A group of members and a couple of visitors of the Slow Food Hawaii Convivium spent the morning yesterday, Saturday, August 7th touring the Hilo Coffee Mill in Mountain View.
Coffee was introduced to Hawaii Island in 1828 and at one time the Puna area of the Big Island had about 6000 acres of coffee trees making it the largest coffee growing area in the whole island until sugar cane was introduced and then all of the coffee acreage was turned to cane. The Hilo Coffee Mill is trying to revert back to the original use of the land.
In the past, I've written about a coffee tasting for the now defunct Hawai'i Island Journal and also about the Farmers Market @the Mill (see below for 2 links), but this time we toured the farm and followed the process from planting to harvesting, roasting and finally tasting the coffee...ending our visit with lunch on the front lanai and shopping in the Farmer's Market.
The pineapple field yields about 200 white pineapples a year...of course, the tops get planted for yet more pineapple plants
Coffee trees were loaded with coffee berries or cherries
Some were beginning to ripen
Kathy explains below the harvesting of the trees
Coffee trees are actually evergree shrubs with a center trunk that grows fairly straigh and from which the branches spread in a beautiful outward pattern - in the 18th Century, botanists classified coffee as a member of the Rubiaceous family, but there are several varieties within the family and also several cultivars within the varieties. If I caught the names correctly, while Kathy was explaining them, at the Hilo Coffee Mill they are growing. Typica, Caturra, and Catuai, Typica is the oldest coffee cultivar known and from which come many of the coffees we're familiar with today.
A beautifully shaped variety of a Typica coffee tree
The Coffee Mill farm has permanent residents... a colorful collection of hens that provide them with an astronomical amount of eggs daily...and of course, there is the 'King of the Roost'
The eggs are sold through the Mill Gift Shop, the Farmers Market and also used for the breakfasts which are served during Market hours on Saturdays.
The Mill Farm also has an experimental planting of Camellia sinensis, the tea plant from which all teas derive.
Many of the plants were blooming at this time and there were also seeds on many of them.
The process of oxidation and fermentation is what determines if the end result is white tea, green tea, oolong, black tea or pu-erh. The twigs and stems (no leaves) are also used for Japanese teas such as Sancha or Matcha.
Back from the walk and inside the roasting and tasting room, Kealani explains the process frpm planting to getting the coffee ready to drink
The best way to start coffee plants is as seedlings which get transplanted to fields after they reach 2 to 3 feet in height. The progression from there until you are able to get a cup of coffee takes several years and more than a few steps; going through blossoming, green cherry, ripe cherry, picking, pulping, hulling, fermenting, washing, then on to parchment, drying, storing to reach the right moisture content, green beans and roasting…..all of this for that wonderful wake up call cup of coffee in the morning!
Christie roasting a fresh batch of coffee beans
Just roasted coffee beans!
We tasted three different coffees; a medium roast grown in Ka'u, a dark roast from the Hilo Coffee Mill and a flavored one that tasted a bit like a subtle blend of raspeberries and blackberries to me but actually was pineapple.
Coffee seeds take 90 days to germinate and 5 years to produce enough cherries
to make it worth while. It takes an estimated 4000 regular coffee beans to make a pound of coffee after roasting. An average tree produces 10 to 12 pounds of ripe cherries which in turn ends up as one tenth of that amount after the coffee is roasted.
It's a wrap!
For lunch on the front lanai, we were served vegetarian, chicken or pork wraps, a delicious white and purple sweet potato salad, pasta salad, iced tea made from Hilo Coffee Mill grown tea and deliciously big fat chocolate chip cookies!
Below are links to two articles I shared about visits to the Farmers Market @The Mill
Hilo Coffee Mill's Farmers Market @ the Mill
Farmers Market @ The Mill
