Kona Coffee Expedition

We were very fortunate last month – we went to the Big Island of Hawaii, the one and only home of Kona Coffee, for a lesson in coffee.  We obviously know all about what happens after getting the green beans but we’ve always wanted to see the first phase, from growing the coffee.

The Kona Coffee belt is located on the west side of the island.  We were staying near the beautiful reefs in Kopoho, on the south east side so it was about 3 hours to drive to Kona.  In true form I had the day planned out for Matthew and I of course 🙂

First we went to visit an acquaintance we had met through HomeAway.  We had wanted to rent his home, which is gorgeous, but out of our budget.  Here’s the view of the pool:

Needless to say it was amazing.  If you’re interested their site is: Kona View Estate Randy and Atsumi are wonderful hosts and the place is truly incredible.  Plus there’s the added bonus of staying on a coffee farm.  Anyway, Randy made us a beautiful cup of his coffee and showed us around the estate.  They’ve done so much work and it’s beautiful.

They were using the Fukunaga pruning method, this is a method of pruning back every third row of trees so that they are on a three year rotation.  Pruning is essential in growing coffee to keep up the quality and quantity of each tree so there’s been lots of testing various methods.  There is also the Kona method, but we didn’t actually see any farms using this system.  It’s a shame I can’t remember how many trees their farm has – I do know that 1 tree produces about 1 pound of roasted coffee – all that work for 1 pound!

After a lovely visit we went on to Hula Daddy,just down the road.  The manager, Debbie, was so kind and took us on a separate special tour of the farm.  This is where we got to see all of the steps of the bean:

We picked some beautiful rich-colored ripe cherries and squished out the bean.  The cherries grow in clusters very close together – when they are ripe it looks like it would be the perfect Christmas decoration!  I was quite surprised to see that covering the bean is a very slimey, sweet goo – the parenchyma. So after the cherries are picked they are  “washed”, the process where the bean is removed from the rest of the fruit.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to see this process as it is done offsite.  There are still a couple of layers that need to be removed from here though, one is the parchment.  This comes off easily during milling which is after the beans are dried.  The beans are dried on big tables out in the Kona sun.

The dried beans are then run back to Hula Daddy where they sort them by size to be graded: Kona Extra Fancy, Kona Fancy, Kona Number 1, Kona Select and Kona Prime as well as Peaberry (Matthew loves peaberry).

Something weird and unexpected we got to see was a wild turkey fight.  It was mating season and there were two males duking it out right in the middle of the coffee trees.

We ran out of time of course so made another trip to Kona where we got to see the UCC operation.  The Ueshima Coffee Company was founded in 1933 and touted as the leader in Japanese coffee.  Their visitors centre is beautiful and offers a custom blend that you get to roast and label yourself.

Our coffee trip was incredible – we learned so much and will never forget the warm Hawaiian welcome we received.  Aloha!!

Matt & Tara in coffee heaven