This low-acid, thick-bodied Yemen is loaded with rustic-sweet flavors and richly bittersweet tones. Complex notes of Halva confections with pistachio and spices, tobacco, dried date, and cocoa. City+ to French. Excellent espresso.

Full Cupping Notes:
Hawari brews an interesting blueprint of earth-toned sweetness, accented by fruit and spice notes, and a foil of bittersweetness. I pick up on a lot of caramelized sweetness in the dry fragrance of medium roasts, like cooked brown sugar, with savory umami notes, and smokey flambé-type bittersweetness. The wet aroma has a very sweet set of smells too, with notes of malted cocoa, caramel, hazelnut, and Five Spice powder. In the brew, flavor profiles at City+/Full City included aspects of molasses and rich cocoa, sesame snacks, sorghum syrup, cinnamon stick, and candied yam. The cup opens up to savory accents as it cools, like roasted barley green tea, along with an aromatic Halva note with pistachio and spices. There’s a tobacco leaf flavor that hits the aroma as the coffee cools, with faint fruited accents that allude to natural dried apricot and date pieces, and a bittersweet-savory note that brought to mind toasted pumpkin seeds dusted with dark cocoa power. Darker roasts are thick in texture, with brooding dark cocoa flavors, perhaps a little heavier on the ‘bitter’ rather than ‘sweet’ – I don’t mean that in a bad way! To me it has the appeal of a really high % cacao bar or baking cocoa powder with just a dusting of sugar to add depth of flavor. Dark roasts stand up to milk very well, and Hawari’s mouthfeel is pretty darn close to milk on its own!