Before the new world (mainly lead by Brazil with it’s signature variety “Mundo Novo”) started growing coffee in 17th century, basically Yemen and India and Java are dominated the coffee plantation in the world. That’s why the words Mocha (port in Yemen) and Java are very much equivalent to coffee in home vocabulary. Arabian, Dutch and British control the coffee trading to Europe for over 200 years.
It wasn’t until 1822 that coffee production started to boom in Brazil, and in 1852 the country became the largest producer of coffee and has remained to this day. Brazil is a real power house of the “new world”, bringing in modern technology to coffee production.
Yemen is the first country in the world that successfully cultivate wild arabica tree on a farm. They follow Ethiopia’s tradition to sun-dried the coffee. After moving on to India and Java island, different variation of processing evolved due to local weather limitation, eventually becoming the Monsooned and Wet Hulled respectively.
These “old world” processing are one days being labeled as sub-standard while the speciality coffee people only tracing washed coffee. These 3 old world coffee picked this month are all Arabic bean processed with high precision traditionally with help of modern technology. You may find a different conclusion after tasting on whether these old school things are really that old.
Yemen – Red roof Natural sun-dried
Yemen is the first country in the world that successfully cultivate wild coffee from Ethiopia as production crop in 14th century. They use the old school natural processing, i.e. simply put on roof or ground to sun dried. The “red roof” is the still the signature scene today in Yemen’s growing regions.
India – Moonsooned Processing
Indian Monsooned Malabar is a unique way of processing coffee developed by India in 18th century. The natural processed coffee are exposed to moisture filled monsoon winds for months, swelling nearly twice their original size and developing a pale gold color. In the old days, the monsooning is happened on the ship for 6 months when it’s sailing from India to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope. Today it happens in a well-ventilated brick or concrete floored warehouses, usually on the West Coast of India using the winds from the Arabian Sea during Monsoon months of June through September.
Indonesia – Wet Hulled (Giling Basah)
In the Bahasa language of Indonesia, Giling Basah means “wet-hulled.” It’s a unique processed adopted in Indonesia not because of any fancy quality/cupping flavors thing in mind, it’s more because of the farmer is trying to grow coffee in a humid climate. When coffee plantation first arrived from India/Ceylon to Java island, the farmer found that the humanity in Indonesia makes it impossible to use the traditional natural sun-dried processing. So they eventually come up with this half washed processed, trying to dry the coffee without parchment to maximize the exposure to heat.
