In order to get your order ready to ship, we need to know the roast that you think you will enjoy the most. The roast can make a huge difference in the flavor you will experience. If you will be ordering more than one estate, or grade, to compare, we suggest you let us roast them all the same. That way you will be comparing the estates, not the roast. If, on the other hand, you wish to compare roasts, select one estate or grade, and have us roast it to three different degrees. If you don't know the best selection for you or a gift recipient, we suggest our Madam Pele roast. It is...not too light (weak)....not too dark (strong, bitter)

Medium Roast

The lightest roast, which is preferred by professional cuppers because the flavor distinctions are not masked by the roast. The velvety light-brown beans provide a rich, snappy Kona flavor with exceptional aroma. Medium body. Highest in caffeine.

Madam Pele Roast

The perfect in-between roast, the favorite of most. The beans are roasted longer so that they produce a mellow, richer flavor that is not overwhelmed by the smoky tones from the roast. The beans are chestnut brown with a slight shimmer of oils on the surface. Ideal body. Retains most of the caffeine.

Dark Roast

Kona makes a particular sweet, dark roast. The flavor is hearty, smoky and strong. Similar to a Viennese roast (not as dark as French or Italian). Beans are dark brown with oily surface. Maximum body. Much of the caffeine has been roasted out.

All of Pele Plantations’ growers cultivate the only tree that produces the right flavor, coffea arabica typica. Coffee was brought to the islands from Brazil in 1825, and to Kona - from Oahu - in 1828. The trees thrive in Kona’s environment and produce their first crop three years after planting. During spring, the trees will flower 4 - 6 times; each flowering is known as a‘round’. It takes seven months for the small beans, produced by each round, to mature, into large, luscious, bright red cherries ready to pick. Cherries are harvested several times, to catch each round at its peak, in the fall.

Cherry Picking

This is the first and most important step. Careful hand picking is critical to quality of coffee and pickers are paid around 50 cents per pound they pick. This cost is one of the reasons why specialty coffee cost more. It takes about 7 pounds of cherries to make one pound of roasted coffee.. Because the coffee cherries do not all ripen at the same time, each tree must be hand-picked so that only the bright-red, ripe cherries are selected, leaving the underripe green, yellow, orange beans on the tree to grow and ripen at a later date. Well trained pickers are valuable - and they know it! With one year of experience they can pick around 200 pounds each day. If there were six flowering rounds in the spring, the pickers will return to pass over each tree six times in the fall. Our harvest runs from August through January.

Cherry Pulping

It is critical that this step is done the same day the fruit is picked, to avoid accidental fermentation and resulting sourness of the brew. The incoming cherries are weighed and dumped into a chute which meters them out into a large tub of water where they are pumped upstairs and into our Penagos pulping machine. This pulper removes the red skin from the two coffee beans inside each cherry. Once separated from the outer red skin, the beans are then dumped into large tubs where they soak for 18 hours so a slick coating, called mucilage, can be naturally fermented off the beans. The next day the beans are rinsed with clear water, then dumped onto the ‘‘shaker conveyor" where excess water is shaken from the beans to prepare for drying.

Sun-drying

At Pele Plantations we have preserved the original drying method introduced in Hawaii by the Japanese coffee farmers 100 years ago. We use a ‘‘hoshidana’’, where the beans are spread out on a wooden deck to achieve a true sun-dry of the beans in the warm Hawaiian sun. With frequent raking, most batches require 10 days to dry to 12% moisture. After drying, the beans now known as ‘‘parchment’’.

Dry-Milling

For this step we drive a 1,000 pound-batch of dried parchment beans to a large commercial dry mill. Here, specialized equipment is used to remove the parchment membrane and silver skin from the bean. At the mill the beans are sorted by size using screens and defective beans are removed on a gravity table.

Custom Roasting

Gus pours coffee, just roasted in his 12 lb. Sevitz, from the cooling tray into buckets for packaging.

Gus starts the roast by pouring the correct weight of un-roasted beans into our Sivetz air roaster. It is necessary to add an extra 20% in weight because ounces are lost when the beans get hot. With a flip of the switch the beans began tumbling in hot air and after a few minutes the green beans began changing color - from yellow to caramel to brown - and they crackle as they enlarge. The roaster sends out the familiar aroma of fresh coffee with its bluish smoke and flakes of silver skin, known as chaff. After reaching the desired temperature the roast is stopped and the beans are dumped into a rapid cooling tray. When they reach room temperature, the beans are packaged in foil bags with one-way valves that preserve freshness by letting the gases out without letting air in.

Mel Deyo has helped us meet demands for years. Here she selects estates to fulfill Coffee Club orders.

Aimee Dorofey, Gus's new roasting partner, carefully evaluates flavor development before stopping her roasts'. She completes 10 -15 roasts each day.

Bean Grinding

Proper grinding is vital because it affects both the amount of surface area exposed to water and it also controls the flow rate. Never grind more coffee than you will use for immediate brewing. Different methods of brewing will require different grind consistencies. Coffee used for drip brewing should be ground to a grind with a consistency similar to California white sand. When using a French press, the coffee should be ground extremely coarse. Espresso requires an extremely fine grind...almost powder-like with a slight grittiness.

We prefer burr grinders which can be set to produce a very uniform grind without heating the beans. Blade grinders grind the beans unevenly and the blades heat up, thereby robbing coffee of some its flavor. Blade grinders generally produce a satisfactory grind in 15 - 20 seconds. To help uniformity of the grounds, shake the grinder, even turn it upside down, while depressing the grinding activation switch.

Bean Storage

During roasting, coffee beans nearly double in size because the new interior space is filled with carbon dioxide (CO2) and the coffee’s aromas. Fresh roasted coffee with give off CO2 gases (degas) for 48 hours after roasting. The CO2 then is replaced by oxygen which reacts with the oils in the beans and turns them rancid. The best storage will slow down or stop de-gasing. At lower the temperatures, gases dissipate at a slower rate. In fact, at temperatures below freezing the coffee does not de-gas at all. So put your coffee in the freezer to keep it fresh!

We suggest keeping the whole bean coffee you will use within the next few days in an air tight container at room temperature away from direct sunlight. Then grind what is needed for the next pot right before brewing.

Bean Brewing

When making brewed coffee in a drip system, we recommend 1 level tablespoon of grinds for each 5-6 ounces of water, i.e. 10 tablespoons of grinds will be needed to brew 10 cups of coffee. If this is too strong for some in your household, dilute their portion after brewing and heat it up again in the microwave on HI for 10 seconds. If you reduce grinds to make weaker coffee, you will ruin the best flavor because lots of water washing over the same beans will pull out some bad flavors that should stay in the grinds, not the cup! Be sure to select a brewing system that moistens all the grounds in the basket, not just some. This is critical for maximum and uniform extraction time to time. You can tell how your machine is doing by examining the wet grinds after brewing. They all should be wet.

Bean Water

You are probably familiar with the phrase that coffee is 98% water, and it is true. Most tap water is full of unpleasant elements, and bottled water has its own problems in being too acidic. The best water is tap water that has been through a filtration device because tap water has the advantage of being highly oxygenated. The water is very important. If you don't like the taste of your water "straight" then it won't make coffee you like. Water should heat to about 200 degrees, just off the boil, for best brewing.