Recently I received a copy of this book The Hawaii Coffee Book by Shawn Steiman. It really is a concise colorful book on Hawaiian coffee. It covers a wide range of topics from island coffee history through the coffee brewing process.
According to the book, Hawaii grew 5.7 million pounds of green coffee during the 2008-2009 growing season. Coffee isn't only grown in the Big Island (Hawai'i - home of the Kona regions) it is also now grown on O'ahu, Maui, Kaua'i, and Moloka'i. Coffee growing on the other islands became a lot more popular within the late 1980s as farms moved away from sugar cane.
A number of the topics covered into the book include:
- Island Guide: The author posts maps regarding the coffee growing regions for every single island. If you enjoyed reading Chris Arnold's article on Hawaiian Coffee this section will be an amazing complement.
- Cupping, Roasting and Grinding Overview: Not specific to Hawaii, however these parts round out the book nicely.
- Resources: most of the coffee farms that provide tours are listed with contact information, including Kona Earth that will be run by Gary Strawn. if you're enthusiastic about taking a tour of a coffee farm, this section lists a couple of options.
- Farming: Growing, Harvesting, and Processing are covered at length. The Wet, Dry and newer Mechanical Demulching methods are explained. Mechanical demulching is the newest method and uses far less water compared to traditional wet process.
- Hawaiian Coffee Professional Profiles: for the book, a handful of important people related to Hawaain coffee are profiled.
- Recipes: Several pages are dedicated to award-winning recipes that use Kona coffee. Recipes include main courses, desserts, and drinks. There is certainly even one which uses the porter brewed by Kona Brewing Company, that we was fortunate to visit during my 2004 day at Oahu.
- Organizations: Last month we learned all about the WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) into the article Coffee Internship on Kona Farm. This section covers that program and others.
- Certification: This part of the book passes through Fair Trade, shade-grown, Direct Trade and how those programs are increasingly being used in Hawaii.
This book was beautifully edited and it has plenty of great photos. The thing I missed on the first read was some information explaining the taste differences when considering the many growing regions across the islands.
Whenever I went back I noticed the varietal name was listed underneath the island profile and a varietal tasting chart listed at the conclusion of the chapter. An individual chart connecting the two could have been more clear.
Overall The Hawaii Coffee Book by Shawn Steiman was a great book that was able to pay for a lot of distinct coffee-related topics in an easy-to-read, colorful manner. Once I have some Kona coffee, I'll have a few recipes to try out.
