100% Kona is a magical phrase you'll find on bags of coffee beans in Hawaii. Kona is on the west side of Hawaii island (The Big Island) and produces the best of the best Hawaiian coffee.

With the cool temperature brought by altitude of volcanoes for growing coffee, warm temperature down by the beach for drying and geological characteristic of the lava rocks, Kona seems to be a very ideal place for growing coffee trees. As tasty and smooth as Kona coffee is, 100% Kona often equates to ~$60 per pound as well. On a journey to Hula Daddy Coffee Farm, I found out why.

First and foremost, I've been on a fair share of winery tours and a coffee farm tour is exactly like a winery tour except you are sober and very alert.

Wish I can drink coffee to this view every. single. day.

The coffee farm tour kicked off with a visit to the coffee trees. On contrary to the tea trees I was imagining in my head, the coffee trees can grow to be several feet tall. Similar to vines, it takes a few years for a coffee tree to produce beans at certain quality and quantity.

Where little coffee trees get nurtured until they are strong enough to be replanted

I've always known that coffee beans, like cocoa beans, are actually seeds within a larger fruit, and both aren't dark brown in the beginning. However, what I didn't know was what made Kona coffee special. In a world where we mass produce everything to leverage scalability for profit. A tedious and labor intensive work like coffee picking ended up as a task for the machines. Lacking the ability to determine the ripeness of the fruit, the coffee produced by farms that opted for machine picking ends up being bitter. However, here in Kona, the coffee beans are only handpicked when they are as ripe as a cranberry red. Which is why every sip of 100% Kona coffee is a dreamy smoothness.

The next step after the coffee beans are picked is to be graded. The beans get sifted and categorized into Prime, Select, Number 1, Fancy, Extra Fancy and Peaberry. One of the criteria is based on the size of the bean, with Prime being the smallest, Extra Fancy being the largest and Peaberry to be those that only has 1 bean in per cherry, which makes them larger and round in shape. Separating coffee beings into different sizes prior to roasting can allow the roasting temperature and time being adjusted to perfection. The roastmasters can better avoid smaller beans get overroasted or larger beans get underroasted. Moreover, the larger the bean is, the smoother the taste will be as well, since the beans are roasted more evenly; in Peaberry's case, the same effect applies, since beans are rounder.

At last, before packaging, the beans get roasted to the desired level, which is done onsite at Hula Daddy. This is when the beans get their color and fragrance. A common misconception with coffee is that the dark roast has the most caffeine, followed by medium then light. Intuitively we associate strength of flavor with color; whereas in reality coffee works the opposite way. Light roast is the moist caffeinated out of all because the beans are exposed to heat in the roaster for the shortest amount of time; hence retained the most caffeine.

As a coffee aficionado, at this point, I can no longer resist not taking some 100% Kona back to Boston with me. Especially at Hula Daddy, and I imagine many other boutique coffee farms on the Big Island, they roast beans to demand. Every bag is labeled with the roasting date, so you'll hardly get a bag that's been roasted over 2 weeks ago.

It's fascinating and eye opening to learn so much about coffee, and actually appreciate the work that goes into these exquisite Kona origin coffees that cost $60 per pound. It's something that many of us indulge (or chug) every day, but there's so much to it!

Now, get me a cup of 100% Kona.

The Haute Way to Live

Caffeinate Me, Kona