superb product, always trying different techniques to produce the holy grail of coffees. We feel we owe it to them, and to you, to get the most flavour and aroma from every single bean.

Roast Style: Light & fruity

Location: Konga, Yirgacheffe

Varietal(s): Ethiopia Heirloom

Processing: Washed

Altitude: 1900-2100 metres above sea level

Country: Ethiopia

Certification: Speciality

Producer: Konga Sede Washing Station

Score: 83

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

When you choose Two Chimps, we just want to give you a big monkey hug! Why? Because you aren’t just supporting our small carbon neutral business, you are also:

• Getting coffee that is ethically sourced via a short supply chain
• Helping to pay our coffee farmers get 30 – 150% more than the standard ‘going rate’
• Supporting vital movements and programmes that are helping to improve the coffee industry

So well done, and thank you. You are making a difference.

The Yirgacheffe district in Ethiopia is home to the largest population of the endangered Ethiopian wolf species. Years of habitat loss and diseases transmitted from domestic dogs have caused their population to decline drastically. Out of the 500 individuals remaining in the wild, 150 are found in the western part of Yirgacheffe, in the Bale Mountains.

In 1995, the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP) was formed by Claudio Sillero and Karen Laurenson after their research showed how rare and threatened these animals were. Since then, the EWCP has become one of the world leaders in carnivore conservation.

As this coffee was grown in the same area as these wolves’ largest habitat, a proportion of every bag sold goes directly to this incredible charity, ensuring changes are made to protect this indigenous species.

It only seemed right that we gave it a name fitting these incredible animals, so forget wolf whistling; whistle for the wolves instead!