beyond bombs and bloodshed...and densimetric gravity table—rayyan is able to mill coffee without...

22 r o a s t September | October 2015 23

BeyondBombs and Bloodshed

Restoring Yemen’s Place

in Specialty Coffee

by Emily Puro

Ethiopia was the official “Portrait Country” of the 27th annual

Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) Event in

April, but in many ways, Ethiopia’s neighbor and fellow legend of

coffee history—Yemen—stole the show.

September | October 2015 23

continued on page 24

A village in the Haraz area of western Yemen. | photo courtesy Mocha MillMokhtar Alkhanshali (plaid shirt) visits the Roowad Cooperative in Hayma. | photo courtesy Mocha MillA farmer in western Yemen’s Hayma area. | photo courtesy Mocha Mill


BEYOND BOMBS AND BLOODSHED | Restoring Yemen’s Place in Specialty Coffee (continued)


Much of the buzz was generated by two Americans who risked their lives escaping the escalating violence in Yemen to attend the conference, bringing samples of Yemeni coffee to share with attendees. When the airport in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, was bombed shortly before they were scheduled to leave, the two men, Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a Yemeni-American who lives in San Francisco, and Andrew Nicholson, a Texan now living in Yemen, drove seven hours to the Port of Mocha, convinced a local fishing boat captain to take them to Djibouti—a harrowing five-hour crossing on the Red Sea—then flew to Kenya, their respective hometowns, and finally the SCAA Event in Seattle.

Talk of their adventure quickly spread. Alkhanshali was interviewed by the BBC, NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, and other media outlets, and was recognized by passersby, an Uber driver and others. Some began referring to him as “The Indiana Jones of Coffee.”

And while the story of this daring escape drew crowds to a breakfast and a cupping featuring Alkhanshali, who owns the export company Mocha Mill, based in Oakland, California, and to the booth Nicholson manned for his Yemen-based mill and export company, Rayyan Mill, it was the coffee many were talking about when they left.

Supporting Yemen’s Coffee Growers

Yemen holds a special place in coffee history, long regarded as the first country in which coffee was cultivated, and home to Mocha, thought to be the jumping off point from which arabica coffee was spread throughout the world.

The coffee grown in Yemen is unique in many ways. A 2013 report by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), titled Rediscovering Coffee in Yemen:

Updating the coffee value chain and a marketing

strategy to reposition Yemen in the international

coffee markets, details a number of factors that contribute to the origin’s appeal. These include: “(1) The existence of unique heirloom varieties, resulting in the ability of the Yemeni coffee trees to yield unparalleled flavor profiles; (2) Excellent elevations,

Alkhanshali (right) with the director of the coffee nursery in Ibb. | photo courtesy Mocha MillAlkhanshali (foreground) tours the largest coffee nursery in Yemen, in the city of Ibb.photo courtesy Mocha Mill



which can exceed 2,000 meters (6,562 feet); (3) Centuries-old traditions in the cultivation and processing of the coffee; and (4) Challenging growing conditions, resulting in stressed coffee beans.”

While there are a number of distinct microclimates in Yemen, creating a rich diversity of coffee varieties grown in different regions, average rainfall in the country is only 167 millimeters annually. This compares with 848 millimeters in Ethiopia and 630 millimeters in Kenya, according to data from the World Bank Group, an international organization working to end poverty.

Because the country is so dry, says Alkhanshali, “Yemeni coffees have become resistant to drought. The coffee tree is stressed from lack of water, and that added stress on the beans creates more complexity.”

This lack of water also means coffee is processed naturally—dried in the cherry—which adds to its unique flavor. Finally, says Alkhanshali, the terraced hills and mountaintop villages, built for defensive purposes, provide the ideal balance of sun and shade. But while experts agree Yemeni coffee holds extraordinary appeal, low productivity and a lack of consistency have forced the origin out of the specialty coffee spotlight for many years.

Currently, the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) is leading the coffee segment of a five-year project in Yemen, funded by USAID and Land O’Lakes International Development. The project, dubbed Competitive Agriculture Systems for High-Value Crops (CASH), is focused on developing high-value agriculture to address food insecurity in Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries. CQI’s main goals include enhancing coffee productivity and quality differentiation in the country.

During its first year on the project, which launched in early 2014, the nonprofit began training growers on best agricultural practices and cupping, and began working to develop the specialty market for Yemeni coffee in the United States and abroad. Unfortunately, the escalation in military actions earlier this year forced CQI to suspend its work in Yemen, as USAID shifted its efforts toward humanitarian aid.

In light of this, CQI has turned its attention to developing specialty markets for Yemeni coffee, but Alkhanshali, 27, and Nicholson, 37, have continued


Alkhanshali uses a traditional Yemeni scale to evaluate coffee in a farmer’s storage room. photo courtesy Mocha Mill A coffee grower in the Bani Ismail area. | photo courtesy Rayyan Mill


their work in country. Nicholson returned to Sana’a—where he lives with his wife and three children—even before the airport resumed operations. (He spent about a week in Djibouti waiting for the airport to reopen before arranging passage on a livestock boat headed to Mocha.) Alkhanshali travels frequently to market Yemeni coffee, but he plans to return to work with growers and others later this year.


Even before the coffee goes to mill, however, quality control systems must be in place. For many years, growers typically have not differentiated between ripe and unripe cherries during picking. A key first step in improving quality was to convey the importance of picking only the ripe, red cherries. This meant bridging the cultural divide, and providing incentives for farmers to pick selectively.

A Cultural Connection

As a Yemeni-American, Alkhanshali is uniquely qualified to bridge the cultural divide. His parents were born in Yemen, and he grew up immersed in the culture. As a child, he visited Yemen frequently and helped his grandmother pick coffee.

A few years ago, he met coffee consultant Willem Boot, of Boot Coffee in Mill Valley, California. Boot, who had been working with CQI in Yemen to produce the 2013 USAID report mentioned previously, became a mentor to Alkhanshali, teaching him about the coffee industry and encouraging him to become a Q Grader. (Alkhanshali is currently the only Q Grader working in Yemen and is, in fact, the first arabica Q Grader of Arab descent.)

On his first coffee-focused trip to Yemen, in May 2014, Alkhanshali visited 32 coffee-growing regions—using USAID and CQI reports, as well as old Arab textbooks to guide him—bringing back samples to cup with Boot.

“I kind of retraced the old Mocha route,” he says, “and I found incredible places on my journey.”

At the end of 2014, he partnered with the nonprofit Small and Micro Enterprise Promotion Services to take 16 Yemeni farmers to Ethiopia, “to learn better agricultural practices from their Ethiopian brothers and sisters across the Red Sea,” he says.

A Focus on Consistency

There are many barriers to the success of Yemeni specialty coffee. A lack of water and subsequent low productivity are obvious concerns. The 2013 USAID report referenced earlier states, “The official average production by smallholders is 550 kilograms per hectare. However, interviews

with various local farmers lower this estimate to around 350 kilograms per hectare.” This compares with yields of 700 to 800 kilograms per hectare in Ethiopia, according to a 2015 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service.

In addition, the terrain is difficult to navigate, growing areas are remote, and many farmers have replaced coffee plants with khat, a mild stimulant that is legal and widely used throughout the country. Khat grows quickly and requires no processing, making it an attractive option for growers who have not seen great value in coffee in recent decades.

The obstacle most often cited by coffee professionals, however, is inconsistent quality.

“While you can get beautiful coffees from Yemen,” says Sean Marshall, a founding partner, with Nicholson, in Rayyan Mill, “they’re horribly inconsistent because the milling process and the scrutiny at the mill level is not very good. It’s even worse at the agricultural level, depending on where it’s grown.”

It was this high level of inconsistency that convinced Nicholson and Marshall their idea to open a modern mill in Yemen had merit. This will be the fourth season the company has been milling coffee for its own operations and other exporters.

Most mills in Yemen use equipment intended for wheat, rice or other grains to hull dry cherry, Nicholson explains. Because the grinders are relatively rough, and because the reconstituted hulls can be sold at the local market, the dried cherries are soaked in water before milling. Using equipment designed specifically for coffee cherry hulling—including a destoner, huller, catador separator, screen grader and densimetric gravity table—Rayyan is able to mill coffee without moistening the cherries.

“After hulling and [machine] sorting, we finish by hand sorting,” Nicholson explains. “We also cater the processes to each lot. In Yemen, lots can be quite different and some need extra passes on some of the machines, or even double or triple hand sorting.”

Alkhanshali relies on his heritage to develop a bond with Yemeni growers that would be difficult for a non-Yemeni to build.

“Most of my work is in khat sessions,” he says. “I spent months doing this, to get them to understand what I want to do. If I came in there wearing pants and my hair parted to the side, saying, ‘Hi

guys,’ that wouldn’t work. I wear a dagger. I wear my tribal turban. My tribe comes with me. I actually speak Arabic a little better than English.”

He is also careful to frame instructions in culturally relevant ways.

“I don’t go there and say, ‘You’ve been doing it this way for 20 years, but you’re



doing it wrong. Here’s the right way to do it,’” he explains. Knowing that picking ripe cherries and using organic fertilizers are bygone traditions in Yemen, he asks growers to recall their parents and grandparents talking about picking the red cherry “like a ruby on a tree,” he says, then he tells them, “We need to go back to what our grandparents used to do.”

Alkhanshali also hosts tasting sessions to educate growers about coffee quality and promote a sense of pride in their product. It’s typically the first time they’ve tasted their coffee roasted to specialty standards—and brewed in a Chemex—he says. When villagers chose their own coffee over an Ethiopian and an Indonesian in one blind cupping, he recalls, “There was so much pride in their eyes.”

“When the farmers learn we’re selling coffee from their community, and we’re selling it by itself and telling their story, they love that,” Nicholson adds. “They know Yemen was famous around the world before and they want to bring it back.”

Providing Price Incentives

Offering price incentives to encourage quality differentiation is another major hurdle.

“A significant portion of Yemen’s coffees are sold into Saudi Arabia, which has an affinity for the country and its plight,” says Andrew Hetzel, a project consultant for CQI focusing on market development for Yemeni coffee. “They pay top dollar for the origin but are not as discriminating about quality as specialty green buyers.”

“If you’ve ever had Saudi coffee,” adds Alkhanshali, “it’s just ginger, saffron, sugar, and a little bit of coffee, so it doesn’t matter how bad the coffee is. You’re not going to taste it.”

To address this, Alkhanshali established his company, Mocha Mill, with a commitment to buying quality Yemeni coffee at a higher price than the growers were getting elsewhere. In addition to the Saudi market, he notes, growers often sell to predatory lenders who offer a lower price pre-harvest, when farmers are desperate for money to feed their families. To address this, he has begun providing interest-free, pre-harvest loans, along with his commitment to buy the cherries at a higher price. (He is currently paying $6 per kilogram for dried coffee cherries.) This hasn’t endeared him to the local loan sharks—he and his tribesmen have exchanged gunfire several times, he says—but it has endeared him to the growers.

continued on page 32 Andrew Nicholson (left) and Sean Marshall, co-founders of Rayyan Mill, representing the company at the SCAA Event in April. | photo courtesy Rayyan Mill

Ali Al-Hajary, deputy manager of Rayyan Mill, on a trip to visit Yemeni coffee growers. photo courtesy Rayyan Mill

Andrew Nicholson (left) works with Rayyan Mill staff in Yemen to adjust settings on the densimetric table for a new microlot. | photo courtesy Rayyan Mill




“Mokhtar’s company has financed three weddings in our village,” says one farmer from the Roowad cooperative in the Hayma area of western Yemen’s Sana’a province, “and he has helped many of us get out of debt by offering us microloans without any interest.”

Introducing Modern Processes

Modernizing drying methods also has been a focus for Alkhanshali and others working to improve coffee quality and consistency in Yemen. He worked with the Roowad cooperative to build Yemen’s first modern drying beds, and provided moisture analyzers and microfinancing for additional improvements.

And although Alkhanshali and Nicholson are both exporters, they often work together to maximize their efforts.

“Andrew has the best coffee mill in Yemen,” says Alkhanshali. “He’s the only one who is dry-milling coffee. We’re the only ones who are cupping coffee in Yemen.”

“The biggest thing is clean coffee,” adds Nicholson. “That’s taken us working at the mill, working on processes, training, moving to GrainPro and jute bags, but also at the farm level,

helping farmers understand what the specialty coffee industry wants. What normally happens with the coffee in Yemen, even really beautiful, delicious, unique microlots, is they get mixed in a big pile with coffee from all over the country and even other countries.”

This focus on microlots and traceability is finding a positive reception from roasters around the world.

“We’ve had a great response not just in the United States,” says Nicholson, “but also in Australia, South Korea, Japan, China and Europe.”

During the first two years of operation, Rayyan Mill exported less than 6 tons of green coffee, as Nicholson focused on developing relationships with farmers and suppliers in Yemen. Last year, that increased to nearly 13 tons, with additional orders the company was unable to fill using existing capital. This year, with increased capital and marketing, Nicholson expects to export between 30 and 45 tons. The company’s current capacity, he says, is about 72 tons annually. Alkhanshali expects to export between 7 and 16 tons of high-quality coffee—with SCAA cupping scores of 90 or higher—this year.

BEYOND BOMBS AND BLOODSHED (continued)

Alkhanshali shows growers the difference between ripe and unripe cherries. | photos courtesy Mocha Mill

Top: Alkhanshali (right) uses a Chemex to brew coffee for growers in western Yemen’s Utmah district. Bottom: Cupping Yemeni coffee at Boot Coffee in Mill Valley, California. | photos courtesy Mocha Mill


Even as the war on terror rages on, Alkhanshali and Nicholson are looking toward the next phase in their quest to return Yemen to specialty coffee prominence. They hope to open a cupping lab in Yemen adhering to SCAA standards and train cuppers to evaluate, roast and brew coffee. They’ll use money generated through the lab to fund drying beds, moisture analyzers, workshops and other improvements for growers.

This year, for the first time, Yemeni farmers told Alkhanshali and Nicholson they wanted to plant more coffee. This is a huge accomplishment, says Nicholson, “because they normally plant khat or some other types of trees, because that makes more money than the coffee traditionally has, but now they see the coffee is doing well for them.”

Living with Danger and Uncertainty

While their swashbuckling journey from Sana’a to Seattle drew widespread awe at the SCAA Event in April, both Alkhanshali and Nicholson point out that brushes with danger are not uncommon.

“That whole story of getting to the SCAA,” says Nicholson, “we have two or three stories like that every year. We’ve just learned to work with the people and work around the politics.”

“What’s been really hard,” he adds, “is getting the resources we need to Yemen because people are so afraid.”

“This has been happening a long time,” agrees Alkhanshali. “The Arab Spring, I think in some regards, was worse. They close the airports; they open them. They close the ports; they open them.”

In addition to exchanging gunfire with predatory lenders, Alkhanshali recounts no less than 11 tribal ambushes during his time in Yemen.


A village in Yemen’s Haraz region. | photo courtesy Mocha Mill

Alkhanshali enjoys a cup of coffee at a cafe in the old city of Sana’a. photo courtesy Mocha Mill continued on page 36

Farmers stand with a shipment of coffee bound for Rayyan Mill. The coffee had to be held for two months before transport to the mill, because of the violence in surrounding areas. | photo courtesy Rayyan Mill



“That’s when you turn a corner and a bunch of people come out of nowhere, and they’re looking for someone from a certain tribe,” he says. “They ask for your ID and they come up with rifles. It’s pretty frightening.”

His most horrific story occurred about a week before his journey to Seattle in April. He was trying to leave the country on a ship out of Aden, a port city in southwestern Yemen, when he was accosted on the street, blindfolded, his arms bound, and thrown into the back of a pickup truck. Before he managed to escape, he overheard one of his assailants talking about access between Mocha and Djibouti, which sparked the idea to leave the country via the Port of Mocha.

While Nicholson’s stories are less harrowing, he has been living in Yemen with his American wife and three children, now 10, 8 and 4 years old, since late 2011. The day he and his partners met with the Yemeni government to discuss their plans for building a mill, he says, “that was the first day of Arab Spring.” Having lined up investors in the United States before unrest swept the region, he and his partners returned to their backers and explained the uncertainty moving forward. The investors gave them carte blanche to proceed or pull out at their discretion.

“I said, ‘We’ve already been talking to farmers. I can’t in good conscience let them down,’” he recalls.

“I feel like I give a lot of hope,” agrees Alkhanshali, “so I have to go back.”

A Warm Reception

Roasters and cuppers confirm that the work Alkhanshali and Nicholson have been doing to supply consistently high-quality coffee from Yemen—coffee that highlights the unique flavor profiles for which the origin has long been celebrated—is paying off.

Winston Harrison, head roaster and green buyer at Crema Coffee Roasters in Nashville, Tennessee, has purchased a few bags of Yemeni coffee from Rayyan Mill for the past few seasons.

“It’s a unique thing we all look forward to every year, because they’re head-turningly different from every other origin,” he says. “I often feel like drinking a good Yemeni coffee is more like drinking a good bourbon [whiskey]. It has a level of spice and fruit and sweetness to it that’s entirely different from anything else we’re able to put on the table.”

As part of a CASH pilot trade program, Philadelphia-based La Colombe Coffee Roasters partnered with CQI on an event in Washington, D.C., in April to showcase Yemeni coffee for an audience of lawmakers and coffee aficionados. After the event, La Colombe put the coffee up for sale for $68 per pound. By the end of May, it was nearly sold out. (Rayyan Mill’s wholesale price for green coffee ranges from $16 to $24 per kilogram, according to Nicholson, while Mocha Mill prices range from $30 to $150 per kilogram, according to Alkhanshali.)

News coverage of the ongoing conflict in Yemen, and the highly publicized Mocha-to-SCAA adventure, have provided rich marketing opportunities for Yemeni coffee.

“We are from Texas, and Texas has a reputation for having politically charged opinions on places in the Middle East, but we have had a very good response,” says Marshall. In addition to being a partner in Rayyan Mill, he owns a roasting company, Fusion Bean, and a cafe, Southside Espresso, both in Houston. “Besides the fact that there’s this crazy Indiana Jones guy going across the

Red Sea,” he continues, “… the fact that we have intimate knowledge of something going on in Yemen that’s not wars and bombing, I think people really take to that.”

“When I do my presentations,” says Alkhanshali, “most of it’s not even about the coffee. It’s about the people and the history and the culture of Yemen. I want people to change their mindset about Yemen. As opposed to it being drones and airstrikes, I want it to be a bridge between something we all know and love, and that’s coffee.”

Top: A grower in the Hayma area. Bottom left: Alkhanshali evaluates coffee. Bottom right: Alkhanshali tests modern raised drying bed prototypes in Ibb. photos courtesy Mocha Mill

Top: Another view of a village in Yemen’s Haraz region. Center: The old city of Sana’a. Bottom: Children in a village in northwestern Yemen. | photos courtesy Mocha Mill

beyond bombs and bloodshed...and densimetric gravity table—rayyan is able to mill coffee without...

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