Bonkers for Cake

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.

These amazing beans have been fully washed at the Mutendero Coffee Washing station, located at 1,820masl in the Isale region of North Kivu. This area boasts incredible conditions that are perfect for growing high-quality Arabica. Rainfall, high altitude, and fertile volcanic soil are all gold-star-worthy for coffee growing, and this area has it all!

The Virunga Coffee Company owns the Mutendero station and has worked hard to improve the local infrastructure to make farms more accessible. Investment in roads and bridges has allowed a higher yield of cherries to be harvested, transported and processed.

In steps to further improve the quality of the coffee, 40 field officers, who are trained agronomists (scientists who study plants and soil), distribute over 3 million seedlings a year to farming communities in Eastern DRC. They can also provide guidance on how to improve soil health, pest management, and crop production and quality. So far, they have trained over 11,000 farmers in GAP (good agricultural practices).

The journey of these beans begins with the perfectly ripe cherries being hand-picked before being transported to the Mutendero station, where they are sorted and pulped. They are then fermented for 18-24 hours (weather dependent) until the mucilage is broken down.

The beans are then washed in water channels before being graded by density and laid on raised African beds to sun dry for 12-18 days. During this period, they are closely monitored and raked to ensure they dry evenly.

Once they have reached the optimum moisture level of 10-12%, they are bagged and sent to the dry-mill Butembo for grading and sorting. Then, they are finally ready to be exported to Two Chimps HQ to be roasted to perfection, ready for your cup.

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: North Kivu

Varietal(s): Bourbon

Processing: Washed

Altitude: 1500-1800 metres above sea level

Country: The Democratic Republic of Congo

Certification: Speciality

Producer: Mutendero Coffee Washing Station

Score: 85.75

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

By purchasing speciality coffee from us, you are supporting the farmers and workers in the country of origin. We make sure we pay between 30 and 150% more than the ‘going rate’ for our green coffee, meaning the farmers are paid more for their crops. This in turn leads to the opportunity of better living conditions and, potentially an even better harvest next year.

We like to keep the supply chain as short as possible too. With less in the chain, even more makes it back to the farm and its workers.

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

You know cakes your thing when you have it with your morning brew. If that’s you, you’re also Bonkers for Cake too!