Roasting techniques of North Africa and Arabia

[kingseven]

Anyone just happen to have any knowledge handy on this subject?

[tisri]

From Kenneth David's "Home Coffee Roasting" book, attributed to William Palgrave's 1863 Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia

Without delay Soweylim begins his preparations for coffee. These open by about five minutes of blowing with the bellows and arranging the charcoal till a sufficient heat has been produced. He then takes a dirty knotted rag out of a niche in the wall close by, and having untied it, empies out if thre or four handfuls of unroasted coffee, the which he places on a little trencher of patted grass, and picks carefully out any blackened grains, or other non-hologous substances, commonly to be found intermixed with the berries when purchased in gross, then, after much cleansing and shaking, he pours the grain so cleansed into a large open iron ladle, and places it over the mouth of the funnel, at the same time blowing the bellows and stirring the grains gently round and round till they crackle, redden, and smoke a little, but carefully withdrawing them from the heat long before they turn black or charred, after the erroneous fashion of Turkey and Europe, after which he puts them to cool a moment on the grass platter.

[zix]

The north african beans I roast differ, but in my experience "ethiopian moka" can take a dark roast, and will probably hold up to any heating method - hot air, drum roast, oven. It is a rugged bean. With the yirgacheffe, roasting times around 15-25 minutes are preferrable (heatgun+bowl or drum roasting) as that gives all the beans good time to become more even in roast darkness. Also, be a bit more careful as a too dark roast (dark espresso-vienna) takes away the finer floral tastes. It will still be useful in espresso though, and by the way it chokes the machine at a coarser grind than most other beans.