We all know Kona coffee is the best, but choosing a bag from the hundreds of farms on the Big Island can be challenging. So we asked the experts at Web site Coffee Review, which rates coffees on a 100-point scale-similar to the one used for wine-which is tastiest. The editors recommended Hula Daddy Kona Coffee, giving 97 points to the Kona Sweet roast and 92 points to the Mele roast.

Hula Daddy started in 2002 on an 11-acre cow pasture and has since grown to more than 30 acres in Holualoa. Owner Lee Patterson also offers tours of the farm and the coffee-tasting room, even baking cookies for guests. “I grew up on a farm and I like creating something that makes people happy.” 

Visit Honolulu Magazine to see original article

• Water
  98% of a cup of coffee is water. Coffee brewed with chlorine or other hard chemicals will be flat and have a bitter, harsh taste. Make sure your water comes from either a high quality filter or quality bottled water. 
• Water Filter
  Your water filter will change the taste of your coffee. High quality filters take out chlorine, other chemicals, odors and algae. Low quality filters leave some chemicals and other material in the water. Dirty filters add a moldy taste to coffee. Check to make sure your filter is taking out everything that might make your coffee taste bad. 
• Temperature
  Great coffee is brewed at 200 degrees Fahrenheit . Check the water coming from your automatic drip brewer with a meat thermometer. If you use a French press or manual drip maker, bring the water to a boil and then pour it after about 30 seconds. Coffee brewed below 195 degrees tastes thin and underdeveloped. 
• Grinder
  Good coffee is brewed from evenly ground coffee beans. Unevenly ground beans will over and under extract, giving your coffee sour and acidic flavors. Using a good quality conical burr grinder will improve the flavor of your coffee.
• Coffee Oil
  Coffee beans are filled with oil. When coffee is ground and brewed the oils adhere to the machine.  If you don’t clean your brewer, grinder and coffee equipment the oils will turn rancid and give your coffee a sour or fishy taste. 
• Coffee Cup
  We serve coffee in our tasting room in ceramic cups. We found that our commercial dishwasher left a detergent film on the cups that affected the coffee taste. We now run our cups twice, once with detergent and once without. If you coffee tastes like detergent, it may be the cup. 
• Storing
  Coffee beans oxidize quickly when exposed to air. In addition, they also pick up flavors in the air e.g. onions, garlic, fuel oil etc. Ground coffee oxidizes faster than whole bean coffee, so coffee beans shouldn’t be ground until just before they are used. Whole bean and ground coffee should be stored in as close to an oxygen free environment as possible. Freezing coffee helps slow down oxidation. Oxidized coffee tastes flat with little aroma and no subtle flavors. 

If you check all of the above and your coffee still tastes bad, then you need to take a look at your beans. How long since the beans were actually on a tree? If it isn’t the current crop year, you are wasting your money. How were the beans processed? If they sat on a truck after picking for more than a few hours they may have a fermented taste. Were the beans sorted and graded?

Good coffee trees have both good and bad beans. Did the processor sort out the bad beans? How were the beans stored? If they sat in a container on a tropical pier they may taste moldy. If they were stored in burlap bags they may taste like burlap. How long since they were roasted? Fresh roasted coffee tastes fresh. Old coffee tastes old. Aging is good for wine, bad for coffee.

The coffee is as perfectly balanced as any I’ve had and lingers as a long finish to complete the experience. Full Review

We’ve been longtime fans of Lee and Karen’s crisp, flavorful 100% Kona-grown Hula Daddy coffees. We’re grateful to Hula Daddy for rewarding our Reader Photo of the Week winners with such a great prize. 

Excerpt from HAWAII Magazine  January/February 2010Article:

 My first stop of the morning, Hula Daddy coffee offers … [tours, sampling and sales]. From a rocking chair on the veranda of the Hula Daddy’s retail shop, you can gaze on owners Lee Paterson and Karen Jue’s 11-acre farm, and, far downslope, the Kailua-kona coastline, all the while samping as many cups of their fabulous brewed raosts as you want…

 Spend a day tasting coffee from farms along the belt, and you”ll quickly find that all Kona coffees are not created equal. Cups of joe  I sampled were consistently good, but not alwaysas crisp and complex as Hula Daddy.’s roasts.

Hula Daddy owners Lee and Karen Paterson bought a cow pasture near Holualoa and turned it into a coffee farm in 2002.

“After practising law for 42 years, it was time to do something new,” says Lee.

“There’s something special about growing coffee. The greatest satisfaction is when people tell me they’ve tasted our coffee and it’s the best. That makes my whole day.”

As we step into Hula Daddy’s garage-sized production room, Meza stands in front of four or five cups of coffee that have been infused for four minutes in 90C water.

One by one, he slurps, swirls and spits out the rich-brown liquid to compare the relative acidity, sweetness and flavour of each brew.

“I’m like the winemaker,” says Meza, who performs this “cupping” procedure at least once a week to control quality and test out experimental batches.

Achieving a coveted, record-setting 97 rating for Hula Daddy’s sweet natural Kona coffee in December 2008 was not a slam dunk, however.

“There are dozens of steps where you can screw up coffee,” explains the 27-year-old roastmaster, who shepherds his estate-grown beans through the many critical stages of production.  

The process begins with hand-picking the bright red coffee “cherries” one berry at a time at the peak of ripeness and then mechanically removing the outer pulp and fermenting the beans.

Fermentation gives so-called “wet-processed” coffees their characteristic bright, clear flavour.

Afterward, the beans are sun-dried and milled to remove the parchment and silver-skin layers.

Selection of the highest-grade green beans, climate-controlled storage and custom roasting at just the right temperature for the optimal amount of time help to ensure that the final product will be full-bodied and aromatic.

The proof of Meza’s long, hard labour is evident up in Hula Daddy’s tasting room where we inhale the rich aroma of fresh-brewed coffee and savour the differences among select, fancy, extra-fancy and prized peaberry Kona.

“We both like coffee, and since we started drinking Kona, we’ve fallen in love with it, so we wanted to see how it’s made,” say Theresa and John Banks, residents of Marysville, Calif., who are taking a self-guided coffee tour as they wind up their holiday on the Big Island.

The couple finds similarities between Hawaii’s Kona coffee belt and California’s Napa Valley wine country.

Hawaiian Tropic
Say aloha to island coffee.
 
Something of the redheaded stepchild of the coffee industry, Hawaiian coffee has for years been known more for tourism than taste. But that reputation is changing—here to rewrite Hawaiian coffee’s character is a crop of island roasters whose coffees are nuanced, balanced and outright delicious Article Source

Kona country offers a taste of history and the chance to savour some award-winning coffee

HOLUALOA, Hawaii–The coffee pot is always on here along the Kona Heritage Corridor on the Big Island of Hawaii, where producers of prized Kona coffee beans are turning up the heat on competition to develop award-winning brews.

Visitors can sample different roasts and estate labels as they drive for more than 30 kilometres through the heart of Kona coffee country on the island’s west coast.

Hawaii’s rich volcanic soil, tropical weather and optimal elevation (420 to 1,100 metres) create the perfect growing conditions for Arabica coffee with superior quality and taste.

A number of the Big Island’s 700 Kona coffee farms and coffee cooperatives offer guided tours and free tastings year-round.

Every November, the annual Kona Coffee Cultural Festival fires up enthusiasts with a cupping competition, picking and recipe contests, colorful parades and a smorgasbord of food.

The 10-day event, which started yesterday and runs to Nov. 15, engages nearly 50 communities in honouring the multi-ethnic heritage of Kona’s coffee pioneers and their decades-long tradition of growing and producing some of the world’s best beans.

These days, newcomers to the coffee business are experimenting with improved varietals of coffee plants and innovative bean processing and roasting techniques in order to take Kona coffee to new heights.

“Only recently have people begun to think about crafting fine coffee,” says Miguel Meza, the roastmaster at Hula Daddy Kona Coffee. “We’re a few decades behind wine in that respect.”

Hula Daddy owners Lee and Karen Paterson bought a cow pasture near Holualoa and turned it into a coffee farm in 2002.

“After practising law for 42 years, it was time to do something new,” says Lee.

“There’s something special about growing coffee. The greatest satisfaction is when people tell me they’ve tasted our coffee and it’s the best. That makes my whole day.”

As we step into Hula Daddy’s garage-sized production room, Meza stands in front of four or five cups of coffee that have been infused for four minutes in 90C water.

One by one, he slurps, swirls and spits out the rich-brown liquid to compare the relative acidity, sweetness and flavour of each brew.

“I’m like the winemaker,” says Meza, who performs this “cupping” procedure at least once a week to control quality and test out experimental batches.

Achieving a coveted, record-setting 97 rating for Hula Daddy’s sweet natural Kona coffee in December 2008 was not a slam dunk, however.

“There are dozens of steps where you can screw up coffee,” explains the 27-year-old roastmaster, who shepherds his estate-grown beans through the many critical stages of production.

The process begins with hand-picking the bright red coffee “cherries” one berry at a time at the peak of ripeness and then mechanically removing the outer pulp and fermenting the beans.

Fermentation gives so-called “wet-processed” coffees their characteristic bright, clear flavour.

Afterward, the beans are sun-dried and milled to remove the parchment and silver-skin layers.

Selection of the highest-grade green beans, climate-controlled storage and custom roasting at just the right temperature for the optimal amount of time help to ensure that the final product will be full-bodied and aromatic.

The proof of Meza’s long, hard labour is evident up in Hula Daddy’s tasting room where we inhale the rich aroma of fresh-brewed coffee and savour the differences among select, fancy, extra-fancy and prized peaberry Kona.

“We both like coffee, and since we started drinking Kona, we’ve fallen in love with it, so we wanted to see how it’s made,” say Theresa and John Banks, residents of Marysville, Calif., who are taking a self-guided coffee tour as they wind up their holiday on the Big Island.

The couple finds similarities between Hawaii’s Kona coffee belt and California’s Napa Valley wine country.

“If you go along the back roads, you often find smaller farms where you can ask questions and have more personal interactions,” John says.

Other coffee farms and tasting rooms beckon to coffee aficionados along the Kona Heritage Corridor, aka Mamalahoa Highway (Route 180).

Kona Blue Sky Coffee Co. offers complimentary guided walking tours and tastings daily.

At Kona Le’a Plantation, the home of Holualoa Kona Coffee Co., owners Desmond and Lisen Twigg-Smith invite visitors to tour their family orchards and mill before enjoying a steaming cup of fresh-roasted Kona coffee in their roasting room.

But to discover the origins of Hawaii’s worldwide coffee-export industry, visit Greenwell Farms, which owes its existence to an ambitious young Englishman who left Britain in the 1840s to seek his fortune abroad.

“My great-grandfather, Henry Nicholas Greenwell, arrived in Hawaii in 1850, bought up property and established this farm,” says Thomas Greenwell, a fourth-generation member of the Greenwell clan and company vice president and chief operating officer.

“From the very beginning, Henry was involved in the coffee business. By the 1860s, he was shipping coffee around the world. And in 1873, he sent coffee to the World’s Fair in Vienna and received a certificate of excellence from the emperor of Austria. I still have a copy of it.”

Today, Greenwell Farms is one of world’s largest exporters of green coffee beans.

In addition to their processing and distribution operations, the Greenwells roast 10 per cent of their own coffee beans, which are sold on-site at a small tasting room or through mail-order sales.

For all the modernization, however, the family-run operation is still steeped in history and tradition.

“Mark Twain was here years ago and mentioned my father’s orange groves in his writing,” Tom says.

Leading the way to a small stand of gnarled coffee plants, he says, “Great-grandma (Elizabeth Caroline Greenwell) planted these trees in 1900 and they are still producing.”

The former Greenwell country store, where native Hawaiian growers once traded their coffee beans for Henry’s staple goods, is now a living museum adjacent to the Kona Historical Society.

Tom’s 80-year-old mother, Jean, retains ownership of the farm and is recognized as a local historian. His 19-year-old son, Benjamin, who early on gained the nickname “Coffee,” works with his father. Tom’s wife, Jennifer, runs the retail and mail-order side of the business.

At the conclusion of our stay on the Big Island, we are careful to tuck several bags of 100 per cent Kona coffee into our luggage.

Some people, however, find the allure of “brown gold” too strong to resist and succumb to its powerful attraction.

Like the Patersons, they never leave.  Article Source: Toronto Star — TheStar.com

Being a former coffee store manager I can tell you first hand that Hula Daddy’s 100% Kona Private Reserve is a taste of heaven in a cup. If you don’t believe me, try some for yourself.  Read Complete Article

Even though Friday began without fanfare, that all changed when the postman arrived with an unexpected package. My brother, for no other reason than he thinks I’m the bomb and wants me to have the best of everything (he really does) sent me the best coffee I have ever tasted. You see, my brother is always in Hawaii. Always. He buys all his coffee from Hula Daddy and visits their tasting room when he’s in Kona. So while placing his order last week, he ordered me some too! This coffee is to die for. Did you know coffee is rated on a 100 point scale like wine and these two one pound bags he sent me, “Kona Sweet” Light Roast received 97 points and the other “Mele” Kona Coffee received a 92 point score. If you have a coffee lover on your holiday list, this would be a very special gift. The bags even come packaged in these beautiful cloth drawstring sacks. What a surprise this was, thanks bro!!!!  Article Source

“Rarely do coffees meet expectations- especially when they are prohibitively expensive. This Kona coffee, of the 700 growers in Kona, this singular one coffee produced as the first dry processed Kona in the world- it is truly a gift to specialty coffee for which we will be forever grateful. “