Alex

Alex is our dry miller. He takes our beans from the parchment stage to green for us just before the roasting process. Last week Alex gave us, we felt, the greatest compliment on our coffee. After milling the parchment he ran his hands through the green bean and scooped up several handfuls of the beans. He said "this is what good coffee is. Your coffee is a very vibrant green, all one color and very hard. This will roast exceptionally well with no broken beans or off color beans. All this makes for a very fresh, tingly, and tasty cup of coffee." Ron needed this encouragement as this season is coming in slow and he is spending a lot of time sorting through the beans as they dry. He picks out all dark or discolored beans and throws them out. We sort again the next day and remove any white or hollow beans. We are glad to report that what we call, self quality control, pays off. This is what makes our coffee just one step above. Also the coffee Alex is speaking to is last years crop. It takes that long to let the flavors partake of the richness in each bean. Lastly, but not unimportant, is the storage process. Alex says as long as we store the coffee/parchment properly and keep the humidity low and even it's better to age. That is what we try to do,and our coffee according to Alex is remarkable because of it. To be clear, storing parchment is what we do, not green. Green bean has a much shorter flavor span and needs to be roasted in a reasonable amount of time. We keep no coffee green. We take it to a roast the same day it is milled which is our commitment to bring the most flavorful Kona coffee to our customers.

Picking Season

Picking season has begun. We have bright crimson cherry and have picked over 1000 lbs. this week. The trees seem to have beans in multiple various stages of ripening so it looks like a long picking season this year. This probably doesn't mean a bumper crop it just means the beans will ripen in smaller stages. Last year we had a terrific winter blossom one day in February and thus had the fruit ripening in a shorter period of time. This year we had more blossoms at many different times. In fact the other day we had trees with ripe cherry, green cherry, little buds going into bean and a blossom all on one tree. We thought what has mother nature come up with this season. But then this year we had more rain in the winter. We called it our rainy, dry season. Coffee loves rain and likes to blossom after a nice winter rain. So here we are with possibly 145 pounds of roasted coffee because as you know it takes 7 pounds of cherry to produce 1 pound of delicious Kona coffee.

Irrigation

This years weather can be describe as, "we had a wet, dry season and now we are on to the dry, wet season." In Kona the dry season is our beautiful months of fall thru winter. We had ample rains thru this season this year. Now we are into Kona's wetter season, supposedly. This is why Kona coffee has grown so well here for over a hundred years. All the rest of the state and it's islands has wet winters and drier sunny summers. The Kona area has the opposite with beautiful sunny winters and wetter spring and summers to enable the coffee to grow juicy and plump and ripen. So far this spring, no rain. Oh, it sprinkles some now and then but we seem to be nearing drought conditions. A couple times this week and again today Ron ran our irrigation. I'm not sure how many zones we have, it's at least 5, so Ron was on a schedule from one part of the farm to the other, twisting and turning valves and giving those luscious beans their drink of water. The trees and the beans look great and are a bright shiny green now. The rains will come, July and August was very rainy last year, so I'm looking forward to that. But right now we will continue to irrigate as we saw one or two lonely little beans turn red the other day. It won't be long.

Juicy rich coffee beans

These beans or cherry as we call them are about 3 months from ripe. They need to become the lovely red full flavored cherry before we snatch them. Just wanted you to know how well they are progressing.

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.

Your coffee is brewing!

Here's what next falls cup of coffee is lookin' like. We've have ample rains, the beans are maturing nicely, still green. They are not ahead or behind schedule, just right! These beans will need to ripen to yellow, blush, then red before they are picked but I am already yearning for the wonderful flavors they will produce.

The season progresses

What I mean is that coffee blossoms are abundant today. After a good few days of rain last week we were expecting this. Perhaps it'll be biggest plantation blossom of the year. Oh, we have had several sporadic blossoms in various parts of the field but this one is the largest so far. The gauge is that coffee cherry will ripen in 210 days after a blossom. This is give or take a week or so on either side depending on spring/summer weather conditions. We had a few very early blossoms from Nov-Jan so picking will start slow near the end of July but it looks like our heaviest picking will be in October this year, much later than has been recorded for this farm in recent years. In fact in the 2005 season they had a very early pick and had new season parchment ready in August.

We had a good season last year and dried all our cherry. This is contrary to this farms practices from earlier years. They sold quite a bit of cherry. So we now believe we have enough parchment to continue with our green bean supply until the new season comes in this year. Having green bean available to our customers means that we'll be able to roast fresh Kona coffee for our customers weekly for our market and on demand for our internet customers. For that we are greatful and for todays blossom we are also greatful. Always feel free to contact us at www.konalisacoffee.com for updates.