I'm drinking a cup of Yemen right now. It tastes more nutty today than I remember. The Yemen we have right now (half a bin full) is the end of the Mocca Sanani. A lot of you have really enjoyed this coffee for its uniqueness, wildness, and sweetness. So if you want to taste it again, you might give it a go right away.
On a brighter note, I just bought coffees from the many, many samples we have cupped recently. In that order, I bought another Yemen. This Yemen is from Anesi. I've had trouble finding out much info about Anesi and this coffee in particular, but I'm hoping my broker (Anna from Cafe Imports) tells me more about it soon. But I think Anesi is a small region within the Sanani region. Regardless, the coffee cupped out beautifully. The most dominating feature of the Anesi, to me, was a sweet (and sour) strawberry flavor. Unfortunately this is a really expensive coffee. From what I understand, Yemen doesn't produce that much coffee and their coffees are in high demand, especially in places that drink Turkish-style coffee. Supposedly Saudi Arabia is a big buyer of Yemen coffee and they are willing to pay big bucks for it. A lot of people in the Specialty industry in the U.S. consider Yemens to be too wild, fermented... basically defective coffee. So that just goes to show you that different people like different stuff. I think I'm going to sell the new Yemen for the same price as I sold the old Yemen ($17/lb). I'll absorb the difference. I keep doing that, and someday it's going to hurt us too bad to continue to do that. The problem is, we keep tasting fantastic coffees and then find out they're expensive. Oh well. Just know you're getting a GREAT value at $17 on this coffee.
Other coffees I ordered from Cafe Imports include a Tanzania Peaberry Songea. I know, I know. You love it already. Also a Brazil, "Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza Lot 11 Pulped Natural Hamilton and Celso Families." Ask for it by name. This coffee is from the Mococa region in Sao Paulo. Pulped natural is the processing method, like the Panama Hartmann Honey, where they take the skins off the cherries and dry the seeds with the mucilage still intact. One reason this coffee is better than most Brazilians is the picking. The farmers triple pick the farm, being careful to harvest ripe cherries only. This is probably the most crucial step in producing great coffee. The varietals in this coffee are Yellow Bourbon, Red Catuai, and Mundo Novo. I've only had a Yellow Bourbon once, in another Brazil. Catuai is a tricky varietal, the reds are better than the yellows, but it's a plant that La Minita is trying to cull out of their coffee at Rio Negro. Mundo Novo is a varietal I don't know much about, but it's some sort of hybrid.
Another coffee I bought is a Kenya AA. Not a lot of info about this coffee yet either. It's a small lot that came out of the auction in Kenya. Scored really high in cuppings at Cafe Imports. Here are their cupping notes: "Floral, red currant, clean acidity, grapefruit, coconut, caramel, creamy body, long sweet aftertaste." Sometimes these coffees come and go so fast that I don't have the opportunity to get samples, roast, cup, and decide before they are gone. So this time I took a chance on the professionals' advice.
Anyway, we're looking forward to new variety in coffees around here. It's tough, when I'm looking for something superb, to weed through a lot of sub-par coffees. Hopefully we've done a satisfactory job.
By the way, I've started using twitter, so some info I want to share that's too short for a blog, I'm going to put up there. If you want to follow that stream, you can find my page here: http://twitter.com/thedoubleshot
