Crown Jewel Yemen Anaerobic Natural Sharqi Haraz Cooperative

Taste

Taste Analysis by Isabella Vitaliano 

One of the most unique coffees I’ve tried, this coffee is hard to pinpoint in exact flavor for me because of how distinct it is. The crown team had the chance to showcase this coffee at World of Coffee and was a bit a showstopper. Yemeni coffees are hard to come by due to the geological location and sociopolitical issues that have been a problem for some time now. Anaerobic processing is a more common process we see from the country. Not only is it hard to get coffee from the region, but quality of this coffee is even more difficult. One of the reasons that the cost of this is so high, is because air freighting grom Yemen is a necessary component of the logistics of getting this coffee to the U.S. 

Fennel, frangipane and fenugreek are all flavor notes we see from the coffee – and weirdly all start with f? merely a coincidence. There is a distinct creaminess to the coffee and deep herbal notes and fresh aromatics. You’ll also find flavors like fermented berries hibiscus and watermelon. Moody yet fresh at the same time, this is a distinctly contemporary coffee, which is a fun juxtaposition to Yemen being one of the first places to commercially cultivate coffee. Not only does it taste incredible but there is a narrative and educational aspect to this coffee that is invaluable to showcase to customers. A rare jewel, an expensive  

one, but one that is worth the investment. Royal was able to get this coffee this time around, but we never know when we will be able to get it. If you are interested, be sure to pick it up before its gone.   

Source

Source Analysis by Chris Kornman, with Charlie Habegger 

Among the most venerated of Royal’s stories passed by word of mouth, is that of cofounder Bob Fulmer’s favorite coffee. Various iterations of the story make their way around the office, likely stemming from an interview, lost to the archives of a pre-digital age, when a reporter apparently asked him what coffee he would be, if reincarnated as a beverage. In his own words, circa 2016 (around the time I started bothering him for stories around the cupping table) he wrote, “To this day, all things being equal, given a choice of every origin supplying their best coffee, with a gun to my head, and having to pick only one to drink forever, Yemen Mocca Sanani would be my choice.” 

Bob, and by extension Royal, have a deep and time-honored relationship, not just commercially with coffee from Yemen, but with the Muslot family. Bob’s recollections of the introduction to the country, the business, and the Muslots ought to be required reading for all of our customers. 

The Muslot family, like Royal, have entered a new generation of coffee trading and continue to adapt to the shifting landscape that is specialty coffee. Fatoum Muslot, Abi Hibah Muslot’s daughter, now runs the export business we continue to secure small quantities of coffee through.  

When Max Nicholas-Fulmer, Bob’s son, texted me not long ago asking me what the most expensive coffee we’ve sourced for Crown Jewels in recent years, I shot back “why, trying to break a record?” and imagined we’d be staring down the barrel at an auction lot Panama or a clandestine Ethiopian coffee grown in Haile Selassie’s heretofore undiscovered private garden. 

I did not expect it to be of Yemeni origin. 

Yemen & Harazi Coffee 

This coffee is produced by legacy farmers of various sizes in the mountains of Eastern Haraz, a large natural preserve and agricultural area in Yemen’s Sana’a Governorate. Coffee-growing families in this part of Yemen, similar to many others across the country, tend parcels of terraced land passed through many generations. Haraz’s people have had coffee in the ground for six hundred years, producing and enjoying it about two centuries before Europeans even knew what coffee was. 

Though Yemen has always represented a kind of living antiquity of coffee, producers here are just as capable of modern methods. Case in point is this microlot. Only 1000 pounds of coffee, anaerobically fermented, vacuum packed and air-shipped to Oakland expressly to be a Crown Jewel. The extra fermentation is a small tweak on top of centuries of tradition, and the result gives us a good glimpse into both: the enduring; and the inspired. 

Our most reliable histories indicate that it would be Sufi imams who would bring coffee into popular use during late night vigils in Yemen’s port of Aden, incontrovertibly no later than the mid-15th century. Arabia Felix, as the region was known at the time, became cultivated coffee’s homeland. For about two centuries, the tiny sliver of the Arabian Peninsula maintained a commercial monopoly on the globe’s supply of green coffee. That Ethiopia, not the Arabian Peninsula, is the origin of our favorite coffee species was a mystery lost upon the first Europeans to encounter the stuff. The Linnaean taxonomic name—arabica—nods to the mistaken provenance. Yemen and parts beyond under the Ottoman Empire embraced coffee, cultivated it, and successfully monetized it. 

One of the modern era’s most thrilling coffee discoveries is the existence of an aptly named Yemenia mother population, reported as recently as 2020 by noted coffee geneticist and former World Coffee Research Chief Scientific Officer Christophe Montagnon, et al. These trees exhibit genetic distinction from the rest of the globe, their uncharted lineages altered and reinforced by centuries of adaptation, isolation, and traditional practices. 

Maintaining coffee trees in a climate as harsh and uniquely challenging as Yemen’s western and northern ranges requires the kind of proven techniques that only generations of farming can figure out. Coffee farms are iconically terraced on arid, incredibly steep slopes. Where irrigation is not available, bore holes are dug manually into the rock to access individual water reserves for each tree wherever rain is scarce. Coffee trees are spaced generously, about 1000 per hectare (compared to 4000-6000 common in Latin America), both by necessity on the narrow terraces, as well as for better groundwater access and erosion control. Raising young coffee trees is a matter of hardening them for a lifetime of mountainous elements and water scarcity. Older coffee trees become very spacious and tall, and often end up hanging their branches over the terrace edge, known locally as “hanging gardens”. Above the coffee, shade trees are carefully selected and positioned for how well they block water evaporation. As can be imagined, productivity is very low in such conditions. And still, over one million people work in Yemen’s coffee trade, from farm to export. 

“Harazi” is a term of terroir distinction, similar to “Kona”, that refers to high-quality heirloom coffee varieties produced in the unique climate and soil of this part of Sana’a, where subtropical conditions and available water springs allow coffee farmers to irrigate—something almost unheard of in the majority of coffee-producing areas in Yemen.  

All Haraz coffee, as traditionally everywhere in Yemen, is typically processed as a natural: hand-picked, sorted for consistency, and dried in a single layer in full sun on raised beds or rooftops. Due to the arid climate and slow maturation patterns, coffee is picked almost year-round.  

Pearl of Tehama & Processing 

Pearl of Tehama, a miller and exporter, is a family business founded in 1970. For many years, all coffee was exported under the name of the family patriarch and founder, Ali Hiba Muslot. After his death in 1980 his three sons continued using the family name until 2012, when the family business, including other trades and retail, was split up. The coffee export business was reborn as Pearl of Tehama for Import, Export, and C.A.S, and is still owned by Ms. Fatoum Muslot, the late Muslot’s daughter. Fatoum’s eldest son, Yasser Al-Khaderi, is the company’s general manager. 

This particular lot of coffee from Haraz was carefully curated by Pearl of Tehama from 200 of their partner farmers. Breaking from tradition, however, it was processed centrally, in very small installments. Cherries otherwise destined for families’ rooftops or raised screens were instead delivered to the Muslot’s central processing site where they were packed into sealed tanks to ferment between 48-72 hours anaerobically. Once fermented, the sticky, wilted cherries were moved directly to raised beds to dry in the sun, a process that took 15-20 days. Fully dried cherry pods were then stored in climate-controlled facilities to allow moisture to equilibrate, before sampling for quality control. 

Final Thoughts 

Getting Yemeni coffee out of the country, to the US, has never been easy. But the current geopolitical landscape makes it nearly impossible.  

Yemen’s decades-long civil conflict rages on, its people and politics besieged by warring factions seemingly incapable of setting aside differences to mend deep societal wounds of poverty, hunger, and the effects of climate change. Recently, a Houthi solidarity campaign for the atrocities continuing to unfold along the Gaza strip successfully disrupted international shipping lanes, reminding even the most capitalist among us that complicity has consequences. But the recent relative shipping stability in the Red Sea has taken a human toll in the form of indiscriminate bombing of Yemen by U.S., Israeli, and UK forces, and further disruptions in global supply chains are compounding as the U.S. and Iran blockade the nearby Strait of Hormuz. For anyone with the luxury of a 10,000-foot view, the cost of shipping coffees from Yemen, as measured in human lives, has been difficult to stomach.  

Six years ago, I wrote an article for Daily Coffee News about low prices and displacement in coffeelands across the world. In it, I asked my coworker Haile about the sustainability of coffee production in such circumstances. “He directly challenged my long-held belief that supporting farmers through times of crises necessarily provides a measure of stability.” I reported. “‘Coffee growing can’t give any stability or security to the people,’ he said.” 

“The stories we tell about the social benefit we provide by simply engaging in commercial activity have always rung hollow,“ I wrote on. “Whether marketing or self-reassuring, the truth is that growing coffee has little meaningful correlation to the larger human struggle of survival, particularly when extreme poverty or violence are involved. Furthermore, the fair payment for specialty coffee — or any crop, for that matter — shouldn’t be dependent upon a contrived narrative.” 

Where does this leave us? As I sip this coffee, steeped with equal parts tragedy and triumph, infused with deep history and modern problems, I think there’s probably something worthwhile in acknowledging that we don’t have to, nay, shouldn’t deign to save the world with our coffee purchases, but that we are unequivocally obligated to be ethical in our practice. And, maybe, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating the diamond, born of unimaginable pressure, while recognizing that there is also so much more work to be done so that coffees like this—and more importantly, the people responsible for their existence—may survive the present, and thrive in the future. 

Green

Green Analysis by Isabella Vitaliano 

Comprised of four Yemeni Heirloom cultivars, these beans are extremely tiny (and adorable). Most of the coffee is highly condensed at the smallest screen size. Density is in the average range as well as moisture content. Water activity is a little bit above average at 0.604. 

Diedrich

Diedrich IR5 Analysis by Doris Garrido 

There are so many things about these small Yemeni beans that make them especially delicious. I felt so proud to be part of the group who brought them when coffee friends were delighted during World of Coffee in San Diego. Hearing so many compliments on the coffee made my fear of the roast I did for the event disappear. There was so much work put in—from the craft to the sourcing—that I was honestly afraid of messing them up. Fortunately, Chris Kornman cleared a path for me last year by profiling the first Yemen we received, and from there I learned how they behave. 

Roasting these beans, I’ve learned they benefit from introducing heat slowly until reaching the equilibrium point. From there, I manage the heat to drive out moisture until I reach Maillard. At that point, I lower the heat to let the sweetness do its magic and then round out the finish during post-development. These beans are very sensitive. As I get close to first crack on both the Bullet and the Diedrich, I notice a tendency for the rate of change to peak. Added to that, the crack starts very quietly, so you have to watch out. Hitting high temperatures too soon will bring out bitterness, but if you hold them steady, the sweetness really shines. All of my roasts ended up a bit dark in color, but surprisingly, they cupped very clean—though I did notice some bitterness in the darkest batch. In the end, color is flavor, right? You just have to give it the right amount. 

For the charge temperature, I used 400°F. To start applying gas, I waited to reach the equilibrium point and added 80% gas once the bean temperature hit 172°F. I ran that gas until 280°F and then dropped to 30%. At 347°F, I started full airflow. The rate of change dropped to 16°F per minute as I hit first crack; that wasn’t bad, but for this coffee I wanted it lower, so I dropped the burners and saved the roast. I let it develop until the rate of change reached 3°F per minute and then dropped the beans. It is impressive how this coffee stands up on the cupping table. It’s just so different and complex: the rich sweetness of watermelon Jolly Ranchers and sweet tea, plum acidity, and persimmon mouthfeel. The experience of this coffee goes beyond any flavor note—it is pure elegance. 

Brew

Brew Analysis by MJ Smith 

As soon as I heard that we had a coffee from Yemen coming down the line, I practically begged to be the one to write about it. I knew that any Crown Jewel from Yemen was going to be amazing, and this one is absolutely bananas, both figuratively and literally. Nearly every brew I tried had some form of banana-like notes to it, on top of an array of other exciting notes, such as various fruit candies, root beer, and rosemary. Let’s get into these brews, shall we? 

The first brew I’m going to write about was actually the last brew that I made. I was satisfied with the brews I had so far, but I felt like I needed one more, and it ended up being my favorite of the lot. As for the recipe, it had a dose of 20g, a grind of 10, and a brew time of 3:35, made on the V60 brewer, coming out to a 1.43 TDS and extraction percentage of 18.45%. I personally found notes of fruit leather, banana smoothie, sumac, plum, and cacao nib. Some notes from the rest of the team include confectionary sugar, root beer, orange wine, fig jam, pineapple candy, and toffee.   

The other brew I wanted to highlight was also really, really delicious, and it had a 19g dose, 10 grind, and 3:20 brew time. I made this one on the Kalita Wave, and it had a TDS of 1.42 and an extraction percentage of 19.28%. This one had us all collectively craving banana bread, as that was the first flavor we all noticed immediately. Some other notes I found were strawberries, orange blossoms, rosemary, and Arnold Palmers. The rest of the team also found notes of blackberries, Rolos, Shiraz, and jasmine.  

Both brews were especially delicious (as were the other brews I made that I didn’t write about), proving that this coffee is flexible and versatile, and it’s probably going to taste great no matter what way you decide to brew it. I highly suggest you don’t pass this coffee up. It truly is incredible. Enjoy!