Navarro Coffee Farm is located in the remote and peaceful Moa’ula Cloud Rest Area that lies on the eastern slopes of Mauna Loa, one of the largest active volcanoes on earth. It is part of the Ka'u region of Big Island, with the farm situated at an elevation of 2,100 feet.

In 1995 Nette’s grandfather was one of the first farmers to plant coffee in the Ka’u region. With the closure of the Ka’u sugar mill farmers were given land and encouraged to grow coffee which was picked and then driven to Kona to be processed and sold. By 2010-12 the farmers in Ka’u were starting to get recognized for the quality of coffee they were producing. The biggest buyer at the time was Starbucks who set protocols for the washed processing of the coffee and all the farmers in the area processed their coffee all the same in this protocol. When it was time for Nette’s grandfather to retire Delvin, Nette’s Husband, who had spent his life around agriculture and learnt how to farm coffee at the Olson Trust stepped up to manage the 20 acre farm. Delvin who was newer to coffee farming and not tied down by protocols and traditions started to experiment with some alternative coffee processing. In 2020 Delvin submitted a naturally processed coffee from the end of the season into a cupping review and blew the judges away. This was the affirmation he needed to throw away the rule book and start pushing boundaries on what coffee from Ka’u can be.

What is Traditional Washed?

The washed method is a traditional way coffee has been processed in Ka’ū. Like with anything in agriculture or culinary the attention to detail you give each process has a massive impact on the quality of the product. Delvin’s team of pickers, mostly close family, take pride in only picking perfectly ripe cherries from his typica and caturra trees. Once back at the mill he washes and floats all the cherries to remove any foreign objects and damaged seeds. He then depulps them into tanks with fresh water sorting out any defects again then leaving them to ferment for 24hrs before washing away the mucilage layer. They are then dried on screen beds for 2 weeks in the sun before being milled to order and double optically sorted before shipment to us.

Producers Name: Delvin & Shawnette Navarro

Farm Name: Navarro Coffee Farm / Hawaiian Monarch

Location: Moa’ula Cloud Rest Area, Ka’u, Hawaii Island

Harvest: Hand picked Fall 2023

Altitude: 2100ft

Variety: typica & caturra

Process: Traditional Washed

Drying Method: dried on raised beds

This is a relationship coffee from our friends at Navarro Coffee Farm . Third year working together we purchased 150lb at $23 per pound.