Kona Coffee FAQs-Roasting, Sourcing, and Shipping
Find answers to common questions about our 100% Kona coffees, roasting schedule, shipping times, and sourcing practices.
Jamaica Blue Mountain Rume Sudan
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Tasting Notes
Not your parents Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee! A bright, silky cup. Rounded and understated with hints of lime zest, ginger, and caramel. The cup softly fades to milk chocolate in the finish.
Background
Gonzalo Hernandez likes to brag that he’s amassed the world’s largest private collection of coffees trees: more than two hundred species, botanical varieties, mutations and cultivars that grow on his exotic Costa Rican “coffee garden”, Coffea Diversa. His collection includes some of the rarest in the world -- coffees many have neither heard of nor tasted.
Of each variety Gonzalo has only a few trees, and his coffees are sold in small 10 kilogram bags to knowledgeable roasters and friends around the world, first come, first serve. We first visited Coffea Diversa and met Gonzalo 11 years ago, and we’ve been looking forward to sharing these ever since.
A few years ago he started a farm in Jamaica's Blue Mountains in partnership with the Sharp Family of Clifton Mount Estate, growing a selection of his best cupping varieties from the Costa Rica farm. This farm is finally starting to produce and Paradise is one of the first roasters in the world to have an opportunity to share these coffees. This year we purchased some of the Rume Sudan variety. Extremely limited, we featured this coffee for our March 2024 Rare Coffees Tour. We have just 20Lb left over to offer.
Rume Sudan
Coffea Arabica is native to the highlands of Southwest Ethiopia and the neighboring Boma Plateau In South Sudan. It was here that this variety was collected in 1942 by British officers from Kenya stationed in Ethiopia and Sudan during World War II. The Rume Sudan along with other varieties collected in southwest Ethiopia such as Dilla Algae and Dalle were brought back to Kenya and trialed there.
This variety showed resistance to Coffee Leaf Rust along with Coffee Berry Disease and good cup quality in Kenya and Tanzania. But poor yields. It has never been extensively commercialized for this reason, but has been important in coffee breeding.
The first of the varieties that Rume Sudan went into developing was the Riuri 11 hybrid in Kenya. Several of the Latest generation of F1 hybrids being planted have Rume Sudan as one of the parents. Such as H1 Centroamericano.
Rume Sudan was introduced to USDA and CATIE in Costa Rica at the same time as Geisha T.2722. USDA accession #205931. Coffea Diversa has been growing at their Costa Rica botanical garden for many years and it is one of the varieties they chose to plant at their new partner farms in Jamaica and Guatemala. Only in the past decade have commercial plantings of this variety started in limited scale. with a handful of farms around the world that currently have mature trees in production.
This variety first gained greater attention in the Specialty Coffee Industry when an example from Colombia was used to win the 2015 World Barista Championship.
What Is 100% Kona Coffee?
100% Kona coffee refers to coffee grown exclusively in the Kona district of Hawai‘i Island — a small, volcanic region
along the western slopes of Hualālai and Mauna Loa. The combination of mineral-rich soil, afternoon cloud cover, and gentle trade winds produces one of the world’s most distinctive coffee terroirs.
To be labeled “100% Kona Coffee,” every bean must be grown within the Kona district and meet strict Hawai‘i grading quality standards. Kona coffee can be made from different arabica varieties, but Kona Typica — a heirloom lineage — remains the region’s most common and traditional cultivar.
If you’d like to explore more Kona coffees, you can browse the full collection here: Browse the Kona Coffee Collection .
About Kona Coffee
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Kona coffee grows on the volcanic slopes of Hawai‘i Island, where mineral-rich soil, afternoon cloud cover, and slow cherry maturation create a naturally sweet and balanced cup. Our Kona Classic Medium is sourced from high-elevation farms and hand-harvested for clarity, smoothness, and elegant sweetness.
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Yes — this roast is Authentic Kona coffee made exclusively from North Kona district-grown coffees, never blended. Our Kona coffees comes from small farms at the highest altitudes in the region.
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Medium roasts highlight Kona’s signature profile: gentle sweetness, soft citrus, toasted almond, and milk chocolate. The result is a balanced, approachable cup ideal for everyday brewing.
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This coffee shines in pour-over, drip, and French press. Use filtered water just off the boil and a medium grind for maximum clarity and sweetness. If you are looking for a Hawaiian coffee for espresso use we recommend our Hawai‘i Island Blend
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Kona is the highest labor cost coffee region in the world. Wages for farm workers here are 15-20x higher than almost all other coffee producing countries. Limited and expensive land, hand-picking, and high production costs create a naturally small supply each year — especially from high-elevation farms like those we partner with.
Company & Facility
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We roast and fulfill all of our coffee orders in Hilo, Hawai'i.
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We roast in small batches using a Diedrich IR12 roasting machine.
Satisfaction Guaranteed
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We source an array of the top specialty coffees worldwide that appeal to an array of different palates.
If at any point you have difficulty brewing, or just appreciating one of our roasted coffees, no problem. Shoot us an email within 5 days of receiving your coffee and we'll help you find the correct brew settings for your coffee, or give you a credit (minus actual shipping costs) on your next purchase. Yep, we're a Satisfaction Guarantee coffee company!
Please note, our Satisfaction Guarantee only applies to U.S. orders of roasted coffees, and you must contact us within 5 days of receiving the coffees. Credits do not include actual shipping fees, which may be different from posted shipping fees.
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We roast and ship on Monday/Wednesday/Friday.
Coffees
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Our commitment to you is to serve exceptional, fresh-roasted coffees. And part of being exceptional means roasting before the flavors inherent in the green bean begin to fade, which happens over time.
Like apples and pumpkins, coffee is a seasonal agricultural product and each country has a different harvesting cycle in which coffees are at their peak. If we were to insist on serving a single origin all year long, the flavors in that coffee would be noticeably better one half of the year over the other. So the reason you no longer see that coffee you loved is because the optimal season has passed. For more on seasonality in coffees, see this blog post here.
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Hopefully so. If it was a popular product or we receive customer requests, we will make every attempt to bring it back. However, please note that coffees from a certain producer may not taste the same year after year.
If you loved a coffee and no longer see it listed, shoot us an email and ask us what is similar. We’d be happy to provide a personal recommendation.
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We aim for balance and completeness along with differentiation and distinction. You shouldn't need to be a professional coffee taster to tell the coffees a part, so, when we’re selecting coffees, we want them to be distinct from each other.
We avoid ”one-trick pony” type coffees, such as Ethiopians with great aroma but no body or acidity, or coffees with good aroma and acidity but lacking sweetness. These elements, which are often reflections of the growing conditions, are harmonized through good roasting.
And, obviously, defects — even subtle defects — influence our selection. Since we live and work at origin, we’re sensitive to coffee defects like “past crop”, pulpy, and naturals that border on over-ferment. With naturals, we’ll only carry these when great examples are available.
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Our perspective on roasting is similar: we seek balance and distinction. To expect that a coffee is “best” when roasted to some pre-determined degree (i.e. only light roasting or only dark roasting) is analogous to thinking that each person would look best in the same outfit, or each coffee should be grown in the same way. We believe it’s our job to discover the roast degree which best highlights outstanding qualities in each coffee.
