That perfect cup of coffee

Kona is where you will find that perfect cup of coffee. All of Kona Lisa's coffee is picked by hand. Even some of the coffee is picked by Ron. Here I'll fill you in on what goes on at the farm as we are preparing the 'cherry' for it's journey to your cup. Cherry is what the coffee fruit containing the bean is called when it is still on the trees. So we pick 'cherry' and only red cherry. Coffee ripens slowly and unevenly on the tree therefore we must pick the same tree several times during picking season. Picking season, by the way, is roughly from Aug-Nov each year at our farm. To keep that cup of coffee light, fruity and chocolaty you need to process that cherry the same day it's picked. We do not let it sit overnight before pulping, so during picking season dinner waits. We pulp that lovely red skin off and let the bean ferment in water overnight. The cherry pulp makes good fertilizer too. Next morning Ron checks the fermenting tank to make sure the fermenting process has completed. He rubs the bean making sure the slimy, sugaring coating is dissolving, then the beans get thoroughly rinsed and spread out on our drying deck. The first day we rake those beans hourly and then daily for the next seven days. This also the time we get down on our hands and knees and pick out and discard any bean that even looks like it should not be in a perfect cup of coffee. At this point your coffee only smells like fresh grain. With good sunshine, yes your cup of coffee is sun dried, Ron will bring his grain meter out to check the moisture content of those dried beans, which are now called parchment. They are called parchment because they are like a peanut with a protective light coating or shell on them. If they have reached the optimum dryness for storing gourmet coffee, about 11%, we pick them up and load them into humidity controlled grain bags for storage. This is the point where your cup of coffee relaxes, smooths it flavor out and waits for you. Kona Lisa does not take her beans to green until then. When you order or we take our coffee up to the Saturday Keauhou market is when parchment gets milled to green and roasted. Our goal is to bring you one of the freshest cups of coffee available and it takes seven pounds of picked cherry to produce one pound of fresh roasted coffee for that perfect cup. That's how we do it and we wouldn't do it any other way.