Hawaiian Coffee

The history behind Hawaiian coffee is that coffee trees came into Hawaii sometime in the early 1800s. One particular British warship, the H.M.S. Blonde came through Brazil in 1825 and had picked up coffee trees. Also, the Governor of Oahu, Chief Boki, is said to have acquired his coffee trees from Rio de Janeiro, when he returned to Oahu from a trip to London.

Apparently, the first coffee trees were planted in Manoa Valley on Oahu Island, and then eventually from that one tiny field, trees were brought to some other Oahu areas, as well as to neighboring islands. A Reverend Samuel Ruggles, is said to have moved trees to the area called Captain Cook, Kona sometime in 1828.

Thus the Captain Cook coffee company is now one of the oldest existing coffee companies within Hawaii. They have been growing and also processing the raw green Kona Hawaiian coffee beans since then. Today there are over 340 private estate farmers who supply the company the coffee cherry to the Captain Cook Company.

By the way the Hawaiian coffee plant makes a cherry, but it is the green seed inside that we call a coffee bean. The Captain Cook Company also produce their own Hawaiian coffee on their own estate farm in South Kona, as well as having a wet mill facility there. There is also another farm in Honaunau, as well as another farm and wet mill facility in Kainaliu.

Although the first coffee plantation was on Kauai, it was wiped out from a coffee blight, by a type of scale insect in 1858. Hawaiian coffee plantations were no longer desired from then on, and instead small farms sprung up that averaged less than 5 acres each.

Over 1,000 such farms were counted in the 1930s, and in the 1950’s there were as many as 6,000 acres of coffee on Kona. Today, there is Hawaiian coffee to be found on all of Hawaii’s major islands. The annual production is approximately 6 or 7 million pounds of the green coffee bean.

The best coffee is made from deep red, almost a crimson color cherry. The cheaper brands use the greenish or yellow-turning cherries. All good Hawaiian coffee must be handpicked, because on any given branch will be ripe crimson colored cherries, and green and yellow cherries as well, thus hand picking is not only necessary but quite advantageous to the grower.

Processing is done either dry or wet. In wet processing the ripe cherries float, and thus are picked out. In dry processing the whole cherry is put out in the sun to dry out. Either way, processing will extract the bean and from there it is roasted, to give us Hawaiian coffee at its best!

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Hawaiian Coffee

hawaiian kona coffee

Hawaiian Coffee

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