Almost all coffee in the world, including Kona coffee, is wet-processed, where beans are separated from the fruit pulp in a machine, fermented, and then washed/rinsed thoroughly. This produces a clean and bright flavor profile, and allows the beans to dry more easily with less tendency to grow mold. This is how we process our Makana coffee.

Between the washed and natural processes, honey is where the cherries are pulped to remove the flesh, but not fermented in water. It is dried with the sticky mucilage still on the bean. This requires more careful attention to frequent raking during drying so mold doesn’t occur. .Its benefits are a sweeter end result in the cup, since it dries in the sweet, sticky natural mucus.

This is much less common, but used by some artisanal producers. The entire coffee cherry is dried in the sun before the beans are extracted, imparting fruity notes to the coffee. This is the most labor intensive as it is the most at risk to acquire mold if not dried in warm and dry conditions. It is also much more expensive because of the intensive labor and unique, sweet flavors.

After processing, Kona coffee beans are often dried on cement slabs with coverings over them to let in the sun but keep out the rain. But for Makana we have many drying trays with a screen bottom for air circulation that we put in our three-shelf drying shed. It acts like a greenhouse, where we can house 14 10’x2.5’ trays on three levels. Depending on where they are located in the shed (the top shelf gets HOT), it can take anywhere from eight days to four weeks to dry to the needed moisture level. Then they are stored in Grain Pro bags inside a burlap sack ideally for at least a month, and then stored for later use or hulled immediately for roasting if needed for your customers.

Once dried and needed for roasting, the beans are hulled to remove their parchment layer (it’s like a big weed wacker to take off the parchment layer), and graded by size and density. The importance of sorting by similar size bean is crucial, because if vastly different sizes are roasted together, it won’t result in a consistent roast, because the small beans will burn while roasting the bigger beans to the desired temperature.