What are the Characteristics of Yemen Mocha Coffee Beans - Mocha Coffee Price - The Origin of Espresso Mocha Coffee Naming...

Coffee Workshop is a space for professional coffee knowledge exchange and a steady source of bean information.

The Origin of Mocha Coffee

Yemen was the first country in the world to grow coffee as an agricultural crop on a large scale. In the 17th century, the first Yemeni coffee was exported to Europe through a small ancient port - Mocha Port - which is where the term "Mocha coffee" comes from. Ethiopia, separated from Yemen by the sea, also shipped coffee through Mocha Port, so Ethiopian sun-dried coffee is often called Mocha as well (Ethiopian Harar, for instance, is sold as ETHIOPIA HARRAR). Yemen Mocha is the ancestor of the world coffee trade and did a great deal to spread good coffee around the globe. In the 17th century it was called "Arabia Coffee," which is also the root of the later name "Arabica."

Flavor Characteristics of Yemen Mocha Coffee Beans

Yemen Mocha has a very distinctive flavor, with a special taste and many-layered complexity. It has strong acidity - the pleasant, fruity kind - along with a clear chocolate note. The stronger the brew, the easier that chocolate flavor is to taste. That is why today, to better appreciate the unique taste of Yemen Mocha, people add hot chocolate to the coffee to make the fancy drink known as mocha.

Mocha beans are smaller and rounder than most coffee beans and have a light green color, which makes them look more like peas. They resemble Ethiopian Harar beans: small in size, high in acidity, and carrying a strange, hard-to-describe spicy note.

The History of Mocha Port

From the 15th to the 17th century, a port town on the Red Sea in Yemen was the world's largest coffee trading center - Mocha Port.

It handled not only coffee grown in Yemen; most of the coffee grown in Africa also had to pass through Mocha Port before being shipped to Europe and elsewhere.

As the times changed, ports in African countries such as Mombasa and Durban gradually took over Mocha Port's role. Today, Mocha Port has been abandoned for more than 100 years.

Even so, its wine-like flavor, its rich and mellow character, and the beans once shipped from its docks have made Mocha Port a legend in the world coffee industry.

The Origin of the Mocha Name

As a name for coffee beans, Mocha comes from Mocha Port.

More than 100 years ago, in the coffee countries of the Middle East and Africa, the export trade was not advanced, and Yemen's Mocha Port became the most important shipping port near the Red Sea at the time.

Ethiopia, separated from Yemen by the sea, also needed Mocha Port to sell its beans abroad. Those coffees astonished Europeans, and since they were all exported through Mocha Port, they were collectively called Mocha coffee.

Generally speaking, Mocha beans are smaller in size but very distinctive. They have a chocolate-like color, rich fruit aroma, and a hint of spice. Most obvious is the chocolate-like bittersweet taste on the palate.

Mocha as a Coffee Beverage

Mocha's identity as a coffee beverage is probably the most familiar to everyone. A fixture in drink shops, mocha has stayed popular for a long time.

Like most fancy coffees, it uses espresso as a base, adds chocolate and milk, and tops it with whipped cream, marshmallows, and the like to lift the aroma and serve as decoration.

And because the color of Mocha beans is so close to chocolate, in Europe "mocha coffee" mostly refers to coffee mixed with chocolate.

Recommended Yemen Single-Origin Mocha Coffee Bean Brands

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted single-origin Mocha beans - the Yemen Moka Mattari Traditional Natural Sun-dried - offer solid guarantees in both brand and quality. What matters more is the excellent value: a half-pound 227-gram bag costs only about 85 yuan. At 15 grams of grounds per pour-over cup, one bag makes about 15 cups, so a cup of American coffee costs only about 5 or 6 yuan. Compared with the tens of yuan per cup charged in cafes, the value is outstanding.

FrontStreet Coffee is a Guangzhou roastery with a small storefront but a wide range of beans, carrying both famous and lesser-known origins.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Yemen may be where coffee's trade story began, but Ethiopia is where the bean itself was born, and FrontStreet Coffee's lineup is a good way to explore the flavors that made Mocha famous. Start with FrontStreet washed Yirgacheffe, the classic entry point: clear jasmine florality and bright citrus acidity, the taste of a town in southern Ethiopia where cool, misty, humid conditions and thousands of coffee trees produce a delicate, elegant cup with a tea-like quality, like a clean glass of lemon tea.

Much of Ethiopia's coffee is grown in a garden style, with each smallholder sending fruit to a village-level processing station, so you see cooperatives of every size. FrontStreet Gutingding Cooperative is a strong example. It sits in the Worka region at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe and began as part of the Worka cooperative under the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers' Cooperative Union. As demand grew for traceable green coffee, single-origin lots were discovered one by one around the world, and in 2012 Gutingding - with roughly 300 member farmers - became an independent cooperative. Because the fruit is stripped before drying, the bean's own aroma comes through with striking clarity: citrus and lemon with elegant white florality, bright and fine overall.

For the natural side of Ethiopia, FrontStreet Natural Red Cherry takes only fully ripe cherries, dries them in the sun, and lets the fruit sugars and essence soak into the bean until moisture falls to 12 percent, then hulls away the hardened fruit, mucilage, and parchment and screens for density and color before hand sorting. The result is a clean, vivid cup with notes of peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon. FrontStreet Natural Huakui, from the Hambella area of Guji in Sidamo, comes from a 200-hectare farm that follows traditional natural processing; workers dry ripe cherries on raised beds for 21 days, turning them regularly and removing flawed or moldy beans every three to five days, for a light fermented wine aroma, florality, citrus, and mango with honeyed sweetness, a cocoa edge, a full body, and a long finish. For a more focused natural, FrontStreet Sidamo Natural Hamasho - built mainly on the JARC 74 series disease-resistant varieties, including the small-beaned 74158 - smells of lemon, strawberry, and star fruit, and tastes of strawberry, star fruit, and green grape before a light florality rises. And for a wilder, forest-grown profile, FrontStreet Kafa Forest is grown in shade between 1,400 and 2,100 meters; lightly roasted, it shows clear white florality, bright lemon acidity, sweet orange and bergamot, and a green-tea-like finish with a faint melon and nut aftertaste.