For today’s coffee review, I check out Big Island Coffee Roasters 100% Kona Geisha, their 2018 Hawaii Grand Champion!
A coffee that is among the special order coffee in which you had to pre-order for the roast date which took place on September 21st and sold out immediately.
First, let’s talk about Big Island Coffee Roasters (for those who don’t know about them).
Who/What is Big Island Coffee Roasters?
When it comes to Hawaiian coffee, Brandon von Damitz and Kelleigh Stewart, the co-founders of Big Island Coffee have been recognized of producing great coffee.
In 2010, the two found a small coffee farm in a wild, disadvantaged region of Hawai’i in Puna and was posted on Craigslist. Originally, they were thinking about buying a farm in Portland, where they both lived. But finding a bank to lend them the money for one proved to be difficult. But after seeing the Craigslist posting of three acres in Puna, full of coffee trees and a house which was being sold less for a price of a home in Portland? They had to go to Hawaii and met the owner, who is from Oklahoma and bought the farm. No need to go through the bank, Bob carries the entire loan and the two have been paying the man, known as Bob, with the profits from their coffee business.
But in the beginning, von Damitz and Stewart then met with the community of farmers and sampled coffee from around Hawai’i and they learned about the local diversity and then learned about how there were people making great coffee with artificially flavored, blended coffee and to make things worse, Kona coffee was taking a hit due to many companies saying they were selling Kona coffee.
Kona coffee farmers have said that the Kona district can only grow approximately 2.7 million pounds of green Kona coffee each year, representing only .01 percent of the world’s green coffee production, but over 20 million pounds of coffee labeled as “Kona” are sold at retail annually. Many coffee companies were using Kona and their advertising and labeling were misleading.
For any person who wants true Hawaiian coffee, its safer to buy it directly from the farms and roasters. Pure and simple!
Kona is known for Typica Arabica variety but it didn’t do well in Puna.
I’ve written about Kona and Ka’u coffee which benefits fro the rich volcanic soil of Mauna Loa.
But where is Puna?
Puna is the district on the Big Island’s south east shore. The district is known for its freshwater springs and volcanically heated tide pools. The whole coastline is made up of lava rock and the eastern flank of the Kilauea volcano is located in the Puna district.
Kilauea is the most active volcano in the world and on the map above, it’s on the right side labeled as “volcano”. Sure, it’s not as big as Mauna Loa or Manua Kea but it’s quite active having eruptions continuously from 1983 to 2018. Big Island Roasters is located in Mountain View and the Kilauea volcano is 10 miles from their farm and roastery.
And as you learn about Hawai’i’s volcanoes, the volcanic soil is quite rich and provides a great place for coffee trees to be cultivated.
And for Big Island Roasters, their research led to methods which produced great coffee and began working with neighboring farmers and sourcing their coffees as well.
But all the hardwork paid off for Big Island Roasters. In 2013, their Puna coffee earned the top score as Grand Champion for the state of Hawaii, which is quite impressive because a) They haven’t been around that long b) they are a small c) With so much attention on Kona and Ka’u coffee, Big Island Roasters is in Puna.
And even if they won, the company were unable to make it because the airline tickets cost as much as the lawnmower they need to replace.
But this couple who moved from Portland to Hawai’i after seeing an ad on CraigsList, have now produced coffee which has become the Grand Champion in the state and literally made Big Island Coffee Roasters the rockstars they are today. But they were still small and not enough coffee to sell at a wholesale rate but retail rate.
These are the stories that I find exciting to read about. The hard work, the amount of research, feeding, testing, roasting and cupping coffee, the important people they had to work with in producing great coffee. It’s a challenge and also expensive.
I have mentioned this many times before, the cost for hired help, the high cost of living, the cost to maintain the trees and equipment, coffee made in Hawai’i is a labor of love but Hawaiian coffee is also known as one of the most expensive coffee in the world for a reason. Farmers/roasters have to charge a bit more. They can’t produce bulk like other countries, there are only so many coffee trees planted on rich volcanic soil.
That’s why I believe in working directly with the farmers and roasters, knowing that you are getting true coffee from Hawai’i, from a district and it’s not blended with other beans.
Which now leads me to my review of Big Island Coffee Roasters 100% Kona Geisha.
I first discovered Geisha coffee back in 2016 by the “Godfather of Japanese Coffee”, Kunitomo Eiichi. At the time, he was raving about his Gesha coffee from Ethiopia and it was the most expensive coffee which he offered at his well-known coffee shop in Tokyo. And I became hooked.
Geisha/Gesha is a variety of coffee which was discovered in Gesha, Ethiopia. A coffee known for its floral aroma and discovered in the 1930s i the mountainous Gesha region of southwestern Ethiopia, seeds were collected in 1936 and planted in Tazmania, Costa Rica and cultivation was later brought to Panama in the ’60s.
Gesha gained popularity in 2004 when it was entered in the “Best of Panama” coffee competition and was sold for $21 per pound. In 2019, it was sold for $1029 per pound (unroasted). Currently, Elida Natural Geisha 1029 is the most expensive coffee in the world at $100 for 18 grams, $100 a cup or $2522 per round roasted. At an auction, 100 pounds of Elida Natural Geisha sold for $102,900.
I love Geisha Coffee. As a coffee lover, I believe Geisha/Gesha, is the highest quality of coffee out there but it comes with a price. There are those willing to spend money for it, those who feel its way too expensive. For me, I feel that Big Island Coffee Roasters offering at $39 for 7 oz. and $55 for 10 oz. is priced well, considering another company sells theirs prize winning Green Tip Geisha (which is the best Geisha) for $175 for 8 oz.
My feeling is if you are a coffee lover, try it out as it’s not that expensive and and know that all good things in life, at least experience things once and decide for yourself if it’s worth it or not.
As for the coffee, Big Island Coffee has this blurb about it:
Enigmatic, exclusive, unforgettable, phenomenal, “God in a cup”. These have all been used to describe the elusive, sexy Geisha coffee variety, originally from the Gori Gesha Forest in Ethiopia and now grown in Kona.
Geisha coffee is a variety that originated in Ethiopia, renowned for the aromatic, complex, floral, and fruit-forward profile it produces. Because of the unusual flavor profile, rarity, production cost, an demand, Geisha coffees have become an aficionado’s obsession. In 2019, a Panama Geisha coffee crushed the record for the highest price paid for coffee at auction, selling at $1029/lb green (unroasted), equating to $2522/lb roasted!
This award-winning Geisha coffee is grown in Kona and has earned Best Kona Coffee at the Kona Coffee Cultural Competition (2018), and Grand Champion at the Hawaii Coffee Association Cupping Competition (2018).
Beyond being hand-harvested and meticulously produced by the Stille family at their Monarch estate farm in Holualoa, it’s also produced using sustainable farm practices and without harmful chemicals.
To cultivate Kona Geisha, the Stille family practices cover-cropping, composting, and interplanting to protect the ecosystem and attract butterflies, bees, and pollinators to their land.
Now before I get into the review, I have to talk about Monarch Farms and the Stille family.
Greg and Susy Stille love Hawai’i and they started out with a small, two-acre farm with a few coffee trees. They picked their own cherries, hand pulped them, put them through the milling, drying and dabbling in roasting small batches and through experience, learned of what makes a perfect cup.
The farm in the Big Island (in Hualalai to be exact) grew, located in the Kona District and also home to many monarch butterflies and thus Monarch Coffee was born.
The Stille’s believe in maintaining a sustainable farms so they have outcroppings of milkweed to attract Monarch and Kamehameha butterflies to pollinate, as well as 28 bee hives, which they admit is not necessary for the coffee crop but believe in having a healthy ecosystem for all of their plants and crops.
Their website goes into many details of their methods of maintaining a sustainable farm.
Most of the crops of Monarch farms are watered primarily by natural rainfall. When additional water is needed, they use water harvested from a rainwater collection system and recycle the water with their fermentation tanks into irrigation. They don’t use chemicals or pesticides on their farm.
But their beans are from rare Ethiopia-derived botanical variety of Gesha using the traditional washed method, skin and fruit of the cherry beans are removed, the beans are then dried. All coffee beans are hand-picked and no machinery is involved.
As for the pulp, Monarch then uses their coffee pulp as compost with a special fertilizer mix, so no part of the coffee goes to waste.
Monarch sells their Geisha Coffee on their website and Big Island Coffee Roasters who work with various farms in Hawai’i, wanted to offer Kona Geisha to their members of their Hawaiian Coffee Club.
As a person who loves coffee, I try to make sure I don’t drink the same coffee everyday.
I will say this about the 100% Kona Geisha, I couldn’t stop drinking it as my urge to drink this coffee went daily. I didn’t want to drink anything else because this coffee was so good!
Once you drink into it, there are complex, fruit flavors that really stand out. May it be pomegranate, candy green apple, jasmine, rose, vanilla, honeysuckle, chocolate…it’s a complex yet vibrant flavor with a good amount of acidity and is quite smooth. The finishing notes are a combination of sweet and light spice, with chocolate and jasmine. Again, it’s complex but in a magnificent way.
I’m absolutely hooked and whether or not you purchase this 100% Kona Geisha Coffee from Big Island Coffee Roasters or Monarch Farms, just know these beans produce magnificent coffee.
Highly recommended!
