Hi.

These are some observations of roasting Yemen beans. I may learn something myself, or someone else may like to hear them.

I picked these beans from SweetMarias to give them a try since I am a fan of Yemen beans. I had read somewhere that there where three main qualities of Yemen, and since I thought my previous ones were the worst in terms of quality, that maybe these would be somewhere in the middle.

The culling took twice as long as usual. There were two big piles of bad beans afterwords and one rock found. I've always found little rocks with Yemen beans so that was not a surprise. But the huge number of bad beans (broken, insect damage, etc) makes me think these beans could the the worst of the worst. Don't know yet. I'll cup them tomorrow. Maybe there is no correlation between the number of bad beans and the flavor. While I was culling and warming the roaster, I thought came to my mind. How about people that use bigger roasters? It would be a huge amount of work to cull for example 500 grams, I thought to myself.

In my last recent roasts, I used a mid size air nozzle for my heat gun. The small nozzle was maybe too small, and the middle one was maybe too big. So I decided to open the small one a little with a drill bit. My small nozzle is now in between the two in terms of opening diameter. It may take me a while to get use to the new airflow settings but I think I am for the better.

These is my first roast. I tried to play it safe (neutral), not too light, not too dark.



I'll cup it morrow and I'll go from there. Usually, I like Yemen for espresso a little over the second crack. But I don't know about these beans in particular.

Cheers

I also picked up some of these greens, but haven't had a chance to roast them. I'm hoping that my small grid drum on the Behmor is up to the task, but I've heard from another roaster that these are pretty small beans so I may be forced to un-retire a hot air popper on this one.

I got the other beans they have from Yemen at the moment but my experience with bean quality was the same. However, I love the flavor in the cup and just ordered another 5 lbs.

I also love the flavor of Yemen.

I tried a cup of clever driper and I was not impressed. It had nothing that stands out. Its flavor remind me of a 'castle.' Maybe it needs a longer roast or a different profile.

However, I knew that this type of coffee does well in espresso so I fired up the machine and took a sip. The first sip was not good but then they improved. It had an OK flavor, much different than drip, but it also had an acidity type I remember I used to get when I roasted mondobonko real fast (for espresso) in my early days. It is a peculiar acidity that I used to call 'red' acidity. I Think it was related to too high of a drum temperature. I am sure it has a chemical name.

Since the finish phase was not standard (short, only 2 minutes long) I think I cannot judge the beans well with this roast. The roast will probably age an improve, but I need to do one with at least three minutes finish phase and go from there.

My conclusion is that this coffee may benefit from a longer roast time, maybe 11-12 minutes. Next time, I'll try to lengthen the mid phase (to build flavor) and the finish phase (to get rid of the acidity) and go from there.

Cheers

I think that most Yemens (I also have this particular Sharasi) benefit with a few extra days of rest.

Rafael;
I also think that your development time being very short (in my view) will not help Yemens. I was a little surprised in the few latest graph that you posted that you seem to now favour a much short roast profile. This is probably linked to the air gun addition, but even in air roaster I prefer roasts that are longer than 10 minutes.
Yemens are wild coffees, you cannot tame a wild animal by being fast!!

Whale wrote:I think that most Yemens (I also have this particular Sharasi) benefit with a few extra days of rest.

Spot on advice. Rest these an extra week (or maybe 2 weeks for espresso). Seriously

Whale wrote:Yemens are wild coffees, you cannot tame a wild animal by being fast!!

Again spot on advice from Sylvain.
When roasting Yemen for Espresso I prefer to get first crack at roughly 10 minutes.

Whale wrote:I think that most Yemens (I also have this particular Sharasi) benefit with a few extra days of rest.

Rafael;
I also think that your development time being very short (in my view) will not help Yemens. I was a little surprised in the few latest graph that you posted that you seem to now favour a much short roast profile. This is probably linked to the air gun addition, but even in air roaster I prefer roasts that are longer than 10 minutes.
Yemens are wild coffees, you cannot tame a wild animal by being fast!!

+2

Yemen is my wife's favorite bean and it ranks pretty high for me as well. I have roasted over 200lbs of it over the years and fully agree that a longer roast and a longer rest is best for it. I am not happy with this years Yemen from SM's, the pre-culling and after culling has been ridiculous and yes doing this for 1kg is a Pita. I did a 500g roast that went way to fast (12 min) and after 10 days found it's way to the compost pile, I really couldn't see how a few more days rest would salvage this roast. Even my longer profile roasts have not been as good as previous year crops although since I am still getting the hang of the IR-1 I am not going to put all the blame on this years crop.

germantown rob wrote:I am not happy with this years Yemen from SM's ....

In general, issues in-country have apparently affected availability for better quality beans from the region. It's easy to be unhappy about that....until I consider what it must be like for the people living there.

On the other hand, there was a recent COOP offering for Yemen Sana'ani that made dynamite espresso. I made a poor (pour?) attempt at a video and will take this opportunity to shamelessly pimp it again:



Please don't remind me to oil the hinges on the back door again - I got it!

Well the squeak reminded me I need to lithium grease my squeaky doors.

Thanks for the sobering thought about the conditions in Yemen, it puts a perspective on my roasting complaints.

JonR10 wrote:On the other hand, there was a recent COOP offering for Yemen Sana'ani that made dynamite espresso. I made a poor (pour?) attempt at a video and will take this opportunity to shamelessly pimp it again...

The crema looks so good!