We are a small coffee farm in one of the most ideal coffee-growing areas of the world: Kona, Hawaii. The name Poseur was chosen because we sort of stumbled into the coffee world when we bought a home on small acreage with what we thought was a relatively small number of coffee trees. Ten months later we were asking ourselves, “How did we miss the fact that we were buying a coffee farm? This is a lot of work!” Five years and countless hours of reading, experimenting, and toil later, we  are happily immersed in the world of coffee from farming to French press – and ready to make our coffee available to coffee lovers around the world. While we prefer to think of ourselves as eager learners, friends tell us that our passion is showing.  We currently produce enough coffee to drink, give as gifts to friends and family, and sell a couple hundred pounds a year. We are truly an estate coffee in that all of our coffee is grown and processed on our farm.

We think of ourselves first and foremost as farmers, producing the best coffee beans we can – you cannot make great coffee without great beans. For us, that starts with healthy soil. We are firm believers in the old adage that “the best fertilizer is the footsteps of the farmer”. We have worked diligently to improve the tilth and microbial health of our soil. We use no herbicides or pesticides in our orchard. This focus on soil health and pruning practices has increasingly produced abundant crops of large, ripe coffee fruit called “cherry”. 

While growing great beans is essential to great coffee, there are many other crucial steps to get that quality to your cup. We do everything ourselves: beyond managing the orchard, we help pick the cherry and conduct all processing of the coffee through drying on site. Because we can be hands on at this scale, every step in the is process carefully managed to produce a consist quality cup of coffee. But more about all of that later – look for future blog posts.

We invite you to explore our website to learn more about coffee and all that goes into producing our rich, smooth cup of coffee, and, of course, to buy a bag or two to enjoy for yourself.

First, we have deep, well-drained volcanic soil. Second, we receive 40-70 inches of rain a year at the right time of the coffee tree cycle. Coffee likes lots of rain during the fruiting season, which is from April thru September, exactly corresponding to our rainy months. The cooler, dry winter months are perfect for ripening the coffee, completing the harvest, pruning the trees, and blooming of the coffee flowers for the next crop.

The third important characteristic of this area that is critical to great coffee is that at 1850’ elevation we have sunny mornings, cloudy afternoons, and cool nights. The best coffee beans form and ripen slowly, developing greater density for better flavor and bean quality. Coffee evolved as an under-story plant and does best with warm but not hot weather and not too much direct sunlight. And, of course, Hawaii provides plenty of warm weather year-round with no risk of frost or freezing.

We use the wet-processing method, which means we take the pulp, or skins, off of the coffee before drying. The slippery coating on the outside of the beans is removed by fermenting overnight, leaving the beans in a translucent shell called the parchment. Because the coating (‘mucilage’) is sugar-based and quite sweet, we under-ferment the beans to leave a little of this sweetness to influence the flavor of the beans.

After fermentation, the parchment has to be dried. We air/sun dry our coffee for one week on screened racks, stirring them occasionally to prevent any chance of spoilage. To achieve the 10-12% moisture content necessary to retain quality during storage, we complete the drying process in food-grade dryers that can maintain temperatures around 100-105 degrees.

After drying the beans, we store them in the parchment in burlap bags in a climate-controlled room. The parchment protects the beans from losing or gaining moisture and from picking up odors or tastes, which green coffee beans will do readily. The beans can be stored 2-3 years in the parchment and actually mellow when stored this way.

The standard in the coffee industry is to hull the beans (remove the parchment) and ship green beans which are more susceptible to loss of quality than in the parchment. At Poseur we have our parchment hulled in batches through-out the year to minimize storage of green beans prior to roasting. All of the coffee we sell has been aged for at least 10-12 months in the parchment. The most common comment we get about our coffee is that it is very ‘smooth’.