Visiting relatives, coffee drinkers, recently asked the one question for which I don’t have a qualified answer: “What is Kona coffee?”
“Well,” I replied in the most fake authoritative voice that a non-coffee drinker could muster on severely short notice and without a Google opportunity in sight, “it’s coffee that is grown along the Kona coast of the Big Island.”
There. That should satisfy their curiosity. Let’s move along to questions about high gasoline prices and why there are no caucasians staying in their hotel, and why it seems that half the women from Japan are pigeon-toed or bow-legged? Or both. Honestly. I have answers for those questions.
Relatives tend not to be cooperative when they’re paying $15 an hour for a hotel room, and I was not well prepared for the follow up question, “What is so great about Kona coffee?”
For what it’s worth, the last time I drank coffee was at age five. Maybe it was four. Kool-Aid was better and sweet so I headed in that direction, leaving the bitterness of coffee to adults with no sense. Sweet is good.
What is so great about Kona coffee? Here’s what I came up with to soothe the savage questioner and impress them with my knowledge of all things Hawaii.
Coffee doesn’t just grow anywhere. It requires a unique mixture of sun, soil, water, and cultivation to produce specialty coffees, those with a premium sweet taste. The Kona side of the Big Island is such a location.
Coffee first came to the Big Island’s Kona district back in the late 19th century and was Brazilian in origin. Today, there are hundreds of Kona coffee farms that produce millions of pounds of coffee. Pure Kona coffee is considered an expensive rarity, as most coffee from Kona is a blend.
Therein lies the problem. Coffee buyers are used to blends, and Kona coffee is often mixed with less expensive Colombian or Brazilian coffee. The blend may be on a 10-to-1 ratio. That reduces costs, but also reduces the quality of the Kona coffee.
Relatives can be utterly persistent even in the face of facts, facts, more facts. “So, why is Kona coffee so great?”
Yeesh. “I’ll buy you some Kona coffee so you can take it back home and decide for yourself,” was my quick, snobbish, and $15 for seven ounces reply.
Kona coffee lives up to its reputation only when it is pure 100% Kona coffee beans. It is full and rich bodied both in flavor and aroma yet leaves absolutely no bitter aftertaste. If you get an aftertaste on Kona coffee it was not processed correctly or is probably not pure Kona. Kona is very non-acidic and is rather sweet & smooth and if you get it from an estate grower all the work is done by hand.