HISTORY:

When I was starting out as a coffee hobbyist and homeroaster, there was only one answer to which bean had the most chocolate taste: "Maui Mocha," a tiny 11 screen bean, grown from a nameless Ethiopian cultivar brought to the Kanaapali estate on Maui, some thirty years earlier.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.coffee/browse_thread/thread/7668c35fd0358b93/2fad1c06dc05998b

Unfortunately, a cult status coffee isn't as lucrative as real estate; so Kanapaali Estate was slated to go down under the steam rollers with all the coffee trees uprooted.

http://www.homeroaster.com/mauimoka.html

Fortunately, condos in the middle of nowhere, by Hawaiian standards, sell better if theres a working few coffee trees around. So a downsized Kanaapali and its Maui Mokka found a way to coexist with the condos.

http://www.lifeaftercoffee.com/2006/05/21/maui-moka-my-favoritie-coffee-is-back/
http://www.kaanapalicoffeefarms.com/coffee/coffeeinkaanapali.html



TASTING NOTES:

Brewed and low dose shots have the same flavors. There is dried apricot, with touches of leather and wine, along with boomingly powerful, sweet malted milk chocolate. At higher doses, the chocolate and apriocot fade and an unpleasant fermented note emerges to become the dominant flavor.

The cappa is very simple, the way chocolate milk would taste in heaven. If Nesquick had been like this; I'd never have switched to grown up drinks.

In the old days, we thought this coffee was unsuitable for espresso and great for cappas. However, modern flexible dosing allows one to get the same chocolate bomb effect in the shot as in the cappa, along with a touch of added complexity. In fact, with the added dried fruit and leather, the shot tastes like a sweeter, cleaner, but also simpler Mocha Mattari, rather any Ethiopian coffee I know. However, the point of this coffee isn't any of that; it's the milk chocolate pure and simple



BUYING:

Sweet Marias's and several other places sell MM versions at larger screen sizes, but these have the usual brown sugar generic island profile. The original 11 screen chocolate bomb is only available at
http://www.mauigrowncoffee.com/-strse-G...gories.bok

The larger bean is around $10 per pound, IMO a waste; while the real thing is $18 and worth a try for anyone who likes chocolatey coffee or has a soft spot for internet coffee history.