One highlight of the last six months was a fantastic stop in Bali, Indonesia. It wasn’t exactly chance that got us there, but it wasn’t exactly expected from early on, either. But it was amazing. Some more on that to follow.
One of the related happy accidents was this little cup of heaven called Kopi Luwak. So to set it up, Bali is beautiful. But our stop there coincided with spring break in Australia. So Kuta was swarmed with party kids, making a lot of noise and entirely taking over the landscape. Luckily, my hotel was up the beach in Seminyak, away from the riffraff and about seven minutes from some decent surfing. So surfing was on the docket from well prior to arriving.
So we were tooling around in the vicinity of the hotel one morning, getting the plan together for the aforementioned surfing. Mornings like this need coffee, and so we walked a block or two and found a little coffee shop. A quick scan of the menu showed a relatively expensive little offering: Kopi Luwak. This was about $10 a cup, far out-pricing everything else they offered. The mind is pretty amazing. Something about it sent me back through my mental file to an NPR story I’d heard a couple years back about this really expensive low-production coffee. So I asked the question, using some almost obscene gestures.
“Is this the coffee made from cat poop?” I asked, while making what I can only assume is the international sign for defecation.
A smile and a vigorous nod from the barista.
Decision made: we’re trying this before we leave.
We’d already placed and paid for an order for the moment, but we went back the next day. Two words: worth it. On top of the fact that any Starbucks patron is already accustomed to paying $7-10 for a designer coffee, it would have been worth it at twice that. Let me set it up.
The Luwak is not really a cat. It’s more of a weasel. These guys live in the trees, and they subsist, in part, on coffee cherries. The coffee starts right there. The Luwak eats the cherries. And they’re very selective in the cherries they’ll eat. Only the best for the Luwak. They digest the fruit, but they don’t digest the bean inside. Yet their digestive systems do act upon the bean. Enzymes work the beans over such that what is excreted is a superior bean with a rich yet mild quality about it. The beans are removed from the feces, cleaned, lightly roasted, ground, and brewed.
And enjoyed. Oh yes, enjoyed.
Think about what you’re drinking or not. It was an amazing cup of coffee. No acid taste. No bitter aftertaste. Barely any coffee breath to speak of. Just a beautiful aroma, full-bodied flavor, and a great finish. So not only did I have an amazing cup of coffee there, but I brought back some beans to brew on my own.
This is where the culinary experience grows and morphs. With beans like these, one doesn’t want to mishandle them, grinding them in a standard blade grinder that risks burning them before they’re brewed. So it’s a burr grinder then. And you don’t put this kind of a grind in a percolator or a drip machine. No, you gotta have a French press. You see where this goes, where it gets you? So my coffee paraphernalia now includes these, along with the earlier mentioned moka pot.
All this from a cup of coffee stumbled upon one morning in Bali.
The irony of this coffee is in its history. Initially the coffee plantations in Indonesia didn’t cater to the less fortunate. Yet the poor people wanted a coffee-like drink as well. They noticed that the Luwak leavings seemed to have coffee beans in them and began cleaning and brewing them. What a reversal, that the beverage of the poor has become one of the most exclusive coffees on the planet.
And no snobbery, but if you have the opportunity, try a cup. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
The Art of Manliness has run a three-part series on willpower (Part I, Part II, Part III). Most of the referenced writing on the subject comes from the early 20th Century, about the time that western society was focused on the ability of humankind to achieve.
