International Jury Cupping Score
87.23
Region
Ka‘ū District,Big Island
Altitude
2,000 feetabove sea level
Estimated Lot Size
40 pounds
Winning Bidder:
Farm History
Leo Norberte is one of the original coffee growers in the Ka‘ū region of Hawai‘i Island. Born in the Philippines, Noberte began working for the C. Brewer Sugar Plantation in Pahala as a young man. When the sugar plantations shut their doors in 1996, C. Brewer offered former employees land leases to try growing coffee on the former sugar cane fields.
Noberte was among the first who tried their hands at coffee farming, taking on 10 acres in the Clouds Rest area just west of the town of Pāhala. 27 years later, Noberte’s JN Coffee Farms span 50 acres on different plots near Pāhala.
Anaerobic Natural Red Bourbon
Red Bourbon has long produced excellent cups in Ka‘ū and Kona, exhibiting more acidity, a fuller mouthfeel and more complex cup than the commonly grown Typica variety. While the vast majority of his land is dedicated to the Typica variety, we were thrilled to learn that JN Farms planted a small plot of Red Bourbon at 1900 feet elevation. 2021 was the first harvest of these trees.
This lot was processed by Miguel Meza and Ralph Gaston of ISLA Custom coffees. First the cherries were sorted with a WECO optical cherry sorting machine to remove green and brown cherries. Then the cherries were inoculated with a Lactic acid producing strain of Yeast (Lanchancea Thermotolerans) The Cherries are fermented in anaerobic conditions for 6 days and then dried as whole cherries on screens in a dehumidified drying room.