What in the Hell ?!!

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Coffee!!

 Coffee is a labor-intensive endeavor. Every part of the coffee bush is caffeinated, from the stems to the leaves. But the best way to harvest the caffeine is to collect cherries, which are the ripened coffee berries that contain coffee beans. 

At Garden Green, there are about 25 coffee plants which we pick about every other day.  Since we are only about 150 ft. above sea level these beans will be considered 'robusta' beans.  It is generally understood that robusta beans do not have the great flavor 'arabica' beans have, but do contain more caffeine.   Arabica beans are grown above 3000 ft.  High altitude and tropical climate are two factors needed in ideal coffee growing conditions, which is why the Kona region on the other side of the island grows what some consider the best coffee in the world! 

Here is one day's bounty plus some chili peppers we collected from an ever-fertile bush in the garden.  Nothing like a cup of hot coffee!!   Get it?.....

To remove the beans from the cherries, you have to 'activate' the cherries by soaking them in water. The water loosens the skins and then you pop the beans out.  Industrial processors use two methods:  a wet and a dry method.  Neither involves manually popping the cherries, but we are speeding up the process.  There are usually two coffee beans in each cherry, but sometimes, you get one big round one, a peaberry.  No one is sure the cause of peaberries, but most likely it is a mutation.  Peaberry coffee is usually more expensive because of their rarity, and the fact that they are manually separated from the rest of the beans.  Talk about tedious!!  Glad we aren't worrying about that. 

Processing coffee, for us at least, is a communal affair, kind of like shellin' peas. 

The best thing about coffee is that it tends to grow in really beautiful places, like Kona, Hawaii. Here's the sunset from our hotel room when we traveled to the coffee region on our trip around the island.