Rosie called the Fike Farms of Hawaii to see if they had regular coffee tours. The new owner, Darcy Ames, invited us to come out and tour the farm. Darcy gave us a great tour of the farm, made us some great Kona coffee and then ground coffee for us to buy. We had a great time.
Here's a picture of mature coffee trees.
The coffee tree is related to the gardenia. You can tell this from a close-up of the white coffee blossom.
Here's a picture of the red cherries on a coffee tree.
Inside the cherry is the coffee bean. Typically each cherry has two coffee beans.
The coffee beans have a slimy mucilage coating that is removed by fermenting in water for 12-18 hours. After fermenting the beans are washed with a water spray and then placed on a concrete floor to dry. The beans typically take 3-7 days to dry to the target 11% moisture. During the drying process they are raked (or turned) regularly. The dried beans are now known as parchment.In a huller, the parchment is removed from the bean. Here's a picture of the bean and the parchment.
The finished beans are then sorted by size and packed in 100 lb sacks. The sacks then head to the roasters to be roasted into coffee. They are then sold as whole bean or ground coffee.Here's Darcy grinding our coffee beans for us.
Darcy also made some delicious Kona coffee in her vacuum coffee maker. Here she is getting it ready to go.
As the bottom part is heated, the water vapor is pushed into the top part of the coffee maker. Once all the water is gone, the heat is turned off. As the pot cools, the liquid is pulled back into the bottom part by the vacuum created during the boiling process.
The coffee was delicious (and strong - just the way we like it)!Thanks Darcy for a fun and interesting coffee tour.
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