The Making of Kona Coffee

The roses are sleeping, so I thought I would stray from my favorite topic and tell you about our visit to a coffee plantation this past December when we were in Hawaii.

A butterfly on a coffee tree blossom

I have never seen coffee grown commercially before, so to see a plantation of one of the most expensive coffees in the world was fascinating.



My first impression on walking into the farm was that coffee trees don't really look like trees. At least, not the graceful statuesque trees that a more northern gardener is used to. They do have a single trunk, but branching starts very low and the plants are barely 6' tall.

Trees bloom in late winter and early spring.

But we did see some trees in full bloom in December

Blossoms are wonderfully fragrant, not unlike orange blossoms, and butterflies seem to love them.

Coffee berries (called cherries) ripen all year long, a few berries at a time, so that each tree has some ripe and unripe berries on it. Cherries are harvested three times a year from the same tree (I wish I could do that with my plums and peaches).



Coffee trees are delicate, and although they need heat, they are easily scorched by the sun. On Hawaii, plantations get reliable cloud cover every afternoon shading the trees from the hottest sun. The trees are not long lived either, so new ones are grown from cuttings for replacement. It must be quite a challenge to grow coffee trees well.

A nursery for replacement trees

Quite a few steps need to be taken to turn a cherry on a coffee tree into an aromatic and richly colored roast in a cup.

My boys get a closer look

Right after picking, cherries are shelled in a pulper which extracts two sticky beans from each cherry.

After a brief period in a fermentation tank, the beans are then spread to dry on a drying rack called hoshidana.



Once they are dry, the "green" beans can be stored in their skin (called parchment) until they are roasted.

A dried green bean with part of the skin taken off. A "skinless" bean is ready for roasting.

 A lot of the work on a coffee farm, from picking to drying, is done by hand. I have come to appreciate my morning cup of coffee a bit more now that I know how much effort goes into its making.