About the Cafe
https://www.honolulucoffee.com/
This is actually the second time I’m writing this review because my iPad mysteriously deleted the first during an unexpected update. I’m happy to return though since I had such a good experience last time. Work brought me out to Oahu for five weeks so I took the opportunity to try local coffees. I also had the chance to visit three different coffee farms on the islands of Kaua’i and the Big Island, which I plan to write about later.
The café itself is expansive with a variety of seating from a high-top bar surrounding the coffee roaster, to a second tier of mostly two and four tops ringing the café. There are also distinct sections for the ordering counter, a glass walled bakery, a pour over coffee bar, a gift shop, and a cupping lab. As with many buildings in Hawaii, the doors and windows are open front and back to allow the trade winds to blow through. This gives the café a tropical flair similar to what one imagines for a romantic idea of old Havana. As it happened, on the day I visited they were busy roasting beans on this Frankenstein contraption of a 1944 Probat UG22 drum roaster plugged into a control device and a laptop computer.
About the Coffee
- Name of Roast: Peaberry
- Roaster: Honolulu Coffee Company
- Origin: Kona, Hawaii
- Drank at: Honolulu Coffee Experience Center, Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii
- Type: Peaberry
- Roast: Light (2/6)
- Price: $$$ (3/4)
- Enjoyed with: Chocolate Croissant and Breakfast Burritto with Portuguese sausage
- Aroma Notes: Sweet, fruity, floral
- Flavor Notes: Milk chocolate, raw sugar, toffee, cherry, nut
- Tasting Notes from the Bag: One of our rarest coffees in the world. Lighter bodied with subtle sweetness and hints of mixed berries.
Today I ordered the Kona Peaberry, which is a special smaller type of coffee bean grown on the slope of Mauna Loa and selected from a harvest of larger beans. I visited a couple of coffee farms during my time on the Big Island and most offered a peaberry as a premium coffee. It is a very satisfying brew, and though I’m doing it from memory, I think it was better than the first time. This brew has a notably full bodied mouth feel that compliments the chocolate and toffee notes. It balances the slightly bitter notes of the coffee bean and the nuttiness of the roasting process. I’ll note that for the most part, I haven’t been impressed by many of the Hawaiian coffees I’ve tried with the exception of select beans from the Ka’u region along the south coast of the Big Island. I think this is largely because the beans available at grocery stores are marketed as “10%” Kona coffee, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s mostly the wholesale beans that didn’t make the cut to be sold directly by the grower as an 100% Kona origin bean.
I visited three different coffee farms between Kauai and the Big Island and noted that most Hawaiian coffees have a very bright, acidic, and floral quality to them. If that’s your thing, you will be happy here, but I’m mostly into less acidic medium roasts with sort of a bitter nuttiness to them – as I’ve qualified upfront with this blog. Still, if you look a little deeper, there’s something to satisfy just about every palette. Unsurprisingly, most of the bulk coffee you can pick up at your local ABC store or even in the grocery stores around Oahu are the mass marketed 10% Kona variety for the most part. It is certainly cheap, with most 12-16oz bags running around 6-10 dollars, but you get what you pay for. If it’s any indictment of those beans, I was mostly drinking Peets as my daily “go-to” coffee while working on the Island. There are few standouts and if you go to an actual local coffee shop, you will likely receive a higher grade coffee than what’s offered at the grocery stores and tourist shops. I recommend stopping by the Honolulu Coffee Experience Center or any of Honolulu Coffee Company’s stores if you’re vacationing in Waikiki and the Kona Peaberry is definitely worth a try while you’re there.
Rating: 8.5/10
Coffee By The Mile 