Kopi Luwak Reeducated

Last Thursday, I was lucky enough to tag along Hubs to meet up with his friend to understand more about kopi luwak supply here in Indonesia. This friend i.e. Pak B. was the same person whom we bought our first packet of kopi luwak from.

After braving the usual traffic congestion (what else?!) we finally made it to the meeting point, which was Pak's office-cum-cafe for potential business contacts to taste coffee samples. After the usual pleasantries, we finally got down to some kopi luwak tasting session. Me likey! :)

And so here they are. First up is kopi luwak robusta beans. I didn't realise that they classify them to this extent. My previous understanding of kopi luwak was just well.. kopi luwak - where coffee beans are just fed to the civet for them to be "processed" by the digestive juices of the civet to get that special taste that is kopi luwak. Personally I didn't quite like this. It had a kinda flat/neutral with a slight burnt taste to it. In fact, it reminded me of the Vietnamese weasel coffee that Hubs bought previously, which unfortunately we still have 4 packets sitting in the kitchen and nobody knows what to do with it. So probably the Vietnamese ones were produced using robusta beans.

And since we have kopi luwak robusta, we definitely must have kopi luwak arabica right? So here it is, and it had a very contrasting difference in taste compared to the robusta brew. It's difficult to describe exactly how it taste like but the arabica brew had a rounded taste that's both rich and delicate and definitely smooth and mellow. I took out my camera to snap both cups of coffee with flash just for fun and noted a difference in the colour of the brew. With the arabica - it was a clear brown liquid while with the robusta i was almost black. You can see it at the edge of the coffee cup, indicated by the yellow arrows.

Pak B also showed a few samples of the dried up kopi luwak beans. Ta-da...

It definitely looked a lot more processed compared to the ones I've seen in the farm in Bali. According to Pak, the civets are very picky eaters. Of course, these days we are talking about farmed kopi luwak for hygienic processing purposes. Once the berries are picked, they have to be served up fresh to the civets. And these peculiar animals will only eat the freshest (maybe in their taste buds, the highest quality) berries. If the berries are set aside overnight or even a couple of hours - sorry, it's reject goods.

I reckon this is probably the novelty surrounding kopi luwak - that these cats"pick" out the freshest beans that produce what is probably known as the most expensive coffee in the world.