Last time we were at Daylight Mind – and had a good food experience – they had Kona, Ka’u, Maui and Oahu coffees on their menu so we wanted to go again and do a side by side taste comparison.  They did have Ka’u, Maui and Oahu coffees in addition to a selection of Kona so we forged ahead. Oh so sorry we are out of the Maui and Oahu. All we have are Big Island coffees.

Our taste comparison wound up being between the Ka’u Coffee and the Kona Llanes Farms coffee.

For those who don’t know, Ka’u is the District of the Big Island that is just south of Kona. It has a somewhat different climate and soil composition while still being on the Western slope of Mauna Loa. We were interested to see how that would play out in the coffee.

To begin, both cups of coffee were rather unpleasant. The beans were roasted too dark and the brew in both cases was bitter with a sour fruit taste. The Ka’u coffee was nearly undrinkable, it was so bitter and sour flavored. The Kona coffee had much less of the sour fruit but it was uncharacteristically bitter. The brewing method was pour-over, which should not contribute to the bad taste so we felt as if it was mostly just poorly roasted and possibly ground too far ahead.

Even with the disappointing flavors we found quite a bit of difference between the two coffees with the Kona much more to our liking. Hopefully we can find a better place than Daylight Mind to try this experiment in the future.