Kona Coffee

Those who know me, know that I am a coffee aficionado and even occasionally roast my own coffee beans. Naturally, I was super excited to visit a coffee farm (technically, the correct term is 'orchard', since coffee grows as a cherry on a tree) while staying in Kona, a region that is well known for favorable weather which regularly produces delicious coffee.

Based on reviews, we picked Heavenly Hawaiian Farms for a tour, and we were not disappointed! Bill provided a great and informative tour, and we got to taste really fantastic coffee. Bill was an engaging host, and Sally has a few more details about his stories, worth a read!

In this post, I'll focus on some of the photos I was able to take on the tour.

Delicious, fresh brewed cup of Kona coffee.

The Kona region doesn't have its own varietal of coffee tree, instead the farm decides which kind of coffee tree to grow. These are Guatemalan coffee trees from Heavenly Hawaiian.

This branch has almost all stages of development of the coffee fruit, from flower to bud to green cherry. Only the ripe, red cherry is missing.

Stages of ripening of the coffee cherry. Once the cherry is ripe (red) you only have about 7 days to pick it before it over-ripens and goes bad.

Once the coffee cherries have been harvested, the fruit of the cherry is separated from the coffee bean and discarded (this must happen within 1 day of picking the cherry off the tree or the bean will go bad). The cleaned, green coffee beans are then dried for a few days, after which they are ready for roasting.

For best flavor, coffee trees need moderate rain 5 out of 7 days per week, all year long. The climate in Kona is ideal with its frequent afternoon showers against the slope of the mountain.

We had a visitor too while sampling the coffee. The folks at HH regularly leave out sugar for the geckos to enjoy.

For a free tour, Bill really took his time and made the experience fun. We learned a lot about how coffee is grown and produced, and Heavenly Hawaiian grows some delicious coffee. The only thing that was missing was the roasting process since HH generally doesn't roast their own beans. That will be for another time. If you're interested in coffee at all, this is a must.