The Milling Process

The Kona coffee process begins in the months of January through June. This is the time when late winter and early summer rains bring the necessary amount of water to bring on the blossoms or “flowers” that eventually turns into coffee cherry. After six to seven months these coffee cherry turn red in color. As the cherry becomes even more a solid red color it is then harvested by hand. Because there is always more than one flowering, the cherry is hand selected at different times. Each tree may be picked as many as seven to eight times during the coffee season.

The first process is wet pulping. During this process the cherry skin is removed from the coffee cherry. This is done with special equipment that ensures all the skin is removed without damage to the coffee. After this process is complete the coffee is now in “parchment” form. The parchment is then placed in large tanks of water called fermentation tanks. In these tanks the parchment ferments for a period of twelve to eighteen hours. During this time the parchment uses this process to gain some of the flavor characteristics that make up the quality of Kona coffee that is world famous.

The next process involves drying the parchment. First we begin by washing the parchment that is in the tanks. To do this we slowly open the tank valves and allow the parchment to run into the de-mucilager. This is a machine that removes all the mucilage from the parchment and leaves it clean. It is then rinsed and placed on wooden drying decks until it reaches the right moisture content. The final drying is done through mechanical dryers.

The final process is what we refer to as the dry mill process. In this process we take the parchment that has been wet milled and dried to our specifications and turn it into raw green coffee. With our state of the art, automated computer dry mill, we are capable of producing the highest quality of Kona coffee. We begin by first removing the parchment skin thus revealing the green coffee. In the next stage we run the green coffee over a series of screens to grade them by size. After the green coffee has been graded by size, it is then run across an air-flowed gravity table to insure that only the largest and most dense green coffee beans are selected for export.

The green coffee is sampled by the State of Hawaii Department of Agriculture and is certified to grade, quality, and certificate of origin. Makua Coffee Company, Inc. only sells 100% pure Kona coffee.