It’s coffee harvesting season in Kona country, from November 4 – 13 is Kona Coffee Cultural Festival week. Usually we are very busy at this time, picking coffee every day ourselves. But not this year, our coffee is ripening very slowly, and we haven’t gotten a big round yet. Well, it turned out to be the best opportunity to attend coffee festival event.

Yesterday was cupping competition – preliminary round, from 9:00am to 2:00am, we went in the this morning. We didn’t enter our coffee this year, we just going to have some fun. We went there with our friend Tom, Trudie and her son Orion. Before we met our friends Jack and Sara, we were a pretty good size group to taste the coffee sample and exchange opinions.

Terry saw the calender which our friend made to promote estate Kona coffee. She used photos of male coffee farmers as there already is one with only women.Terry is the August farmer.

I imagined there would be lot of people inside the cupping room, but there were few people; it was around 10:00 am, we were not really too early. We were there and got to try some coffee samples. OK, here is how coffee tasting went with me.

There were only three farms sample on the table. I poured some coffee from the middle thermos, inhaled the steam from the cup, captured some coffee aroma but not very strong, bitter then sour, the more I drank the stronger the acidic became.

Coffee from left side thermos, a very strong cooked sweet potato smell, first I thought that I like sweet potato, so smell like sweet potato is OK with me. Next second I thought, well, when anyone drinks coffee, they might prefer coffee aroma than sweet potato aroma. Detected acidic right away, and get stronger.

Coffee on the right side, no coffee aroma, acidic was stronger than second one.

Later, another sample came, fresh brewed coffee, captured some coffee aroma, taste mild. Mean while, We sat around a table chatting, coffee cool down in the cup. Tried again, it hardly had any taste, even acidic.

Between those tasting time, I took some pictures and watched judges cupping some coffee. It’s a very interesting scene and I wish I had more knowledge about cupping.

I noticed they’d been tasting from the same coffees for a while, longer than I expected. One judge was a young lady, she always gave a friendly smile to people. With a few questions, I learned something from her. Tasting fresh brewed coffee to identify good quality; tasting again when the coffee temperature come down, at this stage, some good quality disappear, some bad quality show up. Be a good coffee, good quality should remain without adding bad quality.

Hooray! I learned something today. As a coffee farmer, except trying our best to take care the farm, I’m going to learn more about tasting. And I will love to share my learning experience with everyone.

Tom treated us lunch at Huggos’ on the rock, wonderful meal and happy group. It was a satisfied morning, we didn’t know something was waiting for us, kept us busy.

On the way home, a friend need some help to take care of some fish , about 25lb of fish steak needed to be dried or smoked, his dryer broke down so Trudie and I will care of this fish.

Trudie Burnham is Terry’s long time friend, she has lived in New Zealand over 25 years. She is visiting and staying with us for few days. She is a great cook, published 2 cooking books. << Innovative Soy Cooking>>, and <<Secrets of a Sauce Queen>>. With Trudie in the house, I feel very confident to take care this big pile of fish.

I cut up fish, Trudie made sauce, we made 4 batches with different recipes. It took us 1 hour to do the work. We are going to smoke them tomorrow, well, actually it’s first time for both of us to make smoke fish.

Our fishing man friend recommended that hang the fish in the air for a couple hours before smoke them, so outside of the fish will dry a little bit and firm. I took his words, suggested to hang the fish stripes on laundry line over night. Cool breath from mountain will dry the fish a little bit, and no flies at night. But how to hang them, there are hundred pieces of fish.

When things come up to you and you never did before, you just have to deal it with your own way. If it works, then it’s good way for you. Here is my way to solve this present problem.

I used a chopstick, poked a hole at one end of fish, pushed through a cotton string ( we use the string to tie coffee bag ); then Trudie tied them on laundry line. After tied few pieces, she suggested we tie the fish strip on our wooden hanger, it will save us lot of trouble to move it into smoke box. Good idea!

She said, this was the craziest thing she had ever done in 6 months.

This is my first time doing it too, I will remember this for ever. There are many first times in our life, give it a try, we might find some surprises. Who knows, from this first time, I might learned a good recipe for smoke fish. Ha ha ha!

What a day!