 the State of Clean Energy. I'm your host, Mitch Ewan. Our underwriter is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, which is a program of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. I'm very pleased to welcome our guest and my very good friend, Dave Donald, who is the founder of Hawaiian Blue Volcanic Coffee. Today, Dave's going to talk to us about a specialty coffee adventure at Hall Farms in Waimea on the island of Hawaii. Dave, welcome to the show. Why coffee and why Waimea? How did you get started? Well, Aloha. Thanks, Mitch, for having me on your show. Appreciate it. Why Waimea? Well, I moved to Waimea, so that's where I was living and where I was living. It was a small little plant, two feet tall, and I wasn't sure what it was because I wasn't that familiar with coffee at the time. It was back in 2016, and I asked someone about the plant, and they said, yeah, that's coffee. And I said, how long has it been growing there? And they said, oh, about 25 years. And I said, well, isn't it kind of small? And they said, yeah, well, coffee doesn't seem to grow well in Waimea. And that just challenged me. And six months later, I managed to get it up to around six feet and the flowering and the fruiting for the first time in 25 years took off from there. Pretty awesome. So let's look at the first slide. And this is your awesome logo. I love it. Talk to us about that. Essentially, coffee flowers. So really, you know, Waimea is a bit of a desert. It's considered a desert yet you were able to grow coffee trees there. Tell us about that. So there's a wet side and a dry side to Waimea. And on the dry side, there's some farm lots called La La Mido farm lots right next door to Parker Ranch headquarters. And it's definitely considered desert because it rains less than 10 inches a year. That's the standard. And we got about eight inches rain a year. But La La Mido farm lots has a well established irrigation system designed for the farm lots back in the 1950s. And so with that, there are many successful farms here growing various sorts of leafy green vegetables, some flower farms, tomatoes, things like that. And I was just given the opportunity to take some of the seeds from the mother tree and plant them on the farm. And they took off and they're growing really well here. So if you look at pull up slide three, this is what Waimea is supposed to look like. Horses, trees and beautiful hills. But I don't see any coffee trees there. They're close by. They're not in that shot. But I think you've got some other shots of the coffee trees. I do. So you pulled off a miracle basically. Nobody thought you could ever do that. Coffee just doesn't grow in Waimea, right? That's what folks said. I mean, it does grow on the wet side of Waimea. But on the dry side, you won't see any. Okay. So one of your differentiators that I understand it is like you're getting into green energy and your whole value chain is going to be based on renewable energy. So let's have that next slide. Slide four. And that looks like a pretty impressive system, space age. So Paul's farm, Howard, who you've had on a previous show, he's set up a very substantial solar array on top of his 100 foot long barn. And he's got those blue eye on battery racks storing all the energy that he's manufacturing with panels. And that's what's powering the entire farm, including the container that I'm in, which is the coffee lab you'll see in a few minutes. And so there's no utility poles on this property on this farm. Everything is coming from the sun. And he's got some intention of installing a hydrogen electrolyzer production facility and fueling station in the near future. But in the meantime, what we're really interested in, we're interested in trying to understand how coffee grows and how we can grow the highest quality coffee. And so in order to do that, we're looking at different methods of farming, regenerative agriculture, and ways that we can produce with a carbon neutral result, or even a carbon negative result. So that goes back to all the energy that we use, and it goes to the style of farming that we practice. And even with the hydrogen, we'll be using that eventually to roast coffee instead of using natural gas or propane. So going that way in the route you're going, that helps keep any kind of contaminants and things that could affect the taste of the coffee out of the system. Do you like to comment on that, Dave? Yeah, well, coffee is a complex drink, more complex than I ever realized. And they say in wine, there's maybe a thousand different flavor descriptors. In coffee, apparently, there's as many as 10,000. And so we're researching right now the health of the soil and the health of the plants and how the plant's proximity to other plants and other trees affects the flavor of the coffee. And so there's a few good films available to watch on the intelligence of trees and how they interact, and on the mycorrhizae in the earth, and how there's... It's interesting, we have the World Wide Web, they call it the Wood Wide Web. It's a layer of mycorrhizae that is just millimeters underneath the surface of the earth. And it carries the communication between all trees and plants. And so we're researching that. And we're doing experiments right now. We have the ability to harvest from a particular tree and process it all the way to roasted coffee and compare that to the flavor of the next tree or the next tree or the next tree. And so we're refining our research and we're developing the best flavor profile that we feel is desirable. Let's have the next slide up. I want to show Dave's toy for the boy. There it is, guys. An electric tractor and no exhaust fumes. Talk about your new tractor, Dave. I know it hasn't arrived yet, but... Well, we're looking forward to this. There's one on Oahu already, and we'll have the first one on Hawaii Island. And yeah, it's it again, you know, we'll be able to charge it from power created by the Sun. And it charges fully in four hours and then gives you eight hour run time. And what I like about it is that I won't have to wear these guys while driving it. And I won't have to breathe in diesel fumes. And it's just a nice clean... And in any kind of operation you want to use with a tractor, we don't till the land. We're a no-till operation because it's an orchard. But there are different things that we have to do. And occasionally we have to spray. And we spray USDA organic chemicals like insecticidal soap or something, or neem oil in particular. That's one of our favorites. And so the machinery that applies that onto the trees typically is operated by a gas powered motor. In this case, it'll be PTO driven right off an electric tractor. So again, carbon neutral. And because we're not tilling the land, we're creating a carbon sink with the land and the trees. So eventually we will be carbon negative. And you're not drowning the trees in diesel exhaust either or oil or all the other things that are stewed up by a fossil fuel engine. Exactly. And we don't have that cost. We don't have that cost to buy fuel. Right, exactly. So let's go on to the next slide because nobody knew it actually snowed in Waimea. When the flowers blossom in Kona, they call it Kona snow. And so now that we have a coffee farm in Waimea, we call it Waimea snow. There you go. Great. Next slide. So standing guard over all of this is... We have some spectacular views. We're debatable whether we're on the slopes of Kohala Mountains or Mount Akaya because we're right sort of in between. But we have this spectacular view of the top of Mount Akaya when it snow caps. And I think that shot shows the flowers blossoming and the snow on top of Mount Akaya. So looking to the future, next slide, you have a pretty aggressive seedling program for new trees. So tell us a little bit about some of the challenges and what your plans are there, Dave. Currently we have around 3,000 seedlings that are getting ready to plant. And interestingly, there's two issues that coffee farmers in the state are up against right now. One is CBB, coffee berry borer, a little beetle, an insect. And the other is CLR, coffee leaf rust, which I believe is a fungus. And so these are prevalent on all islands and on a lot of farms. They're pretty devastating. Because we're so isolated here, we knock on wood, don't have any of those issues right now. But we do have more sort of traditional or more familiar insects like mealybutt or greenscale. And so typically we'll use neem oil, and which is a really effective organic product to use to treat them. So we're developing these seedlings using neem cake and neem oil treatments to get them as healthy as possible before we plant them. Okay, so let's have a look at Dave's fantastic lab. Next slide, there you go. Dave, this is beautiful. So tell us about your lab. Well, we have a wet mill outside where we process, and inside we're setting up a dry mill. We have some machinery. There's probably a shot there about a green bean sorter. It's a computer driven artificial intelligence green bean sorter. And we have some ability to dry and isolate the trees, as I said earlier. But once all of that's done, we want to drink the coffee. So we need a lab where we can haul a small amount of the parchment and roast a small amount and cup it. And so we do that in this lab, and we have a little cupping line outside. You'll see. Okay, hang on. Tell us about cupping. This sounds like some millennial kind of a thing. No, it's the process of identifying and, you know, desirable flavor descriptors and scoring. And so, you know, we're in the fourth wave of coffee. The first wave began 100 years ago and was essentially World War II, where they just mass produced coffee and they shipped it out to the troops to keep them away. And then the wave two was in the 60s when you started to see coffee shops and a few coffee shops started to become their own roasters. And then wave three and now wave four is this specialty coffee level. So just like in the wine industry, you can buy a $10 bottle of wine or a $10,000 bottle of wine. In the coffee industry, you can buy a cup of coffee for a few dollars or you can buy a cup of coffee for $100. And so there's a specialty coffee association and they've established a scoring system and they've established courses to train people to cup coffee where they're called sensory experts and cue graders. And they look at the coffee and they taste it and they smell it and it's a whole process. There's a lot of loud noises and a lot of slurping and sipping and spitting and they score the coffee. But you have farms like the Lamastice farm down in Boquette Panama who's selling his green bean for $1,200 a pound. Well, that opens up a whole new... Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Well, no, you go ahead. I was leaving. Yeah, okay. So that opens up the the idea of high value agricultural products. So why don't you tell us about your thoughts on that, Dave? Right. So farming in general is endangered. A lot of the farmers are retiring across the country and in Hawaii and their sons and daughters are not up to follow them because it's hard work and unless the crop is an extremely valuable one, there's not a lot of return. And often farms are sold off as subdivisions and unfortunate because it's valuable land because it's high in nutrition to grow. So we're sort of rethinking the whole industry and something called high value agricultural product or HVAP is the acronym is what is attractive to some folks and certainly myself because we've been scored as a specialty coffee and we're selling our coffee for a high price and we're working hard to push the score higher and higher and higher to get a greater price over the seasons. So there's other high value agricultural products. You know, one that comes to mind is wasabi for instance. That's an HVAP. So there's a number of them and so that's it's the wave of the future and how do you do this profitably. One of the ways is by pursuing a sort of a carbon neutral way of farming using solar, hydrogen, etc. You know, to produce your crop. You're producing the purity of your product has a great influence on how it tastes and how it's valued by people that are buying it. So next slide. Let's have another view of your lab looking. I love your shiny floors, Dave. I can eat off that floor. It's just epoxy. Okay, so next slide. So the lab huller, you know, this is a mini version. A large machine would be able to do hundreds and hundreds of pounds of parchment taking the husk off the parchment per hour. But this is just a very small hulling machine that's designed for lab and it does, you know, like half a pound and takes a couple of minutes. And that's what I was talking about earlier. The purpose of the lab is to, you know, prepare coffee from samples and see, you know, taste how this tree compares to that tree or this grove compares to that grove or this month compares to that month's harvest. So we're doing all kinds of tests. Let's flash up the lab roaster because that's a companion piece. Yeah, again, just a mini, mini roaster. Roasters are designed for specific quantities. So big roasters are usually five to 30 pounds. But if we're all we're roasting is a quarter pound or a half pound, we need a small machine like this. Okay. So let's have a look at what a cherry looks like. And what is a cherry anyway, Dave? You know, coffee, it's interesting, coffee is related to the gardenia family or gardenias are related to the coffee family. I'm not sure which way it goes, but anyhow, they produce this very beautiful and fragrant white flower that lasts only around 24 hours. And the flower falls off and then gradually over time, you start to see a green berry that starts to form. And as it grows and matures, it starts to turn color. It goes through various stages of yellow and orange, then finally red. And when it is ripe to pick, the color will be quite a deep red, very much like a cherry. And when you see a tree covered in ripe coffee cherries, hence the name cherries, and then you pick them when they're that beautiful deep burgundy red. Sounds good. So let's look at the various stages of coffee being processing. In this shot, you're probably looking at some cherry pulp in a tray. And then I think there's a bag of parchment. And so underneath the red pulp, there's the first mucilage which you ferment off, and then it remains parchment. And this is sort of a hard shell that covers the green bean. So that has to be hulled. And after it's hulled, you get the green bean and then it's roasted. But to get to that stage, it's quite a long time. It takes at least three weeks to dry the parchment. And then you want to store the parchment for at least three months to let it rest before you hull it. And then once you hull it, you have a shorter time to roast it. And once it's roasted, it should be drunk within three weeks. Wow, it's quite the process. Let's have a look at the next slide. So at the end of the day, after all that time, it ends up in a bag. Yeah, that's a sample bag. We have a very simple looking product. Right. And roll the drums for the next slide. Well, we were fortunate to have an opportunity at the last moment. We realized we had an opportunity to enter the statewide cupping competition. There's two major contests in Hawaii every year. And one is the Kona coffee farmers. And we're not in Kona. We're in Waimea. So we can't enter that one. But we were able to enter the statewide competition. And we managed to swing first place in the Hawaii district. So very grateful for that. And next year, we intend to do even better. Awesome. Okay, I think you want to reach out to a few people that helped you along this path? Well, I wouldn't have been able to do any of this without Howard and Pat Hall. They've been phenomenal in extremely generous and kind and helpful right from the beginning. And so we're growing the coffee on their farm. And they've installed this really fantastic solar and battery powered operation. And Andrea Calabada from CETAR has just been so generous with her time. University of Hawaii. I got to get a plug in from the University of Hawaii. University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture Research and Human Resources. And Andrea is the coffee expert for this island and probably for the state. And she's just wonderful. And we've also been helped tremendously by Pacific Coffee Research, Brittany Horn, and Brian Webb, who's our roaster. Brittany's been our roaster as well. And Brian's been our roaster. And he has the Optimist Roastery in Cafe. And I forget who else is on the list because it's not in front of me. But I think the most important person is my wife, Ann Lee, who's my partner and Ann's a scientist. And so she spearheads all the experimentation in growing the seedlings and helping me diagnose issues with the trees and understand what kind of treatments we need to apply and how to improve everything. So we're fortunate because the coffee tree that we originally started with was a hybrid developed by Professor University of Hawaii Helo Campus. And it's a hybrid of Jamaican Blue Mountain and Guatemalan, which is what Kona Coffee is. So everything we're growing are cakey from that original mother tree who's named after my maternal grandmother, Irene. That's great. So you're going to start calling each of your trees by a specific name? I think that might be a good idea. It's better than row three tree number 45. So I think I'm going to have to come up with names for everyone. Yeah, exactly. So let's have a look at the, I think we're on our last slide now. Okay, so your website I understand is under construction still. Yeah, I mean, it's still brewing, right Dave? Still brewing. Yeah, it's steeping right now. It's, it'll be up and running within a few weeks. I just, I have to go over some of the, some of the wording, some of the writing and stuff, but it's, it's essentially designed, but you know, a little bit of tweaking before the big launch. Okay, we're almost at the end of the show Dave. So I want to give you a chance not to be interrupted by me. Do you have any closing thoughts? And maybe for other people that want to get in the business or what has been some of your major challenges? And do you have any idea what kind of solutions are required in the agricultural sector to help people like yourself be more and be successful? Well, I wouldn't have been able to have done any of this without the help of the University of Hawaii, CTAHR. I mean, I can't, I can't state that strongly enough that without the help of all of the researchers and scientists at CTAHR and all the knowledge they share with us freely. Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, they don't charge you for that. That's like a service. Yeah, the only cost to me is my, my gas to get down to South Kona from Waimea, but you know, it's all free of charge. And they even come and visit the farm. If you ask for them to come and visit the farm and they'll spend several hours in the farm, you know, looking at every individual tree, they'll help you with analyzing the soil. You can bring soil samples to the extension offices. And within a week or so, you get a complete nutritional report of what's in the soil and what you need and what you have too much of specific to the crop you're growing. So what's an extension office? Well, there's, on this island, there's five extension of CTAHR. So they're, they're experimental farms and extension offices. And so at the office, they're, they're manned by all of these researchers and scientists. And in the, in the instance of, of coffee, that, that office is located in South Kona. And so that, because I'm growing coffee, that's where I go. But the Waimea district has an extension office and they have an experimental farm growing tea, for instance. Volcano has an extension office and they grow berries and some root vegetables. So it's all appropriate to the region. And so you just, you can show up there and, you know, ask questions and they're extremely helpful. They, they, you know, they have a display of all the services and courses that they offer. And you can sign up and, and take courses and seminars. And now of course, because of the pandemic, we've been doing a lot of that through Zoom or video. Like we are now. Yeah. So Dave, we're out of time. Okay. We're going to leave it there. So thank you so much for coming on the show and giving us all your insight on, on your Hawaiian coffee and all your adventures and your successes. And we wish you success going forward, of course. So thank you so much, Dave. Thank you very much, Commander. Okay. I like that part. So aloha everyone. This has been Mitchell in on Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'll be back in two weeks with another action pack show. So everybody aloha.