Bait Yaseen Honey

Bait Yaseen Honey · Community Lot · Carbonic Honey · Yemenia · Bait Yaseen, Hayma Dakhiliya, Sana'a

Most honey processes need water. Yemen does not have it to spare, so rather than treat that as an obstacle Qima built a process around it. Carbonic Honey uses no water at any stage: the cherries are depulped dry so the sticky mucilage stays on the bean, fermented under controlled gas, then dried slowly in open air. What comes out has a weight and a texture that neither of the Alchemy protocols produces.

Bait Yaseen is a good place to try it. The village lies in Bani Al-Siyagh, its terraces stepping down below the Taylah Fort on the flank of Nabi Shu'ayb, Yemen's highest mountain. The holdings here are tiny, a few terraces each, and the lot is assembled from many of them. Bananas and sorghum grow between the coffee rows, and the trees themselves were inherited rather than planted, most of them older than the farmers working them.

The village has done this before. Bait Yaseen sent a honey lot to the 2024 auction, and although it finished in the middle of the field it drew one of the highest prices of that year, which says something about how buyers read the process.

For farmers here the appeal is more practical than it sounds. Selling ripe cherry rather than dried coffee takes the drying burden off the household, and a process that needs no water removes the one input the valley can never guarantee.