Kona at Home: How to Store This Year’s Winning Kona Blend

As every coffee drinker knows, maintaining the freshness of beans or grounds is essential. People are always sharing with me their methods for storing coffee, and I am often asked for my recommendations for storing coffee. And I always give the same advice: it is necessary to maintain optimal temperature and air conditions.

As any coffee drinker can tell you, there is nothing worse than the taste of coffee brewed from stale beans or grounds. In our tasting setting in Gävle, David and I are very careful to maintain an agreeable temperature. Even though beans are hard to the touch, they are as sensitive in their response to adverse temperature conditions as a painting or an instrument. So, we must always keep coffee at temperatures that ensure the best aroma, color and taste.

As I have shared previously, the ideal temperature for cupping is 62-65°C (144-149°F), and we strictly adhere to this guideline every day at Gevalia, since we know that doing otherwise would impact our taste experience. When it comes to storing coffee, temperature also remains paramount. It is my recommendation that coffee be stored at 8°C (46°F). This is on the colder side for a refrigerator, but, in my experience, this storage temperature guarantees optimal results for bean color and aroma as well as the perfect brewed cup down the road.

The other important factor to consider while storing is air. As with fruits, which become overripe when left to out of refrigeration for too long, or breads, which harden with too much exposure to the air, coffee can also be adversely affected by air. As such, I recommend storing coffee beans and grounds in an airtight container to maintain freshness and guarantee later enjoyment. If temperature and airtight conditions are met, one will be guaranteed a lovely cup of brewed coffee when the time is right.

If you follow these guidelines, you will always have a fresh cup of coffee, no matter how long your beans or grounds have been in refrigeration. Combined with a tight seal, you are guaranteed success – no matter what the bean or the blend.

Cupping Kona: the Subtleties Involved in Cupping Different Beans

This will be my ninth year serving on the judging panel at the Kona Coffee Cupping Competition in Kona, Hawaii. Although I cup coffee every day in Sweden for Gevalia, the cupping experience at Kona is truly unique.

While I employ a consistent method to tasting all blends and beans, the charged atmosphere of the Kona Competition requires that a particular and undivided attention be given in a very intense and exciting situation. In Sweden, David and I cup between 250 and 300 cups of coffee daily, but the challenge of choosing the winning bean at Kona requires two intense days of four judges each cupping over 600 cups per day. If this year is as successful as last year for the Kona growers and the crop produced, I anticipate that more than 70 farms will enter their coffee into the competition.

David and I often discuss how important it is to cup in the same manner from day to day. There is, of course, a science that we follow closely. But as the number of cups I work with doubles for two days at Kona, I will need to rely on things beyond the science of cupping, and trust that decades of honing my senses of smell and taste will serve me well. And, of course, I will be carrying my lucky cupping spoon with me. I never cup coffee without it.

My Sense of Responsibility to Millions of Coffee Drinkers: the Kona Coffee Cupping Competition

At Kona, it is always very exciting to cup the world’s most exclusive coffee bean. Kona coffee grows only on the volcanic slopes of the Kona region in Hawaii, which certainly limits the acreage on which coffee can be grown.

In my travels, there is one constant theme: people always share stories about their favorite cup of coffee. While each story is unique, the storytellers share a devotion to coffee. And for Kona drinkers, the amount of coffee grown per year is limited, and it is essential that only the best beans be offered to customers. So, for everyone whose favorite cup of coffee is Kona, the Kona Coffee Cupping Competition is of utmost importance. Indeed, while I am at Kona, I know that cupping the year’s coffee harvest is pivotal for the drinkers of the year’s Kona offering.

My goal at Kona is to choose the Kona bean that will mean every Kona drinker enjoys his or her cup of coffee to the utmost. The responsibility to Kona drinkers is always on my mind when I am in Hawaii, and I hope that when you enjoy your cup of Kona coffee, you will remember that your favorite cup of coffee has been selected with care.

Importance of the Competition and the Significance of the Winning Bean

In the Kona region of Hawaii’s Big Island, there is no greater honor for a farm than to be named as producer of the winning bean at the Gevalia Kona Coffee Cupping Competition. Last year, more than 70 farms competed by submitting their Kona coffee samples within the competition’s rules for consideration. Over the two-and-a-half days I spent working with my fellow judges in cupping over 600 cups of submitted Kona coffee, I was struck by how much competing farms were enjoying the camaraderie of their special coffee community and how the annual Kona Festival speaks to the underlying enthusiasm the local growers hold for the Kona region, soil and coffee – and for their colleagues in the Kona region.

In my time spent on the slopes of Mount Hualalau and Mauna Loa in the Kona Districts, I have visited enormous coffee farms covering acres and acres, and have visited some farms that grow coffee only on an acre or two. But regardless of the total acreage of coffee crop produced by a particular farm, all entrants are equal at the Kona Coffee Cupping Competition. Each coffee farm submits a 50-pound sample of its Kona crop, from which five pounds are entered into the competition. The Kona Coffee Cupping Competition is a blind tasting, and as such, each five-pound sample of beans is assigned a number.

Once the field has been narrowed to 15 competitors, new numbers are assigned. This way, we judges are even more aware of maintaining an acute palate and can approach each cupping with a “blind tongue,” if you will. In addition to cupping each sample, we also examine the green and roasted beans of each submission to evaluate the properties of the beans. The beans are given marks in six categories: fragrance, aroma, taste, nose, aftertaste and body. The sample given the highest score becomes the winning bean – and the acreage of the submitting farm is never taken into consideration.

The equality amongst competitors from the outset of the Gevalia Kona Cupping Competition is what makes the competition such an integral part of the Kona crop every year. Gevalia relies on the Kona beans selected by the cupping panel to produce its Gevalia Kona Select Varietal coffee. When I am home in Gävle, cupping our Kona coffee, I am proud that it has come from a region so rich in coffee quality and worthy competitors.