The Other Coffee Districts — Kauaʻi, Maui, Molokaʻi and Oʻahu

Coffee is a post-contact crop in Hawaiʻi, and it was planted in the nineteenth century on more than one island, not only on the Big Island slopes of Kona and Kaʻū. Kauaʻi, Maui, Molokaʻi and Oʻahu each took the tree into their own soils, and each holds a district of its own. The names Kona coffee and Kaʻū coffee are protected under Hawaiʻi's origin-labelling law; coffee from these other districts carries the name of its island and its place, and is sold under that name alone.

The tree is arabica coffee, Coffea arabica, grown as an understorey or orchard crop and picked as red cherry by hand in successive passes. The cherry is pulped, fermented and dried as parchment, then milled to green bean before roasting. Each island gives a different cup: the leeward and upland slopes of Maui, the dry western plains of Kauaʻi, the central uplands of Molokaʻi and the windward and Waialua country of Oʻahu differ in elevation, rainfall and soil, and the cup follows them. The bean is sold as green, as roasted whole bean, or ground, and is labelled by island and district.

The coffee of these islands is drunk black or with milk at breakfast and beside sweet pastry, such as the manju and sweet bread of the plantation bakeries. Sweetness and fat soften the roast's bitterness and acid, which is the structural reason the cup suits a bakery table. A lighter roast keeps the fruit and acidity of the mountain bean and asks for little beside it.