Winter 2019 - 13. Coffee in Bali - Luwak

13.  Coffee in Bali - Luwak 

We had a visit to a coffee plantation but it was not a place like we saw in Costa Rica, for example or in Columbia. It was very, very different here in Bali. 

Luwak Plantation

First of all we went for a walk through the jungle. Plants grew everywhere and you needed to be a botanist to know these plants. Our guide showed us ginger and pointed at it…sure enough, looking closer, seeing the roots, it was what I know as ginger. I saw ginseng, turmeric and other spices that grew ‘wild’ all over the place but the harvesting was done by a ‘specialist’ I guess. 

And then, the guide showed me coffee trees (bushes?) full of beans but they were mostly green. Not yet ripe enough for picking. Well here in Bali,

Coffee Beans Not Yet Ripe

people do not pick those beans, an animal eats those beans. This animal is a nocturnal cat-like animal named civet cat or Luwak. It is plentiful on Bali and Indonesia and the function of this cat is to eat ripe coffee beans. It eats them at night and somehow this cat knows when a coffee bean is at its absolute best and then eats it. The outer husk of the bean is what this cat lives on and when digested, it passes the actual center of the bean, the part we use to grind coffee, through its digestive system. Yes, this cat poops coffee beans and those coffee beans make what some experts say is the best coffee in the world, Luwak Coffee. In the market, 1

Civet Cat

kg. of these poop beans cost around US $700 in 2019. The actual coffee bean, after roasting and processing comes close to US $500 per lbs. The actual roasting of the poop beans takes about 30 minutes, the beans you see in the pictures of the link turn almost totally black after roasting.

Our guide called the Luwak bean coffee:   Cat-poo-chino

Funny guy, this guide!

So you see, early in the morning on this

plantation, people walk through the jungle and collect cat poop. They collect the Palm Civet

Digested Coffee Beans

Cat’s poop to then process it further. I spoke with one of the

Washed and Hulled Beans

collectors and he told me it’s a nice walk in the jungle in the early morning, he knows where the animals live, he knows which bush (tree?) they live in and he just picks up what they drop during the night. It’s a good paying job he said.

Roasting Coffee Beans With a Little Help

Carol and I each had a cup of this famous brew and I don’t really care for it. We bought instead some teas and flavored coffees we could enjoy in the afternoon.

I much prefer the spice teas we bought. Rosella,  Pandanus  and I think, Spice Tea were our choices.

We also bought 3 coffee mixes like:  Mocha, Coconut and Vanilla. Yum!

The Helper and the Roaster

Luwak Coffee tasted bitter and had some aftertaste I cannot describe. Yuk!

It Was Fun to Sample All the Teas