Hawaii
Kona Coffee Farms and Mill

Our trip to Hawaii of May 28-June 9, 2008 was to attend "Hawaii Coffee Feast". But not only to attend coffee fest but to become familiar with the landscape and the coffee farms in the Kona district. Our trip began when we checked into the Out Rigger Condominium in Kona. We sing high praises for this place. Just look at the art that greets you.

This is the backyard of our Condominium! OMG

I am sorry to mar the picture with my ugly face. Just have to brag that I was there. It has been my dream to visit a coffee plantation since we have been roasting coffee.

Coffee is picked by hand. Why? As you look over the fields of coffee trees, you see that some of the fruit is ripe and some have a long way to go. So every few weeks the pickers are back out there harvesting.

Our tour guide and manager of this farm got bucked of his horse. You can see him on crutches. The machinery that you see takes the meat of the cherry off the 2 coffee seeds.

Here is an inside veiw of this machine. The coffee is seperated from the cherry.

Just to back up a bit. There are three basic parts to a coffee cherry. The meat of the cherry. The green coffee bean. And the green coffee bean is encased in a hard shell. Coffee still inside this shell is called parchment. So at this point, when the "parchment" is stripped from the cherry the mill will soak the parchment in water over night. This starts a fermentation that eats a slimy film off the parchment. This is a critical part of coffee processing.

After the fermentation it is time to dry the coffee. Some mills dry in the sun. Some mills dry in big dryers.It takes 12-24 hours to dry in these drums.

During the peak of harvest time, things get hectic. Here you see even bigger dryers. Drying correctly is important. If a mill left to much moisture in the coffee he could make more money (coffee is sold by the pound) But doing so could cause the coffee to mold. Drying too much could damage the coffee also.

There are two machines in this picture. In the foreground we see a machine that takes the "parchment" and husked from the green coffee bean. The machine in the background with the plywood. This has screens on each level. These screens grade coffee according to size. Screen 19 is extra extra fancy.