Kopi Luwak

Dear family and friends,

I don’t think there is anything that we associate more closely to Indonesia than coffee. We even call our coffee java, for crying out loud. Quite beyond the beans we get from Java, most of us now look for coffee from other parts of Indonesia, including Sulawesi, Sumatra, and Bali, even Papua. I know coffee originated in Africa, and it is hard to beat Central or South American beans, but where would we be without Indonesian coffee? Today, names such as Sumatra Mandheling, Sulawesi Kalossi, Java Jampit, drip off the tongue of true coffee cognoscenti as easily as most might say “Nabob regular grind”.

 

And I must say, one of the pleasures of traveling around Indonesia is the generally good coffee that is available. Elsewhere in my travels I have encountered more Nescafe instant than one should have to bear in five lifetimes. Almost the worst coffee you get here, even in humble restaurants, is a supply of finely ground coffee on the table to which you add hot water. For sure, it would be improved with a French press, but at least you do get a ‘Turkish’ style, and quite good, cup of joe.

I stopped off in Jakarta for several days to arrange for my travel to Papua. Jakarta is just one more big ugly SE Asian city, maybe the ugliest. It has no real center, and its 9 or 14 million inhabitants (depending on your source of information) sprawl for miles in all directions.

However, back to the coffee; at a modest restaurant in Jakarta I happened to learn of a particular coffee bean that is apparently gaining great favour with the beautiful people. You may have missed reports on this latest rapture of the glitterati, so let me fill you in. It is called Kopi Luwak and it is ‘harvested’ in Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi. Kopi is the original Indonesian name for coffee; Luwak is a small tree-dwelling marsupial or civet. This animal has been long regarded as a pest because they climb to the very top of the coffee trees eating only the ripest, reddest coffee beans. However, the beans apparently pass through the animal’s digestion system more or less intact and are excreted out onto the ground. What must have begun as an easy way to harvest beans without having to climb, has emerged as the priciest coffee in the world. The passage through the digestive system apparently ferments the beans, which is said to add a unique and very desirable complexity to the final brew. Only about 250kg of this delight are being produced annually, and it costs about $600US per kilo.

Aficionados are cited as saying "It's the most complex coffee I've ever tasted," and, "It has a little of everything pleasurable in all coffees; earthy, musty tone, the heaviest bodied I've ever tasted. It's almost syrupy, and the aroma is very unique." Earthy? Musty? Very unique aroma? Well, I don’t wonder.

My thoughts on this?  Given that this coffee costs about $5 per cup, and that the beans spent some time in the anal canal of an animal related to skunks, don’t expect to be served kopi luwak soon on Savary Island. Regards to all.

Merv.