Self-observation:

Had a cup of the full city roast on this Yemen this morning. It is great as an espresso but in the pourover, it is too roast dominant and loses too much character.

Over the years, my tastes in pourover roasting levels has shifted from FC+, then morphed to FC, and now, to C+. Granted, it differs with a bean -- some are better for pourovers at FC -- but I find myself having gravitated to lighter and lighter finishing. I begin almost all beans at a City+ ending point and then play with roast duration based on that starting point.

Not to worry -- doubt that I will ever become a City drinker <grins>, except for the occasional Gesha.

I brewed up a 5 day rested City+ sample of this today and like Dave, found it's characteristics a bit lacking and faint. I imagine this would work well if I did do a blend of two, adding in a bit of darker roasted coffee and maybe french press it. But not tossing it out with the bathwater, I'll keep playing with it while I have it. It's fortunately low on Yemen funk, and wide on subtle flavor notes, they just seem a bit soft to me.

Tom that about sums it up. Seems like this Yemen falls off quickly.....

Interesting! I last did a roast of 2 pounds of the Yemen Mokha Ismaeli on July 31 in my RK drum. To please myself, I took it darker. I had some second cracks in the cooler. Three days ago, I took some from the freezer and today, I brewed up 25 grams in my Impress for an afternoon cup. It was just delicious. Do you remember grape bubble gum from the '50's? That's what it reminded me of. I still like this coffee. So - some interesting points. It was roasted in a bbq grill. The roasted beans have been frozen for 2 1/2 months. And, it's still a delicious cup.

I think I'll blend some with the October Roast & Learn Brazil for a nice espresso.

Interesting! I last did a roast of 2 pounds of the Yemen Mokha Ismaeli on July 31 in my RK drum. To please myself, I took it darker. I had some second cracks in the cooler. Three days ago, I took some from the freezer and today, I brewed up 25 grams in my Impress for an afternoon cup. It was just delicious. Do you remember grape bubble gum from the '50's? That's what it reminded me of. I still like this coffee. So - some interesting points. It was roasted in a bbq grill. The roasted beans have been frozen for 2 1/2 months. And, it's still a delicious cup.

Thanks for the report!

I think I'll blend some with the October Roast & Learn Brazil for a nice espresso.

Not a bad thought. The Yemen, last month's Sumatran, and this month's Brazil could make a pretty good combination, now that I think about it. I'll have to play with some ratios and see what I can get.

I'm not sure if it's OK to revive this thread, but I have a couple pounds left of that Yemen and I just can't make it sing. It seems like people had good results and I never had bad beans from SM. I wanted to participate in the R&L but ended up being quite busy...

I'm a novice roaster with a Hottop, voltage stabilized with variac and controlled with HTC+TC4C. I tried a couple roasts and they all turn out very bad. Leathery, fermented, woody and no fruits at all. I don't mind some funky cup, but this was just bad. I tried in drip (clever), espresso, various times of rest, all without success. My profiles are not that far from people reporting good results. Normally, most of my roast end up pretty good (could be better but still), so I'm confused about what I'm doing wrong. Here is a summary of what I tried so far (more or less randomly I guess!)

175g charge.

Drying/Ramp/Dev Drop
6:15/4/2:30 437F
6/3:50/2 430F
6/3:50/1:40 420F
6:20/4/3:10 420F

and an example profile (disregard 1stCend as it was quite muted and not sure exactly where it stopped)



Some of these might have been OK (nothing nice), but #3 was awful and #4 quite bad. Any suggestions on what to try next? Any suggestions on roasting Yemen in general? Faster drying? Roasting darker?

Thanks for all the information in this forum!

Shorten your whole profile drastically. Your beans are older and a development phase like that will only result in a compounding of those undesirable woody notes.

Past crop can't be fixed in the roaster, but roasting them for shorter times can ameliorate a few problems.

Is June 2014 already past crop? I thought this was for >1 year after arrival. It's true that I have been using beans stored in a ziploc bag, but the rest is stored in vacuum-sealed Mason jars.

I'll try a shorter profile tonight, something like 5/3:30/2.

June is when it sold, it was harvested likely in mid- late 2013. Yemen's harvest season is apparently one of the shortest, and carried out from October-December, but some state June-Dec. Either way this coffee arrived stateside in May of this year. YMMV but any coffee that doesn't get vac sealed and frozen starts to show age, (woody, strawlike, or flattened flavors) after 3 or so months in my book.

The vacuum sealing doesn't preventing aging (via) preventing water motility like deep freezing. I use both, but I consider the freezer as contributing to the lion's share of protection.

I find Yemens have much longer shelf life than other greens. Probably due to the elevation/density, some grown up to 8,000.' I have some Yemens which I am working through from 2 crops ago. Starting to show but they have the longest legs of any origin in my stash.