Blossoming

Coffee starts like many other fruits we enjoy — as a beautiful, fragrant and delicate blossom. These blossoms eventually develop into the coffee cherry, and it is the seeds of this fruit, usually two to a cherry, which become the coffee bean familiar to most of us.

Harvesting

On Kauai, the blossoming begins in February or March, and by May, the young fruit begins to form. The fruit ripens around late September, and harvesting begins.

Kauai’s harvesting period runs from mid-October through early December. We harvest 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, using 3 shifts — a practice unique in our industry. Due to the size of the estate and the existence of several micro-climates, we rely on daily scouting reports to select the fields with maximum ripeness.

Wet Processing

After the coffee cherries are harvested, trucks deliver them from the fields to the wet processing plant within two hours, eliminating the chance of fermentation and damage to the coffee. At the wet processing plant, the cherries are separated into three types as determined by stages of maturity — ripe, natural and immature coffee. These stages are decided by noting inherent differences in density and hardness of the cherries. We produce five grades of coffee from our wet processing plant, with an average daily capacity of 650,000 pounds of cherries.

Pulping

Next, the ripe coffee cherries are “pulped,” (the skin and fleshy fruit of the cherry are removed) in a pulper, whose pulping pressure is set to liberate the beans from the ripe soft cherries. The ripe, pulped coffee is then given several more chances to “fail” quality tests, primarily based on bean density at this stage. Passing through density channels and “cribas,” the selection process of the best coffee continues.

Drying

Next, the pulped beans are hydrowashed to remove the sticky mucilage that coats them, then sent to pre-dryers, a fluidized bed of air that is the start of the drying process. After this, the beans are gently dried in heated drying elevators for 18 to 36 hours. The bean temperature is carefully monitored during drying, and the heat is turned off for 8 or more hours per day to simulate cool night breezes associated with patio drying. The result is parchment coffee, or pergamino, at about 11–12% moisture.

Milling

The coffee rests in parchment for a while and is then milled to remove the parchment and silverskin, again taking great care to monitor bean temperatures and preserve each bean’s flavor and quality. Sizing screens and density tables further sort out the best beans.

Sorting

The final sorting step in the dry mill is the color sorter, where an electronic eye scans each bean for color, selecting the finest colored beans and rejecting those that don’t pass with a blast of air.

Grading

Each batch of coffee is graded and cupped and inspected by the State of Hawaii Department of Agriculture. The DOA inspector officially certifies each batch of coffee by grade quality and origin

Shipping

Once certified, the bag’s tag is marked to indicate grade and origin, and the 100% pure Kauai coffee is ready for roasting! The coffee is roasted and packaged on our estate. It is then shipped to coffee lovers around the world!