Hawaiian Coffee is Best Home-Grown.
There are many little-known, but fascinating facts about Hawaii, one of which is that this is the only state in the U.S. where coffee is grown. Furthermore, Hawaii-grown coffee is generally acknowledged to be among the very best in the world. Coffee from the Kona area of the Big Island has the big reputation—and it’s well-deserved—but the same conditions exist here on Maui: volcanic soil, no extremes of temperature, sunny mornings and cloud cover in the afternoons over the mountain slopes where the coffee grows best.
Several years ago, my indefatigable wife decided she would like to try growing coffee. Today, less than a hundred feet from where I’m sitting, there are sixty coffee trees, each six- to eight-feet high. Paula has recently taken her second harvest of the bright red “cherries” and gone through the time-consuming and labor intensive processing that has ultimately yielded 75 pounds of beans ready for roasting.
Since the dried beans can be stored for months and roasted in small quantities as needed, we now have more than a year’s supply. And it is absolutely wonderful coffee, roasted exactly the way each of us prefers. In fact, for most of the year, breakfasts here begin with juice squeezed from oranges that were picked from our trees and we finish with our own coffee. I still find that amazing as well as delicious and we count our blessings every single day.
Hawaiian coffee sells at premium prices. Even here, it routinely costs between $18 and $30 a pound. My wife could sell her beans from as much as $20 a pound to a company that roasts and sells coffee under their label. Of course, we would just have to revert to buying the coffee we drink at retail prices. The fact is, Paula’s coffee growing-picking-pulping-hulling-drying-and-roasting enterprise is probably saving us at least $1000 a year … as long as you don’t figure in a cost for her labor.
Finally, should you be a coffee aficionado and come across Hawaiian coffee for sale, a word of advice: Never ever buy what purports to be Hawaiian coffee if it’s labeled a “blend” … as in “Kona Blend” or “Maui Blend”. That could actually contain as little as 10-percent Hawaiian coffee, with the other 90 percent being very ordinary coffee. Essentially, it’s a scam.
But the real Hawaiian coffee? Ahhhh! You’ll never go back to the ordinary stuff.
Freshly squeezed orange juice? I’m always looking for that in restaurants. But that, and homemade-from-scratch pies are increasingly difficult to find.
And this time of year at home I have Texas oranges from the Lower Rio Grande Valley – they’re much sweeter and less acidic than Florida or California oranges (I’m not sure I was aware that oranges were grown in Hawaii.)
For those travelers who find themselves in Wichita I know of at least 2 restaurants that serve fresh squeezed orange juice – The Good Egg and Legends at the Hilton Double Tree at the President Dwight Eisenhower airport.
And on a recent Amtrak trip on the California Zephyr I enjoyed fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast at the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs.
Any idea how the flavor of Hawaiian oranges contrasts with those from Texas, California, or Florida?
I’ve never done a comparison, but my sense is that the juice we get from our trees is milder, if that makes an sense. I have four varieties, too, each producing mature fruit at a somewhat different time. That way we have fresh fruit over a longer period that if we had all one variety. We also have bananas — a local variety with fruit that is only about six inches long, but firm and just a bit tart — plus papayas. Because of our constant temperate climate, most of this fruit comes year-round. Of course, so do the weeds.