Harvest Begins: Inside Kona Coffee Harvest Season at Our Farm

The Land Wakes Up

Holualoa sits in the northern reach of the Kona Coffee Belt, a narrow ribbon of farms running along the western slope of the volcano. The soil here is young and rocky — broken-down lava, dark and mineral-rich, the kind of ground that drains fast and feeds deep. Our trees grow in dappled light beneath a canopy of mango and avocado, their broad leaves softening the midday sun.

The weather keeps its own appointments. Sunny mornings. Clouds that gather in the afternoon and bring a gentle, reliable rain. Coffee people call this the mauka rhythm — mauka meaning toward the mountain. It is the single greatest reason Kona coffee tastes the way it does, and it cannot be bought, copied, or rushed. It can only be stewarded.

That word matters to us. Aloha 'Āina — love of the land — is not a slogan here. It's the inheritance Cassandra Hazen accepted when she bought this property in 2005, and the kuleana, the responsibility, that her son David Duron carries forward today. Leave a place better than you found it. The harvest is where that promise meets the soil.

Color Is the Only Calendar

Most crops are gathered all at once. Coffee refuses to cooperate. On a single branch you'll find white blossoms, hard green cherries, blushing yellow ones, and a few that have gone fully, perfectly red — all at the same time. The fruit ripens on its own schedule, and the tree never finishes the job in one go.

So we don't pick a field. We pick a color.

Only the deep-red, fully ripe cherry comes off the branch. The green ones are left to keep ripening; the overripe ones are left behind. This is selective hand-picking, and it's the reason Kona coffee carries the reputation it does. There is no machine that can make this judgment. There is only a practiced eye and a careful hand, moving tree to tree.

Because the cherries ripen in waves, pickers return to the same trees again and again. A tree might be visited several times across the season, with roughly three to four weeks between passes, as the next round of fruit comes ripe. Across a full Kona harvest, that can mean many passes from late summer into the new year, with the peak of picking landing in the fall. Holualoa's upper-elevation groves tend to ripen later than farms lower down the slope, stretching the season toward the new year. The cherry decides when it's ready. We follow.

After the Picking: The Wet Process

A basket of red cherry is not coffee yet. It's fruit. Turning it into the green bean a roaster can work with happens fast — ideally the same day it's picked — through what's known as the wet process, the method Kona has long favored.

Pulping. First the cherries are floated to cull the light and underripe ones, then run through a pulper that strips away the bright outer skin and fruit. What's left is the seed — two beans per cherry — still wrapped in a sticky, sugary layer called mucilage.

Fermentation. Those beans rest in tanks of water, where natural fermentation gently loosens the mucilage from the parchment shell beneath. Depending on the weather, this takes somewhere between twelve and thirty-six hours. It's watched, not timed by a clock alone — too little and the beans stay slick, too long and the cup turns sharp.

Washing. When the mucilage has broken down, the beans are rinsed clean with fresh water. What emerges is coffee in parchment: pale, firm, and still carrying far too much moisture to keep.

Drying. Now patience takes over. The parchment coffee is spread thin on raised drying beds and on the lānai — the open deck — and turned by hand, day after day. Over roughly two to three weeks the beans give up their water until they hold around eleven and a half percent moisture: dry enough to be stable, gentle enough to preserve the flavor inside. Only then does the coffee rest in parchment, waiting for its final transformation.

The People Behind the Cup

A harvest is only as good as the hands that bring it in. David and the team work closely together — watching the weather, and keeping the estate's standards uncompromising. No blends, no shortcuts, only 100% Kona.

When the dried parchment is ready, it passes to our master roaster, Brian Axelrod, and his wife Amy, who provide what they call true tree-to-cup care: hulling the parchment away, grading the green beans, and roasting in small batches only when an order comes in. Brian puts it plainly:

"If I'm putting my name on it, I want it to be the highest quality it can be."

That's the whole philosophy in one sentence. It's why we roast to order rather than to inventory, and why your bag ships when it's ready — fresh, never sitting on a shelf.

A Sign on the Beach

Long before the first cherry reddens, there's the honu — the green sea turtle that became our brand's symbol. Cassandra saw one basking on the sand and took it as a sign she was meant to steward this land. In Hawaiian tradition the honu is an 'aumakua, an ancestral guardian, the navigator that links people, land, and sea.

It's a fitting emblem for harvest season. The honu doesn't hurry. It moves with the tide, returns to the same shores, and trusts the rhythm of the place. So do we.

The cherries are turning red on the mountain. The drying beds are ready on the lānai. Steeped in Tradition, rooted in the 'āina, the 2026 harvest has begun — and over the coming weeks, we'll carry it carefully from the tree to your cup.

Be brazen. Join the Kona ritual.

Bring It Home. Join the Fresh Brew Club to be among the first to receive the 2026 harvest — 100% Kona from our single estate, roasted to order and shipped the day it's ready.