Once you're hooked on coffee grown in Hawaii, it's hard to live without it. There are residents who never leave the islands without a bag or two tucked in their luggage. The aroma, when it escapes from the bag whatever your destination, is as much the scent of the islands as the salty smell of the ocean or the sweet fragrance of ginger.
There is not a lot of coffee grown on Maui. But if you watch for the label MauiGrown Coffee Company, you can be sure you've got the real thing. MauiGrown Coffee comes from a 500-acre estate near Lahaina in the West Maui Mountains. Its trees yield several varieties of Arabica coffee.
Try a cup of MauiGrown at its Company Store in Lahaina, near the Lahaina Smokestack. Both green and roasted coffee are available.
Grandma's Coffee House in Kula is another good stop for island-grown coffee. The Coffee House serves organic coffee grown on the slopes of Haleakala. Grandma's grows, harvests, processes and roasts its own coffee in a more than century-old roaster located in the coffee house. Coffee also is available by the pound.
Most of the coffee you'll find in Hawaii will contain at least some percentage of Kona coffee. Grown on the Big Island, Kona coffee is made from some of the finest beans in the world. A bag of 100 percent Kona is expensive, blends less so.
Bad Ass Coffee Company, with five locations on Maui, serves gourmet coffee by the cup, espresso drinks and related food and beverage products. The store's name is derived from the early days of coffee growing on the Big Island when the bellows of the donkeys could be heard echoing through the mountains as they hauled the heavy loads of coffee up and down the mountainside.
Coffee is a good choice when you're looking for something to take home from the islands. It stuffs well into corners of already over-stuffed bags, it doesn't break or spill, and will pass the mandatory agriculture check at Hawaii airports. Best of all, when you open a bag at home, you'll get a whiff and a taste of Hawaii.
