The Kona Coffee Farmers Association believes that coffee blenders using only 10% Kona coffee are exploiting the Kona brand name by selling inferior and overpriced coffee with the name Kona on the label. The KCFA has spent the past five years trying to convince consumers that the should not buy 10% Kona coffee blends. They have done an excellent job of consumer education. At the Hula Daddy Kona Coffee tasting room, tourists often ask us “Is this 100% Kona coffee?” The KCFA has also tried to convince the Hawaii Legislature to prohibit the sale of 10% Kona coffee blends.

The Hawaii Coffee Association and the Kona Coffee Council, which are both dominated by the big Hawaiian coffee roasters argue that the cannot sell the three million pounds of Kona coffee produced each year except by blending Kona coffee with coffees from Central America. Their argument seems somewhat incongruous , since essentially they are saying they cannot sell three million pounds of 100% Kona coffee but they can sell 30 million pounds of 10% Kona coffee blends with the name Kona on the package. They have battled the KCFA in the legislature each session to keep using the name Kona on 10% Kona blends.  So far the roasters have won.

The KCFA is right that the coffee mills are using the Kona brand name to sell overpriced coffee. Since even coffee professionals cannot detect the taste of 10% Kona in a blend, the consumer, who buys a 10% Kona blend is really buying Central American coffee with a fair retail price of around $7.50 a pound. Ten percent Kona blends sell from $9 to $25 a pound. This means that the consumer is paying $1.50 to $17.50 a pound solely in exchange for the name Kona printed on the label.

However,  the KCFA is wrong about the quality. Average 100% Kona coffees score in the mid-80′s in coffee cupping competitions. (There are also some outstanding Kona coffees that score at world class levels and some poor Kona coffees that are below speciality grade standards.) The cupping scores for Kona coffee 10% blends are equal to or above the cupping scores for average 100% Kona coffee. Here are few examples from Coffee Review:

 If Kona coffee blends are scoring equal to or better than average 100% Kona coffee than the consumer is getting a good quality cup of coffee, albeit at a high price. If there is any erosion in the brand name Kona based on quality, it is not because of 10% Kona coffee blends.

If not the blenders then who? What about some of the low quality 100% Kona coffee sellers? If a roaster is selling 100% Kona coffee with low grade beans won’t the consumer judge all Kona coffees based upon that experience?

We decided to conduct an experiment to find out if some mills were eroding the Kona brand name by selling low quality 100% Kona coffee.  We bought the lowest price 100% Kona coffee at Safeway, Walmart and Costco. (We were surrounded by tourists at each location checking the prices to find the cheapest 100% Kona coffee) We also bought the lowest price 10% Kona blend at Safeway and Walmart. We then set up a blind tasting with a certified coffee Q cupper. All of the coffees were brewed exactly the same way and all were tasted at the same time. In the Q cuppers opinion, the cupping scores were:

Based on the Q cuppers opinion, only one of the low price 100% Kona coffees met speciality grade standards. (The Speciality Coffee Association of America sets a cupping score of 80 and above for speciality coffee.) The other two 100% Kona coffees were below speciality grade coffee standards.  Both of the 10% blends scored better than the 100% Kona coffee and were less expensive.

 The Kona Coffee Farmers Association has run afoul of the Law of Unintended Consequences. By driving price conscious consumers away from 10% Kona blends they are pushing them into low grade 100% Kona coffee. Consumers who taste poor quality 100% Kona coffee are likely to generalize that experience to all Kona coffee and refuse to buy any Kona coffee in the future. Educating consumers on 10% Kona coffee blends isn’t enough. Kona famers also need to educate consumers on recognizing poor quality Kona coffee, even if it has a 100% Kona coffee label.

Karen Jue Paterson is the owner of Hula Daddy Kona Coffee, a 33 acre coffee farm in Kona, Hawaii. She is a member of the Hawaii Coffee Associaiton, the Kona Coffee Council and the Kona Coffee Farmers Association. She is also the author of a number of articles on Kona Coffee including: Kona Coffee Farmers at a Crossroad http://www.huladaddy.com/?p=696 How Typica is Your Kona Coffee?  http://www.huladaddy.com/?p=710

All drinking water has some minerals and chemicals.  Some of those compounds are positive and add to the refreshing taste. However, there are as many as 315 different mineral and chemical compounds distributed by city water companies, not all of them good for coffee brewing.

Perfect Coffee Brewing Water

The Speciality Coffee Association of America recommends brewing coffee in water that contains 150 parts/million of total dissolved solids, 5 grains hardness and a ph close to 7. The water should be free of calcium, magnesium. chlorine, iron, organic contaminates and foreign odours and flavors.

Sounds great but how do you know? Unless you want to spend a lot of money on a laboratory water analysis, you have to go to the source. You know that your tap water doesn’t meet these requirements because, at the very least,  it has chlorine in it. Chlorine destroys the good flavors in coffee. Quality bottled water should be close to these requirements. You can call the bottled water company and ask for a free copy of their water quality report. If you use a  water filter, you can check the manufacturer’s website to see  what effect the filter will have on your tap water.

Cup Your Water

The simplest and maybe the best thing to do is to cup your water just like you cup your coffee. How does the water look? Is it clear, or is it cloudy? Does it settle and become clearer? How does it smell? How does it taste – hot vs. cold? 

Use a Water Filter

If you use a water filter make sure that it is giving you the water quality you need. Many restaurants make coffee made from tap water run though cheap in-line filters. How many really good cups of coffee have you ever had at a restaurant?  Some of the different types of filters are:

Activated Carbon Filters

Water is forced through positively charged carbon. Carbon filters are common in counter top, faucet and under the sink units. They remove bad tastes, odors and chlorine. The higher quality filters also remove heavy metals, germs and some organic chemicals.

Cation Exchange Water Softeners 

In a cation water softener water is forced through a chemical bath that trades minerals with a strong positive charge for minerals with a lesser charge. Water softeners are whole house or point of entry systems. Water softeners remove calcium,  magnesium and barium. Through ion exchange, this process replaces the minerals in the water with sodium. However, sodium when combined with the bicarbonates already in the water, causes the coffee grounds to swell and extends the extraction time which results in over extraction. If too much oil is released, especially bitter oils, it can result in a bitter coffee and often an “oil slick” on the surface of the coffee that binds the coffee particles together. We do not recommend making coffee with water from a water softener system

Distiller/Boiler

Home distillers boil water and then re-condense the steam. They eliminate bacteria, organic solids, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead and mercury, arsenic, barium, fluoride, selenium and sodium. However, distilled water is flat and doesn’t have a refreshing taste as it lacks the good minerals that bring out the natural flavors of the coffee.  We do not recommend distilled water for brewing coffee.

Reverse Osmosis 

In an RO filter water is forced though a semipermeable membrane which allows the water molecules to pass but keeps out larger molecules. Reverse osmosis filters eliminate most contaminants, including germs, cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, arsenic, barium, nitrate/nitrite, perchlorate and selenium. However, water coming directly from a reverse osmosis filter tastes flat.  Most bottled water companies use reverse osmosis to manufacture “spring water.” However, bottled water companies add oxygen and good tasting minerals after the water has been filtered. You can’t do that with a home reverse osmosis system. We do not recommend making coffee with water from a home reverse osmosis system.

Maintain Your Filter

What Water Source Should You Use to Brew Hula Daddy Kona Coffee?

Typical Kona Coffee Cherries Being Pulped

We talked to other farmers and they said that the University of Hawaii had determined fruit color didn’t make a difference in flavor. We looked for and found the publication the farmers were referring to:

“Sometimes pickers are permitted to harvest three types of cherry: green-ripe, or mature green, which is mature coffee although not fully ripe and has a yellowish-green skin; hard-ripe, which is firm and red (or yellow); and soft-ripe, which is overripe, red to dark red, soft, and juicy. These three types, or what might be called ripeness stages, were noted as early as 1937 to have similar cupping qualities in tests conducted at the CTAHR Kona Research Station. ” http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/fb/coffee/coffee_harvesting.html

Putting all of this information together for our first harvest, we accepted that it was OK to process coffee picked at different stages of ripeness. The same type of picking occurred in our second harvest.

By our third harvest, we were starting to have doubts about the quality of our picking. One thing we noticed is that many of the top quality farms in Central America employed sorters sitting at long moving belts to remove under and over-ripe coffee fruit before the pulping process. We also found publications by other universities that contradicted the University of Hawaii publication. So we decided to make our own tests.

First, we took a look at over-ripe beans. Pickers often don’t see soft spots on the back of ripe coffee fruit. Even if they see it, they still may put it in the basket. We were told that over-ripe beans float and the mills had water tanks that would float the over-ripe beans away from the pulper. So, we picked some beans that were “soft-ripe” ( had soft spots in them that were rotting). We mixed them in with some perfectly red-ripe beans and dropped them into a pail of water.  The red-ripe beans sank to the bottom. The worst over-ripe beans floated and could be separated from the good beans. But the half-rotten beans stayed at the bottom with the good beans. So we were getting out some of the bad beans before they went into the pulper, but not all of them.

Second, we picked coffee fruit at five different stages of ripeness, green, yellow, yellow-red, red (hard-ripe) , and purple (hard-purple).  We kept each stage separate and hand processed and roasted them. We didn’t use the red and purple soft-ripe beans because they were already rotting and you could smell it in the beans. We threw out the green sample because it wouldn’t ferment after we pulped it. We then had three coffee professionals, including a Q cupper, do a blind evaluation of  the  roasted coffee from each stage of ripeness. The blind assessments were remarkably uniform. The averages were:

 We concluded there was a significant difference between beans from red fruit and yellow fruit and a slight difference between yellow-red and red fruit. We were surprised by the drop off in the purple fruit since we expected the purple fruit to be more ripe and to have more flavor.

Third, we wondered what effect the sugar content of our coffee fruit would have on the taste. We had read that the sugar content of the coffee fruit was important to the final cupping characteristics.

“Sucrose is one of the compounds in the raw coffee bean that has been implicated as an important precursor of coffee flavour and aroma because it degrades rapidly during roasting, forming anhydro-sugars (such as 1,6 anhydro-glucose) and other compounds like glyoxal (De Maria et al., 1994). Such molecules are then able to react principally with amino acids (Maillard reaction) forming aliphatic acids, hydroxymethyl furfural and other furans, and pyrazine. These compounds are all considered to be essential contributors to coffee flavour….” Biochemical and genomic analysis of sucrose metabolism during coffee (Coffea arabica) fruit development , Journal of Experimental Botany, Vol. 57, No. 12, pp. 3243–3258, 2006 doi:10.1093/jxb/erl084

We had also read that Central American coffee farmers were using refractometers to measure coffee fruit sugar before picking.  So, we took our yellow, yellow-red, red and purple coffee fruit and measured the brix content. The results were

We decided that our pickers would have to pick a range of fruit from yellow-red to purple (hard). We recently read a blog by Jack Groot that gives a great visual explanation of the conclusion we reached three years ago:

           www.coffeegroot.com/2011/04/pick-ripe-coffee-cherries/

Based upon the research papers we read and our own unscientific experiments we concluded, at least for our farm, that:

1. Green, yellow, red (soft-ripe), purple (soft-ripe), brown and black beans are not acceptable.

2. A range of beans from at least half-red to purple (hard-ripe) is  acceptable 

3. We pay our pickers a premium to pick ripe coffee beans 

4. We pick every week to get the coffee fruit we wanted.

5. We have to work at the sorting table to maintain the quality of the fruit.

 We have done this now for two years. What has the result been? The good news is that our cupping scores have increased substantially.  We now only sell retail and we have sold out of all of our coffees for the past two years. The bad news is that it is a lot of hard  work and I often wake up during the night dreaming that I am sorting coffee fruit.

My grandmother used a coffee percolator with a metal filter to brew coffee for my grandfather. She didn’t choose the filter, that was the way the coffee pot came. The coffee was black, bitter and made your hair stand on end. But it kept my grandfather working the farm until he was 86. Today, if my grandmother went to the store, she would have to choose between a steel filter, gold filter, plastic filter, paper filter or a cloth filter. I am sure she would say “Too many choices.” Here are some of the pro’s and con’s when you choose the filter for your Hula Daddy Kona Coffee.

Paper Filters

Paper filters are the most popular. There are pluses for using paper filters. First, they are easy. Pop the filter in, add the coffee grounds, brew and discard. They keep out the grounds from the brewing basket. They are also ecological. Coffee grounds and paper filters make great compost. Put them around your acid loving plants and they will thank you with lots of flowers. Mix them into your garden soil and the earthworms will party. One of the best reasons to use paper filters is that they remove a coffee oil called cafestol, which researchers have found elevates LDL cholesterol.

One con of paper filters is if you are not careful you can make a big mess. Everyone has dropped a paper filter and had to clean up the wet grounds. Inexpensive filters sometimes split open when you are pulling them out of your brewer. Over time paper filters are more expensive than permanent filters. Also cheaper paper filters can leave a papery taste in the coffee.

If you decide to use a paper filter, make sure it is the right one. Every coffee brewer is different. Some brewers have a cone brewer, some have flat bottoms, some will take a very fine filter, some won’t. If you use the wrong filter, it may effect the flavor of your coffee, even worse you may see your coffee pouring over the counter onto your floor.

Metal Filters

There are also coffee filters that are made out of metal. Most metal filters are stainless steel but there are also gold filters. The gold filters are more inert and don’t react with the coffee.

The pro’s of metal filters are that they don’t absorb coffee oils so that the coffee tastes richer. They are also more convenient than a paper filter because you can’t run out of them and, in the long run, they are cheaper. The con’s are that they have to be cleaned each time, and they let more of the grounds into the cup.

Cloth Filters

Cloth coffee filters are made of unbleached cotton. They work like the paper filters but after you use them you wash them out and reuse them.

The pro’s are that the cloth filters retain more coffee grounds than the metal filters and they allow more of the coffee oil to pass through than the paper filters. Also they are reusable and will last for several months.

The con is that they are messy to clean, and, if not cleaned well, will give an off taste to the coffee. 

Double Filtering

It is possible to double filter your coffee. Many people like making coffee in a french press but don’t like the grounds that usually go through the metal filter. They may also be worried about cafestol .  An easy answer is to pour the brewed coffee from the french press through a paper filter into a carafe.

Clean Your Filter

You have to clean, metal, cloth and plastic filters thoroughly. Regardless of which filter you use, you also have to clean the brew basket after each brew. Coffee oils stick to the filters and brew baskets and turn rancid very quickly. Rancid coffee oils and dried out coffee grounds do not taste good.

Change Filters – Change your Brew Profile

When you change filters you have to change your brewing procedure e.g. paper filters are finer than metal filters so the extraction time will be longer and there will be less solids in your coffee. Metal filters need a coarser grind to keep the solids out of the cup. If you don’t change your brewing procedure, you may find that your coffee has become bitter or sour, weaker or stronger. 

The bottom line is that you can use any quality filter for the best Hula Daddy Kona Coffee. However, each type of filter will produce a different cup. You have to choose the filter that produces the best taste for you.

Brewing coffee is all about extraction of the flavors from the bean. However, there are good flavors and bad flavors in a coffee bean. If you over-extract coffee it will taste acidic and bitter. If you under-extract, the coffee will be weak and sour. If the grounds are uneven some of the grounds will over-extract and some will under-extract. Acidic, bitter and sour flavors do not cancel each other out. If your coffee grounds are not even, you need to throw out your coffee grinder and get a new one.

There are three types of grinders available for home use: Blade grinders, flat burr grinders and conical burr grinders. The prices vary : about twenty dollars for a blade grinder; forty to a hundred dollars for a flat burr grinder; and one hundred to four hundred for a conical burr grinder. (There are more expensive professional grinders on the market for up to several thousand dollars.)

Blade grinders are the electric spice or nut grinders sold in kitchen stores. The blades spins and cracks the beans. The longer the beans are in the grinder the more they are cracked. They are inexpensive, and easy to clean. However, the result will be large, medium and fine coffee grounds. The large grounds will under-extract in your brewer and the small grounds will over-extract.

Flat Blade Burr Grinders have two flat, parallel blade plates that provide a shearing effect on the coffee beans. The bottom is attached to the motor and always spins. Beans enter the chamber from the top and move laterally through the burrs before being swept into the chute. Settings on the grinder allow you to adjust the space between these plates, thus determining the size (or fineness) of the ground coffee. As a coffee bean passes between the plates, it is first broken into chunks, then ground coarsely, then finely (if applicable), and then expelled from the grinding chamber by sweeping arms that turn with the plate that spins. Burrs are sized by diameter (in millimeters); the larger they are, the more coffee that can pass through in a set amount of time.

Conical Burr Grinders have two cone shaped burrs facing each other. The two burrs in a conical grinder consist of an outer ring burr, and a inner cone burr (hence the name). Coffee beans pass through vertically before being swept out the chute.

There are both high speed and low speed burr grinders. If you have to grind a lot of coffee, a low speed grinder is a good investment since they grind coffee at a cooler temperature.

Now that you know about the different types of grinders, which one should you buy? Obviously, it depends on the price and the quality. The best choice for making drip or french press coffee is a low speed conical burr grinder. You should be able to buy a quality conical burr grinder for about a hundred dollars.

We now know that while Guatemalan Typica trees are the dominant tree in Kona, many other varieties have found their way into Kona coffee nurseries and into Kona orchards. Even on those farms who claim that their trees are “Kona Typica” there are often different varieties of coffee that have come in as volunteers or been purposely planted to enrich the flavor profile.

When Mark Twain visited Kona and uttered his famous approval of Kona coffee “Kona coffee has a richer flavor than any other, be it grown where it may and call it by what name you please,” he wasn’t talking about Kona Typica coffee. The coffee Twain extolled was from Brazilian Typica coffee trees brought to Hawaii from Brazil in 1825 by Chief Boki and then transplanted to Kona by Samuel Ruggles, a Congregationalist minister. Interestingly, Ruggles didn’t bring the trees for the coffee, he brought them to landscape his church.

The Brazilian trees thrived in Kona until 1897 when Herman Weidemann and John Horner convinced Kona coffee farmers that coffee from trees that Weidemann had brought from Guatemala in 1892 was superior to the coffee praised by Twain. Many coffee farmers switched and began to grow the Guatemalan Typica trees. However, the Brazilian coffee trees and their progeny still exist in many farms.

In the 1960’s, there was an infusion of Red Caturra trees into Kona orchards. Many of those Caturra trees are still found today in coffee nurseries and Kona orchards. Again around 2000 and continuing today, Progeny 502 trees grafted onto Liberica rootstock are being planted as an answer to nematode infestation.

Today, there are many different varieties of arabica coffees grown in Kona orchards. Since the coffee mills mix together all of the beans they receive, there are almost no Kona coffee’s in cafes or supermarkets that are pure Guatemalan Typica. Is that good or bad? There is no way to tell. On some farms it is very good. Greenwell has a private reserve coffee that is a blend of Guatamalan Typica, Brazilian Typica and Red Boubon that is excellent. Pau Hana sells a blend of Guatemalan Typica, Brazilian Typica and Orange Bourbon that is also excellent. 

 Some of the coffee varieties found in Kona coffee are:

Interestingly, many of these different arabica coffees have started to show up as winners in Kona cupping contests. Some of the winners and their coffees are:

A number of other farms with different varieties have placed highly in the cupping competitions.

Will new varieties be a boon or a detriment to Kona coffee farmers? In Napa, new varities of grapes introduced in the 1970’s brought world dominance and increased profits for grape farmers. In the apple industry, new varieties allowed American farmers to compete successfully with foreign apples at the supermarket. Will the same be true for Kona farmers? It is up to the customers, not the farmers. If customers want different varieties, they will buy them where they can – in Kona or from foreign farmers. If customers prefer the Kona heritage profile, then the new varieties will be ripped out of Kona coffee farms.

Kona coffee farmers are in a bind. Production is down after two years of drought and the scourge of twig and berry borers. At the same time, major coffee distributors are damaging the brand by selling low quality Kona coffee, blended and unblended, at prices below the cost of quality production. In addition, competition from foreign coffees is increasing. Foreign farmers, who sold mid and low grade coffee in the past are beginning to create high quality coffees that are attracting coffee gourmets.  For the same price as an average Kona coffee, a consumer can purchase any number of 94+ rated coffees from foreign farmers. Some of the foreign competition is only a few miles away in Kau, Hilo and Puna. For example, a Kau coffee has scored above Kona coffee two years in a row at both the Specialty Coffee Association of American and the the Hawaii Coffee Association cupping competitions.

Kona coffee is at the same point in history that the Napa wine industry was before 1975. Before the 70′s Napa was a small agricultural town know for cattle and cheap bulk wines. Then, in 1975, the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association stated that it would not support wine grapes such as Napa Gamay and Chenin Blanc. The Association urged growers to convert to top quality grape varieties. Leaders in the Napa wine industry accepted the challenge “A…result was the transformation of Napa from a poor, backwater country whose economy was based on cattle to a cosmopolitan leader in wine production.” Bottled Poetry,  James T Lapsley, Univesity of California Press (1997)

Napa Valley became a leader in world wines because of the vision of some of the Napa Valley’s growers. “How did this region, representing roughly 5 percent of all California’s wine grape vineyard acreage, become synonymous with wine quality and achieve such dominance? The short answer is that Napa producers were leaders in defining wine quality and creating a market for such wine. As leaders they expended the initial energy – planting the vineyard, so to speak  – and as leaders they have reaped the harvest.” Bottled Poetry ibid. The return for the Napa farmers was better grape and wine prices, increased land value and more and better paying jobs in the community. Kona coffee farmers have the same opportunity.

There is a strong parallel between the average wine produced in Napa before 1975 and the coffee produced in Kona today. Kona coffee typically scores in the mid-80′s in cupping competitions. The mid-80′s are near the bottom of the Specialty Coffee cupping scores and substantially below the 94+ of top rated coffees. (That is not to say that all Kona farms score in the mid-80′s, on any bell curve there are always scores above and below.) However, the median Kona coffee, today, is best described by Tom Owens, owner of Sweet Marias and a 2005 Gevalia Kona Coffee Competition judge: “In a historical sense, coffees like Kona are the pinnacle of a particular definition of what “good coffee” is … clean, pleasant, mild, good aftertaste. This is a notion of “good coffee” handed down from a time when low grade coffee was called Brazil Rio and it had a seriously foul, dirty taste (so awful it is still called Rioy in defective coffee terminology). The best coffees were considered the polar opposite: island coffees…mild, delicate and clean. Certain Specialty Coffees we now appreciate as intense and desirable cups, Yemeni coffees, Ethiopian Harrar, Dry processed Sumatras for example, would be considered terrible in this definition. If you love these intense coffees, Kona may seem too light, too simple, too mild. The even scores in the mid-80′s indicate balance and solid quality.”

Kona coffee farmers can’t expect consumers to buy average Kona coffee when they can buy top rated coffees at lower prices.  However, consumers will buy top rated Kona coffeee at top prices. The question then is whether Kona coffee leaders will work together to promote the Kona brand, the Kona coffee region, introduce new varietal coffees, and adopt new methods and science. The alternative is to do nothing, continue on the current path and watch the reputation of Kona coffee wither.

Kona farmers cannot rely on the local coffee trade associations to become the leaders in improving the quality of Kona coffee. The Hawaii coffee trade associations spend more time taking shots at each other than they do promoting quality Kona coffee. The Hawaii Coffee Association, the Kona Coffee Council and the Kona Coffee Farmers Association are fixated by issues relating to cheap Kona coffee and Kona coffee blends.  As one example, the Kona Coffee Farmers Association opposes the introduction of new coffee varietals into Kona, even though those varietals are scoring higher than traditional Kona Typica in cupping competitions.

The Kona Coffee Cultural Festival in its annual festival and cupping competition is the one standout. However, the KCCF refuses to divulge the cupping scores of the coffees in its competition. While, in the short run,  not publishing the scores may protect some farmer egos, in the long run, it disincentivizes farmers to improve their cupping scores. The pain of receiving a low score is a strong incentive to improve quality next year.

Nor can farmers expect much from the State Department of Agriculture. There has been a need in Kona for new standards for green coffee grading for some time. As one example, the DOA has been “researching” a standard for Kona dry natural green coffee for the past three years.

If farmers in Kona want their coffees to remain a factor in Specialty Coffee they are going to have to do 5 things: 

1. Focus on Quality

Small scale farmers can only compete with the large distributors by focusing on quality. The majority of Kona farmers pick their coffee cherries and sell them to the mills. In a typical year,  a farmer receives around $110 dollars for a hundred pound bag.  One hundred pounds of coffee cherries after processing is about 15 pounds of roasted coffee. The mills sell the 15 pounds of coffee to roasters and retailers for prices around $225.  The retailers sell then sell the coffee for about $450. Even taking into account the cost of production, marketing and transportation, the majority of Kona coffee profits goes to the mills and the retailers. The farmer who spent 12 months feeding, watering, pruning, and picking the crop gets the least amount of profit. Without a quality product, farmers are at the mercy of the mill. However, a farmer with top quality coffee can demand a higher price from the mills or contract for processing and sell directly.

2. Publish the Cupping Scores for Kona Coffee

Kona farmers need to know how their coffees score compared to other coffees on the world market. Publishing the scores gives each farmer a measuring stick for improvement. In addition, it will end the magical thinking engaged in by some farmers – that average Kona coffee competes with the best world coffees. It may be painful. at first,  when outside coffee experts give a famer’s coffee a low rating. However, in the end it will result in an increase in the quality of Kona coffee.

3. Encourage Cooperation for Quality

If farmers want to increase the reputation of Kona coffee it will require a group effort. A few outstanding Kona coffees won’t create a world reputation. One key to the reputation of Napa wines has been the open cooperation of the growers.

“There a lot of cooperation among winemakers. That’s what is expected and you’d be foolish not to do it. You help your neighbors in times of trouble, you share information, you visit other wineries, you go tasting. All of this helps you discern quality so that you can benefit and make your own wine better. So, in this sense, this constantly tasting other peoples’ wines means you can strive to make your wine better, and if everybody is doing that everybody is making wines better.” From co-operation to competition; market transformation among elite Napa Valley wine producers Ian M. Taplin www.emeraldinsight.com/1751-1062.htm

By and large Kona coffee farmers do exchange information and cooperate. However, there are a few farms large and small that have “take, but don’t give back” attitudes. It has become more common to hear about “secret trees” and “secret drying processes “ from some farmers.  Kona farmers are all in the same boat, we are either going to sail together or sink together. 

4. Encourage Quality Improvement

The reputation of Kona coffee will only improve through the introduction of new coffee varieties and better production methods. Quality improvements are going to start at the bottom. Large growers, mills and distributors are not going to risk their profits by taking chances on quality improvement.

“The innovators in this industry have been the small folks such as myself, with flair and creativity that keeps the industry and quality improving. It might sound conceited but having worked for Mondavi and other big ones I realize that we’re the one that take the big risks, not them.” From co-operation to competition; market transformation among elite Napa Valley wine producers Ian M. Taplin www.emeraldinsight.com/1751-1062.htm

There is some evidence that quality changes are beginning to happen in Kona. Some farms are trying new production methods including milling only red ripe fruit, dry fermenting, double fermenting, dry naturals and pulped naturals. Others are learning that Coffee Boost is not the answer to quality coffee. Within the last few years, coffee farmers in Kona have started harvesting different coffee varieties. Some of the new varieties growing on farms in Kona are Bourbon, Catura, Catuai, Maragogipe and Blue Mountain. Some farmers have entered these coffees into the KCCF contest and have won or placed near the top. 

5. Create a Federal Appellation for Kona Coffee 

Farmers in Napa learned quickly that unscrupulous distributors would try to capitalize on their success. Just like with Kona coffee there was more Napa wine sold than was actually produced in Napa. One answer was the creation of a wine appellation for Napa wine with nationwide rules for the Napa label.

Specialty coffee growers all over the world have realized there they need legal protection for their coffee regions. Jamaica, Colombia and Costa Rica have established legal appellations for their coffee regions. Ethiopia has a United States trademark for Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and Harrar coffee. Other countries are considering similar approaches.

Only a governmental agency can create a coffee appellation.  The only federal protection for Kona coffee is the State’s trademark for the words “100% Kona Coffee.” Other than the trademark, the State of Hawaii has done very little to protect the Kona coffee name. It is ironic that third world countries are doing more to protect their coffee heritage than the State of Hawaii.

1. Growing altitude
2. Soil
3. Water
4. Tree variety
5. Ground cover
6. Tree spacing
7. Shade
8. Pruning
9. Fertilizing
10. Composting
11. Selective harvesting
12. Hand sorting coffee fruit
13. Floating coffee fruit
14. Pulping
15. Fermenting
16. Floating coffee beans
17. Sun drying
18. Temperature and humidity controlled storage
19. Resting parchment coffee
20. Quality hulling
21. Sorting and grading
22. Artisan roasting
23. Protective packaging
24. Short shelf time
25. Shipping speed

Making a list was the easy part, then we had to do something about it. Some of the things we were already doing so that helped like: Shade We get shade every afternoon when the clouds come in to cover Kona; Water- we get about an inch of rain a week.

Some of the factors were expensive like: Altitude – we bought a 20 acre cow pasture at 2500 feet, bulldozed it and planted 10,000 coffee trees on it;  Artisan coffee roasting – we had a custom roasting machine built and then hired a world class coffee roaster to run it;  Selective picking – Kona coffee pickers are usually paid by the pound, so they pick everything whether it is ripe or not, we started paying by the hour for only red ripe beans, which doubled our picking cost; Hand sorting coffee fruit – no one in Kona hand sorts their coffee fruit, we started hand sorting every load of coffee to insure only quality beans; Sun Drying – we rented a low altitude drying area; Composting – Kona is deficient is compost material so we are using fish market waste, coffee pulp and tree chips to create over 100,000 pounds of compost a year.

Some of the factors took time like: Soil – It took us three years of applying minerals, fertilizer, and organic material to create a rich soil that has micro-nutrients for the coffee beans; Tree selection – we cupped coffee from over 50 different types of coffee trees before we found the flavor we wanted, then we had to pick the seeds, plant them, wait a year and transplant them into the ground; Ground cover, most Kona farms use Roundup to control weeds under the trees, we stopped using herbicides and planted a low growing nitrogen fixing ground cover. 

Many of the factors reduced the quantity of the coffee we could sell like: Pruning – the standard coffee tree in Kona has five or more vertical branches, we cut back to 3 verticals which cut out quantity but increased our quality; Floating – we put all of our coffee cherries and coffee beans in a water bath, if they are dense they sink, if they float they go on our compost pile; Sorting and grading – we mechanically sort out beans that won’t make good coffee, we throw out about 25% of the coffee we pick each year by using aggressive quality control methods.

Is it worth it? We think so. Our cupping scores have continously improved each year. However, only our time will tell if our customers like the taste of our coffee. So far they have and we are selling out of coffee every year.

We recently bought a pound of expensive gourmet coffee from a well known roaster. When we checked the beans, we found deformed beans, chipped beans, unripe beans and beans with bug holes in them. Because the beans were not uniform the roast wasn’t uniform either, so some of the beans were light roasted, some medium roasted and some dark roasted.

Hula Daddy Kona Coffee Roasted Coffee Beans

Quality roasters will not buy beans that have not been sorted and graded. If they do buy damaged beans, It is their job to pick them out. No pound of roasted coffee will be perfect. When coffee roasts the action of the roasting drum may cause the beans to chip. Also when the beans expand in roasting they crack like popcorn as the steam is driven out of the beans. Sudden expansion may cause some of the beans to shatter. However, differences in the beans should be the exception.

The next time you buy gourmet coffee look at the beans before you grind them. Every bean going into your grinder should look like all of the other beans – the same size, the same color. Each bean should be whole without any chips or holes If the farmer or the roaster hasn’t done his job here are some of the defects that you may find:

• Broken Beans – Bits and pieces of beans.
• Curled Beans (Boat Shaped) – Beans that are curled up at the ends.
• Chipped Beans – Beans that have been abraded or nicked.
• Quakers – Unripe beans that have been roasted. They will have a lighter color than the other beans.
• Shells – Beans that look hollowed out like pasta shells.
• Undersized/over-sized beans – Beans that are significantly bigger or smaller than the other beans.
• Withered Beans – Dried up,wrinkled beans.

Roasted Coffee Beans with Defects

Beans with defects are going to affect that taste of your coffee. A medium roast coffee with defective beans may also have light roasted and dark roasted beans in it. Small beans, shells, withered beans and charred beans will give a burnt taste to coffee. Large beans and quakers will give your coffee a sour, astringent and often rancid taste. At Hula Daddy Kona Coffee we hand sort our coffee beans, when we pick them, when we pulp them, after we dry them, before we roast them and after we roast them. We also machine sort them after we hull them. We do not tolerate defective coffee beans.

If you are paying the price for high quality gourmet coffee beans you should be getting what you paid for. Besides tasting the quality of the coffee the only way to tell if you are getting good coffee is to look at the beans before you brew them.

Coffee beans, like grapes, take on the “goût de terroir,” or taste of the land. Kona Coffee taste is affected by the elevation, soil, orientation to the sun, drainage, pruning, watering and fertilizing. Farms next door to each other often produce coffees which are dramatically different in quality and flavor.

Even if the trees produce outstanding coffee beans, the taste can be ruined by poor processing. Premium coffee beans have to be pulped, fermented, washed, dried, hulled, graded, sorted and stored perfectly to create an outstanding cup of coffee. If you want the best Kona Coffee you should buy from a farmer you can trust, someone who has the knowledge and patience to answer questions, who displays passion for his beans and is willing to put the time, effort and money into creating a great cup of coffee.

Buy Kona Coffee from the Actual Grower

Coffee typically passes through three or four different companies before getting to the consumer. Each distributor moves and stores the coffee. If they don’t do it right, the beans lose flavor. If you buy direct, you reduce the chance of poor shipping and storage. The only person who can honestly vouch for the purity and quality of the coffee is the person who grew it.

Buy Fresh Coffee Beans

Ask when the coffee beans were grown. Most coffee is brewed from beans that were grown years before. Even if the coffee is “fresh roasted” the beans may still be old. Fresh roasted old coffee is still old coffee. Gourmet Kona Coffee is brewed from this year’s crop.  You don’t drink wine made from old grapes and you shouldn’t drink coffee made from old coffee beans.

Buy Kona Coffee Beans from Someone who is Passionate

Growing coffee is like growing wine grapes. Great wines come from vineyards where the workers are passionate about the wine. Great coffee comes from plantations where the grower is passionate about quality. Farmers who care about their coffee are excited and interested. Farmers and distributors who are out to make a buck don’t want to waste their time. Talk to the grower – expect their coffee to reflect their passion.