Monarch Coffee Farm

Having the best quality coffee means having the healthiest coffee plants from the start. This week, we have been identifying any trees that need removing and replacing them with healthy keiki Gesha trees.

Five of the world’s seven species of sea turtles make their home in Hawai`i’s waters, including the green sea turtle (honu), hawksbill (honu `ea), leatherback, loggerhead, and olive ridley. The honu is the most likely to be seen on Hawaiian reefs, followed by the hawksbill. Olive ridley, leatherback, and loggerheads are typically found in deeper, offshore waters and are rarely seen. We have a special love and respect for the marine life in Hawai`i especially because Susy and Greg’s granddaughter, Madalyn, is a marine scientist who studied at UH Hilo. Her passion for these incredible creatures inspires all of us here at Monarch Coffee Farm! Happy #worldturtleday

#MonarchSpotlight part 2. I learned how to speak Spanish during my years in the Pacific Northwest, which proved crucial when I came across a coffee importer called Sustainable Harvest. They offered me a job and within a week I moved to Nicaragua to run their quality control lab. I was roasting and cupping every single day and visited coffee farms, witnessing the particular challenges they deal with on an infrastructure and farm level. It was such an amazing experience. When... I returned to Portland, I ran quality control globally, before taking up a position with Scott Laboratories in 2017. I lived in Guatemala for about 6 months and traveled extensively, marketing LalCafe yeast for post-harvest processing to improve the process for coffee producers, consistency, cup profiles, and mill efficiency. I met Greg and Abby from Monarch Coffee at a trade show in Seattle and we hit it off right away. They are amazing people, so joyful and direct with their goals and also super friendly. I really vibe with that. I got to visit their farm when I was working throughout Hawai‘i and Latin America with LalCafe and was blown away with their approach and curiosity. They were excited to have me at the farm, with the focus on quality control, retail, and what coffee buyers respond to. It always felt like I was coming home and I never wanted to leaveespecially working with the likes of Abby, Greg, Sal, Susy and Jacob. We processed coffee together, I shared my experiences from other coffee-producing regions, they shared their knowledge and we realized that we had a lot to learn from each other. My big draw to working with Monarch is their insatiable curiosity, they want to be as good at what they are doing as they possibly can be. I can’t wait to add to that energy. I’ve worked in every facet of the coffee supply chain except for being employed directly by a farmliving farm life, understanding the plant and the product from that perspective, it’s something I am very much looking forward to. I can’t wait to pull rocks and run the weed trimmer! Alex is now living his dream life, working with coffee in the mountains and surfing at the weekends! Welcome to the team, Alex!

It’s Aloha Friday and we want to send our warmest aloha to all of our Monarch Coffee `ohana. We hope you are enjoying a good cup of coffee and getting ready for the weekend, where ever you are

The planting of our keiki Gesha trees continues! It is exciting to think that one day the coffee produced by these trees may end up in your cup! Who feels like they get a taste of Hawai`i when they drink our coffee?

Celebration Sale starts TODAY! Father’s Day and graduation season are almost here and at Monarch Coffee we always like to show our appreciation to all the hardworking Dads and Grads out there! Celebrating the father figure and/or grad in your life? Why not give them the gift of Monarch Coffee and apparel! And, as a special offer to our social media and newsletter followers, we are offering a limited time 15% discount, simply enter code DadsGrads15 when checking out between June 1-21.

What better way to celebrate the relaunch of our Happy Camper coffee than being Happy campers ourselves! We decided to hitch up the trailer and hit the road - taking with us our favorite Monarch Coffee shirts and mugs, of course!

Sunday’s feel good at the Monarch Coffee Farm! We are looking forward to a week of tending the the keiki Gesha trees that we just planted, roasting coffee for orders, welcoming guests that are visiting us for farm tours, and everything else that comes up on a busy coffee farm What do you look forward to doing in the week ahead?

It’s time for our latest #MonarchSpotlight and we are delighted to introduce you to Alex, our new post-harvest process lead, who starts work at the farm on April 26! Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Alex has lived in Portland, Oregon, since 2009 and has worked in coffee for over 17 years. Over to you, Alex: I fell in love with coffee many years ago, the moment I tasted the Geisha varietal from Hacienda La Esmerelda it sparked a curiosity that sent me on the path of my ca...reer. You could say it was a pivotal moment for me and I distinctly remember thinking ‘What is this?! It’s not like anything I have ever had before.’ I was working as a barista at the time, I drank a lot of coffee and had lots of varietals and origins at my fingertips but I’d never tasted anything quite like it. Now I’m about to start working with Gesha coffee in Hawai‘i, and it feels like I have come full circle. Rewinding to my early days in the coffee field, I started working as a barista in 2004, I competed in a barista competition and worked in multiple cafes over the course of 10 years. I started to get into quality control as a potential career path when I was working in Illinois, for a roaster/wholesaler/café operation, taking care of wholesale sales, working barista shifts and even dabbled in training baristas for the Midwest Regional Barista Competition. It was here that I really started getting into how to cup and evaluate coffee and took classes to further my knowledge at SCAA (now SCA) trade shows. When I moved to Portland I was hoping to broaden my skillset and further my career. I started work with an operation called Coffeehouse-Five, who at the time was partnered with a now well-known roaster in Portland called Coava. I had a great time learning about coffee and was working on state-of-the-art equipment, which required a significantly higher level of expertise than I was used to. This was everything I wanted. I was cupping on a weekly basis and took on public cuppings, and a couple of years later I was acting as the coffee buyer, turning the shop into a multi-roaster concept. Join us for part 2 of Alex’s spotlight next week!