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At Carta Coffee, we believe that our passion for farming helps craft our supremely delicious coffee. We harvest our beans on a beautiful farm in the Kealakua district of Kona, in Hawaii.
We wanted to share with you some details about where exactly our coffee comes from, what grounds we broke at the farm in 2016, and what’s in store for the future of Nolyssa Farm.
History of Nolyssa Farm
In 2015, Carta Coffee founder Scott Burr purchased a six acre plot of land in Kona, Hawaii, one of the greatest coffee-growing regions in the world. Burr was a third-generation wine-maker who used to travel the world helping wineries perfect their wine. This time, however, he wanted to get back to his farming roots and delve into the coffee-growing business.
After rebuilding the land bit by bit, the farming and harvesting began.
Before Planting After Planting (1 year later)
Influenced by his wine-making background, Burr wanted his coffee consumers to have the same tasting experience as they did when tasting wine. As Burr tells it, he wanted to make coffee that would get people’s eyes to light up when they tasted it. To get the natural flavor profiles he was looking for, he decided to implement two different methods in the drying process - the traditional wet method and the more natural dry method.
The wet method involves a machine known as a coffee pulper. Once the coffee cherries are hand-picked from the branches, they are then put through the pulper. The pulper removes the outer cherry skin, washes them, and separates the unripe or “bad” beans. After they’re washed, the beans go through fermentation (to take out the sugar), and are then placed on wooden drying decks. This drying process typically takes about a week before they are stored and then roasted. The flavor profile for this method results in a clean, citrus expression.
The second method Burr used was the natural dry method, which excludes the use of any mechanical processing. After being picked off the branches, the coffee cherries are placed directly in the wooden drying sheds, where they take about three weeks to dry - from the outside through the inside. This method produces a nutty, chocolatey expression.
Once the flavor profiles were perfected, Nolyssa Farm was officially born.
Nolyssa Farm in 2016
2016 held a lot of notable moments for the Nolyssa Farm. In addition to selling the first harvest, Burr went to events like the Sunset Celebration Weekend and the Gihardelli Chocolate Festival where he received wonderful feedback on the coffee he was growing.
He also invited people to visit the farm and took them on tours of the grounds. Using his prior experience from the wine industry, he came up with the idea to hold coffee tastings, where visitors could sample his various expressions of coffee. He managed to pull off quite a few successful coffee tastings - visitors compared it to a wine tasting experience and said they didn’t know that there could be such great flavors in coffee.
Another major event on the farm included the live broadcast of a radio show. An iheartradio show called The Connected Table came to Nolyssa and broadcasted live, right from the farm, as they tasted coffee samples. They interviewed Burr on the air about why 100% Kona coffee is among the most prized coffee in the world, how Burr got started in the coffee business, and why their listeners should buy it.
Burr is excited about the future of Nolyssa Farm, and he has big plans. He wants to host more tastings and construct a tasting area on the farm, as well as attend more events across the country.
Interesting in trying our delicious, high-quality 100% Kona coffee? You can buy the highest quality Kona coffee beans directly from Carta Coffee’s Nolyssa farm here.
