Bani Ofair XV

Bani Ofair XV · Community Lot · Alchemy XV · Kent · Bani Ofair, Maghrib Ans, Dhamar

Over the past five auctions, Bani Ofair has sent out lots processed with XII, XI, a Carbonic Honey and an XCI, and this year an XV. Few origins anywhere have been through that much of a processing catalogue, and the reason is that the coffee here holds up to it.

The ground is dry volcanic slope at around 1,800 metres in the highlands of Maghrib Ans, in a governorate whose name comes from a Himyarite king and whose valleys have been farmed since long before anyone here had heard of coffee. Kent has settled into this soil well, and the farms are small enough that the lot has to be gathered across many of them.

XV is the second protocol in the Alchemy series. It starts with carbonic maceration, the sealed gas regulated fermentation that made XI's name, then adds a dedicated anaerobic stage on top: two separate fermentation environments, run in sequence, which keeps the brightness of the original protocol and sets it over something deeper.

Qima has worked in Bani Ofair since 2021, building rainwater reservoirs, training farmers and supplying seedlings. The farmers' own account of what the auction changed is simple enough: it is the reason anyone outside Yemen knows this valley by name.