Diamonds on the Asian Coffee Crown of Yemeni Mocha Coffee

Yemeni coffee, a well-known coffee named after a port in Yemen.

The most familiar "mocha coffee". When the word appears on the recipes of bags and cafes, the meaning is different. The former refers to the port where coffee beans are exported, while the latter refers to a kind of coffee. Strictly speaking, coffee beans exported from the port of Mocha in Yemen can be called mocha coffee. Later, the port was abandoned, and the coffee once named after mocha still used the old name, which is a special case. But the mocha that appears on the coffee bag must have a suffix. For example, the Yemeni mocha is called Mocha Madari, while the Ethiopian exported Mocha is called Mocha Harald.

Yemenis have had the habit of drinking coffee since ancient times, and the coffee culture here is very different from that of other parts of the world. In Yemen, there are many middlemen engaged in the acquisition and storage of coffee, the newly purchased coffee is in no hurry to sell every year, and coffee farmers also hoard coffee at home as a means of saving. the ones that really enter the market are often old beans that have been in stock for several years. Due to the dry climate and lack of rain in Yemen, the water content of these coffee beans is very low, which gives Yemeni coffee a very unique taste.

In the coastal plain of the Red Sea in western Yemen, the climate and soil and water conditions are not suitable for growing coffee, and coffee is mainly produced in the western mountains. Mocha coffee grows in the mountains at an altitude of 3000 meters, where the geographical environment is unique, the mountain is rugged, the air is thin, the light is strong, and the water comes from rainfall and mountain springs, which make mocha coffee special aroma and taste. The local farmers carved out fertile terraces on the hillside. To this day, coffee is still grown in the same way in these areas as it was three or four hundred years ago, relying entirely on artificial labor, never using any chemical fertilizers or pesticides, and relying on sunshine, Rain Water and unique soil to grow pure natural Yemeni coffee. In fact, coffee grown in Haiti, Ethiopia and the West Indies belongs to the same ancestry as Yemeni coffee, and many of them are known as mocha coffee. However, for a variety of reasons, their taste and aroma are very different from those of mocha coffee produced in Yemen.

Yemeni coffee is also picked and processed entirely by hand. The preliminary processing of coffee beans is made by drying and drying naturally in the sun. This method is the most primitive and simple, without any machinery or cleaning, so sometimes there are a small amount of sand and pebbles in Yemeni coffee beans. At present, only Brazil, Haiti and a few parts of India still use drying method to treat coffee beans. The coffee roasting process is also done entirely by hand, and the heat depends entirely on experience and feeling. Every process from planting, picking to roasting is done in the oldest way, and although the roasted beans are of different colors, it is this aroma mixed with rugged and wild flavors that makes the unique Yemeni mocha coffee. No wonder some people call Mocha "the diamond in the crown of Asian coffee".