You can guide yourself through the facility, which includes a roasting room featuring steampunk-like Big Joe and Little Joe roasters, or pay $12 for a guided tour which nets you a full cup of 100-percent Kona and an etched mug.
For devotees, the “ultimate tour” lets you roast 5 pounds of coffee (with the backup of the roastmaster, just in case of nerves).
This innovative operation is the only farm in Kona where the coffee plants are trellised like grape vineyards, a patented idea that lets the plants catch more sun and yields up to 35 percent more of this Blue Ribbon (for Best New Coffee In the World, in 2001) coffee.
Green beans (coffee is actually a seed) are stored in breathable burlap bags onsite in a climate-controlled room that keeps the humidity under 50 percent.
It was here that we learned to never, ever freeze your coffee unless you want to kill both the antioxidant qualities and the flavor.
There’s a coffee bar perched at the top of a breathtaking view down to the sea, glorious white and black chocolate-coated peaberry in the gift shop, and a five course Rapa Nui Cuccina sunset dinner option if all that touring made you hungry.
Dinner reservations: (808) 747-1287
Open all days from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Last tour begins at 4.
Click here for details on earning HawaiianMiles at Kona Joe Coffee.
