We went to visit Kauai Coffee Company and spent quite a bit of time there and really enjoyed it. We took our time sampling all the different coffee. They have the entire line of coffee available to sample! It was great! Then we went on a self guided walking tour which was very interesting and beautiful. When we were done the tour we went to check out the shop and buy some coffee!!
Kauai Coffee Company is the sole producer of over half of the coffee grown in the United States.
Here is a little bit of information about coffee production on Kauai...
Coffee starts out 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 seed of this fruit, usually two to a cherry, which become the coffee bean.
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. They harvest 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Twelve mechanical harvesters that were originally designed for blueberries perform the harvesting.
After the coffee cherries are harvested, trucks deliver them from the fields to the wet processing plant. At the plant, the cherries are separated into three types, as determined by stages of maturity - ripe, natural and immature coffee, by using inherent differences in density and hardness. They produce 5 grades of coffee from the wet processing plant with an average daily capacity of 650 000 pounds of coffee cherries.
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.
Next, the beans are washed and sent to pre-dryers. After this the beans are gently dried in drying elevators for 18 to 36 hours. The bean temperature is carefully monitored and the heat is turned off for 8 or more hours per day to simulate cool night breezes.
Then the coffee rests in parchment for a while and then is milled to remove parchment and silverskin.
The final sorting step in the dry mill is the colour sorter, where an electronic eye scans each bean for colour, selecting the finest coloured beans and rejecting those that don't pass with a blast of air.
Each batch of coffee is graded and cupped, and inspected by the State of Hawaii Department of Agriculture.
Then the coffee is roasted and packaged on the estate.
This was just in the parking lot. Beautiful tree!
This was cool. There were names carved in all the leaves on this tree!
This is a Plumeria Tree. I love these trees!
Sampling!!
Looking at all the cool equipment and stuff!
Stating the walking tour...
I love this bush! It is so colourful!
Beautiful purple flowers!
There were signs like this all through the walking tour with really interesting information on them.
Red dirt!!
This is what the machines look like that they use for harvesting.
Again, the machines for harvesting. They were origionally designed for blueberries.
This is a small scale sample of what the wet plant looks like.
Blaine having fun!
This was when we finished the tour and were just getting ready to go check out the gift shop. This bush was really beautiful!! Look at all the colours!
