Green Coffee (unroasted)

Try your hand at home roasting Yemeni coffee.

Your Green Coffee Options

1. Haraaz Region Collection Center Blend:
Longtime favorite, which is easy to work with and tasty at all roast levels. Has a hint of Yemen's winey/raspberry ferment. This coffee is dried under optimal conditions at a centralized facility. (In contrast, Yemeni coffee is usually dried directly at the farm level.) Haraaz Cooperative.

• LIGHT: Sweet, traditional, and soaring—with a gentle, raspberry/winey ferment.
• MEDIUM: Clean, resonant, and intense flavors; sensation of dried figs and stewed, darker fruits.
• DARK: Bold, creamy, balanced with notes of dry cocoa.

2. Matari Region:
A classic region, known for its high altitude and strong-tasting coffee. Sourced by the Pearl of Tehama Import/Export company.

• LIGHT: Robust and traditional.
• MEDIUM: Robust, full-bodied, traditional.
• DARK: Bold and rich.

3. Pearls of Al Qafr: An engaging coffee with so much to explore, from flavors, to structure, to balance. As a lighter roast, it has Yemen's traditional wine-like acidity / a fruity, raspberry ferment; as a darker roast, this evolves into intense smoothness and creaminess. Sourced from the Al Qafr district of Ibb Governorate.

• LIGHT: Bold, rich, and traditional, with Yemen's (subtle) winey ferment
• MEDIUM: Earthy, chocolatey, and comforting, with a fleeting winey-fruity ferment.
• DARK: An intensely smooth, creamy, and full-bodied dark roast. An all-time favorite.

4. Yemen Blend:
An introduction to Yemeni coffee, which will leave you smiling. Sourced and blended by the Haraaz Cooperative®.

5. Java, Western Region (Sunda):
A mild, nutty, earthy, and smooth Java, with which you can make a famed Mocha-Java blend. Sourced from western Java—historic Batavia / Dutch East India Company—where the blend began over 300 years ago.

Discontinued coffees (but will return):

• Burai Region: A versatile coffee that's rustic and cocoa notes at lighter roasts and more chocolately notes as a darker roast.
• Haima Region: A more mild Yemen, that tilts towards nutty, smooth, and simply delicious. Easy and forgiving to roast from light to dark.
• Kholani Region: Yemen's northern-most region, the Kholani tribal area is found in the Sa'dah Governorate, which borders Saudi Arabia. This is a newer offering, and has a traditional and balanced flavor, with subtle lemony notes, and an overall warmth of flavor.
• Pearl of Tehama Yemen Blend: A well-balanced, versatile Yemeni coffee, sourced from the Sana'a Governorate, by the Pearl of Tehama Import/Export company.

Additional information:

Haraaz Cooperative® is the name we use at Al Mokha to describe the fantastic work of Shabbir Ezzi. He has been operating in Yemen since 2006, and we have worked with him since 2014.

He sources his coffee from a combination of about 800 registered farmers (reserve quality) and also from trusted collectors more generally (regular quality).

For the registered farmers, Shabbir provides them with an ID, so he can directly ensure that they are paid fair wages and their hard work is rewarded. He even has an incentive program in place, where the more coffee you produce, the more you earn per pound. These growing wages (better than linear!) prove a strong incentive to work together and build relationships for the long term.

These are good principals but there is far more than that. In the eastern Haraaz Mountains where the cooperative is based, the economics of coffee have improved so much that farmers have chosen to uproot qat—a cash crop and mild narcotic plant—and replace it with coffee. This change reflects how farmers can make more money and live a more dignified life producing coffee. In fact, Shabbir has been so successful, that all the qat has been uprooted.

General Info: As a green coffee, understand that Yemen's is not the typical lot of consistent beans that are identical from shipping container to shipping container. Rather, Yemen's coffee lacks such aesthetic uniformity and instead has a beauty of its own: the beans are smaller and varied in size. This showcases their authenticity, old-world cultivation, and natural processing of 10 - 20 days drying in the sun after harvest.

The magic of Yemen is not the volume of consistent coffee over time but rather the story that each batch and each harvest tells. In Yemen there are 100,000 farmers producing on average 115 kg of coffee annually per farmer. These are backyard, terraced gardens on Yemen's steep mountain slopes. When you roast and enjoy this coffee you will inevitably appreciate and understand the incredible process that brought this coffee from farmer to your cup.

Commercial use, trademark, and copyright: The Al Mokha® registered trademark shall not be used in connection with resale, marketing, or branding of derived coffee products. 

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