How Should You Drink Yemeni Coffee? What Are the Characteristics of Yemen Coffee Beans? Yemeni Specialty Coffee Beans

The Origins of Coffee in Yemen

According to the World Coffee Research Institute, the first archaeological evidence of coffee being drunk as a beverage was found in the city of Zabid, Yemen.

In the 15th century, coffee cultivation began inside Yemen to meet local demand. In 1450, Yemeni Islamic Sufi practitioners were the first to drink coffee, using it to stay awake during late-night prayers. That practice turned mountainsides into terraced slopes, and people invented the agricultural techniques needed to grow coffee there.

The love for the dark infusion spread across the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, where merchants and traders from around the world met.

Yemen shipped large quantities of unroasted beans from the port of Mokha, and coffee drinking became popular worldwide, with coffee houses opening in Europe from 1650 onward.

Understanding Mocha Coffee

Mocha originally referred to beans shipped from the port of Mocha in Arabia, on the Arabian Peninsula within Yemen. Today's pure, rare Yemen Mocha is extremely uncommon; authentic Mocha is scarce, expensive and rich, with a full, mellow flavor.

Yemen Mocha: although botanically coffee originated in Ethiopia, from a cultural perspective the introduction of coffee as a beverage to the European world happened in Arab Yemen. For a stretch of time after that, to talk about coffee was to talk about Yemen, and to talk about Yemen was to talk about Mocha.

Mocha was a commercial port, just as Brazilian coffee is exported from the port of Santos, which is why Santos stands in for Brazilian coffee. In the same way, the port of Mocha that shipped coffee became the collective name for Yemen coffee.

Unique Characteristics of Yemen Coffee

Yemen is completely different from other coffee-producing countries. Water scarcity, an arid climate and barren land mean the coffee trees that survive in Yemen differ from the meticulously cultivated varieties of other major producing nations. Set beside Arab Yemen, the climate of Central and South America looks like a fully equipped greenhouse. These unfavorable factors have sent Yemen's coffee industry into steady decline—yet the very same factors give Yemen coffee an uncontrollable, primitive wildness in the cup.

Although the Yemen coffee industry has declined, these beans still appear in the specialty coffee market today.

Coffee Varieties and Production

Yemen coffee varieties are complex, so they are generally named by their origin, as in Mattari, Sanani, Ismaeili, Hirazi and others. The formal name is prefixed with Yemen Mocha—for example, YEMEN MOCHA MATTARI.

Because coffee is expensive, Yemen's manual production methods, layers of middlemen and costly transport make the coffee barely distinguishable from a luxury good. Before 1690 there were only three coffee-growing regions in the entire world, all of them in Yemen. They sat on steep mountains with irrigation facilities, divided into small coffee plots tended by only a few hundred farmers.

Farmers carried their own beans from small nearby plots to sell at market year-round. De la Roque recorded that harvests were "not fixed in quantity, not regular in timing, so Arabs knew no such thing as a harvest season." Coffee farmers brought beans to market six days a week, each day offering slightly more than the day before; when prices were low they held back and refused to sell. In the market, Indian and Arab merchants controlled the coffee business. From the early 17th century the Dutch and British East India Companies kept representatives in Mocha, but even so, like De la Roque, they purchased through Indian middlemen said to be the most skilled at bargaining prices down. Europeans held low commercial status because they lacked political influence, and the only European goods Yemenis wanted were piastre coins made from Mexican silver, which they demanded immediately.

Brewing Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee suggests the following brewing parameters for Yemen Mocha:

V60/1:15/89°C/Time: one minute fifty seconds

Flavor: Spices, chocolate, grapes

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Yemen Mocha is expensive and hard to find, and many of the flavors people love in it—chocolate, spice, dried fruit—turn up in far more accessible coffees. Brazil is a good place to look. FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon is a classic single-origin Brazilian bean: Red Bourbon grown at around 1,000 meters and processed pulped natural, which leaves some mucilage on the bean during drying and keeps the sweetness measured. Roasted medium, it shows cream, peanut, toasted bread, caramel and hazelnut, with a rounded body, very low acidity and a hint of bitterness. It brews well as a pour-over and also works in a moka pot, as an SOE, in a siphon or in a French press.

If it is sweetness you are after, FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Queen's Farm Yellow Bourbon comes from Mogiana near South Minas, where fertile red volcanic soil helps the fruit ripen with plenty of nutrients. The Yellow Bourbon here is a rare mutation of Red Bourbon, ripening orange-yellow rather than red and tasting cleaner in fruit. It brings a cane-sugar sweetness that few other origins can replicate, alongside fruit and chocolate, and suits a pour-over, a moka pot or a home espresso machine. Much like Yemen Mocha, both beans benefit from a short rest after roasting before you brew them.