If you love coffee as much as I do, then you probably enjoy discovering a new variety that you really enjoy. It’s very satisfying when you hit on a special flavor that suits your tastes perfectly, and there are enough varieties around the world that could keep you busy tasting for several lifetimes. Let me introduce you to my very favorite coffee bean – Kona from Hawaii – which I highly recommend.

You may think that you’ve already tried Kona coffee, but let me warn you of something. It’s fairly easy to find coffee with the word “Kona” featured prominently on the label. However, look closely and you’ll probably find that it’s actually a blend of beans – sometimes containing as little as 10% actual Kona coffee beans. The rest are usually lower quality varieties from Brazil or Central America. In fact, the USA’s federal law does not require labels to specify the proportions, but Hawaii’s state laws do. So you may have to do a little investigating to find 100% Kona beans, but believe me, it’s worth the extra effort.

To be correctly called Kona coffee, the beans must have been grown in the Kona Districts of Hawaii, specifically on Mount Hualalai and Mauna Loa. This beautiful area on the Big Island has the perfect climate for growing these delectable beans: bright, sunny mornings, rainy afternoons, and mild, cool evenings. This type of climate is not found in many places of the world, and these conditions are what make this variety rare and unique.

There are two types of Kona beans. The first type is more common, from cherries that produce two beans. These are the coffee beans that most people are used to seeing, with one rounded side and one flat side where the two cherries pressed against each other as they formed. This type of Kona beans includes Kona fancy, Kona extra fancy, Kona Number 1, and Kona prime.

The second type of Kona bean, the peaberry, is more rare. When the cherry only contains one coffee bean instead of two, this is referred to as a peaberry. Some people believe that peaberry coffee beans are more flavorful than their more common double-bean counterparts because the single bean doesn’t share components with a “twin”. Whether that’s true or not is up to you to decide. Look for Kona peaberry number 1 and Kona peaberry prime to see for yourself.

It wasn’t until I moved to the US that I started drinking coffee regularly and became what they call in the Netherlands a ‘koffieleut’, which translates literally into ‘coffee socialite.’ Although the average European drinks more coffee per year than the average American, the cultural importance and its effects on the average European seems to me smaller than that on the average American. After all, coffee is a cultural obsession in the United States.

Chains with thousands of branches like Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks dominate US daily street life. Especially in the morning (90% of coffee consumed in the US is in the morning), millions of white foamy cups with boldly imprinted pink and orange logos bob across the streets in morning rush hour and on the train. Coffee drive-ins are a saving grace for the rushing army of helmeted and tattooed construction workers. During lunch break, men and women in savvy business suits duck into coffee shops.

Students chill out from early afternoon till late evening on comfy couches at coffee lounges around campus. Police officers clutch coffee cups while guarding road construction sites on the highway. In short, coffee drinkers in the United States can be found just about anywhere you go.

This mass-psychotic ritual causes Americans to associate Europe above all with cars that oddly do not contain cup holders (to an American this is like selling a car without tires), or with the unbelievably petite cups of coffee European restaurants serve, so small that my father-in-law had to always order two cups of coffee. It is my strongest conviction that the easily agitated and obsessed nature of the ‘New Englander’ can be blamed on the monster-size cups of coffee they consume. Not without reason is the word ‘coffee’ derived from the Arab ‘qahwa’ meaning ‘that which prevents sleep.’ Arabs have cooked coffee beans in boiling water since as far back as the 9th century and drank the stimulating extract as an alternative to the Muslims’ forbidden alcohol.

These days coffee is second only to oil as the most valuable (legally) traded good in the world with a total trade value of $70 billion. Interestingly, only $6 billion reaches coffee producing countries. The remaining $64 billion is generated as surplus value in the consumption countries. Small farmers grow 70% of world coffee production. They mainly grow two kinds of coffee beans: Arabica and Robusta. About 20 million people in the world are directly dependent on coffee production for their subsistence.