Holy Crapuccino!

2/3/2015.  Ever heard of this Indonesian coffee bean that passes through the intestines of a civet cat?  I keep seeing it on the cafe menus in Bali.  Costs 10x as much as a regular cup of javanese bean coffee.  I'd never heard of luwak before so I did a quick check on my phone before ordering it.  Supposed to be mellow, low-acid, and amazing.  As well as many mentions of toxoplasmosis and civet cat factory farming.  Pity the little kitty's poop chute!  I ordered a pineapple coconut lassi.

Later, I was asking my driver Juli about luwak and he rolled his eyes. "Only Brits and Californians drink that stuff, yah?  If it's rare and you can't get it at home, then it must taste better."  The rich, stupid, and gullible first world.

The next day I asked Juli to take me to the ARMA cultural museum in Ubud.  He made a face. “I will tell you something.  You don’t wanna go there. It’s a tourist trap and the exact same stuff you saw last week at the Museum Puri Lukasan.”  So I asked him for an idea.  He said, “Well, you seemed pretty interested in luwak.  Want to see how it’s made?  With the civet cats and everything?  I can take you to a small coffee plantation."

I was greeted by Komang, a vivacious young woman who led me and Max through a forest of Arabica and cherry coffee berries.  We saw a few ripe red ones but most of them are green right now:

Then she shows us the civet "cats":

The animals were pacing their cages.  Komang explained, “All we give them is coffee berries. So they’re full of caffeine.” I ask her what their diet in the wild would be like. “Oh, other stuff. But here they are working. This is their job.”

For five minutes I watched a 15 month old civet do figure eights, never once stopping.

While we were standing there, she gave me a quick bio.  Most of the civet cats are scooped up as newborns and then returned to the forest at 2 years old.  This is when they start pooping less and are no longer useful.  When the workers return a prolific pooper to the forest, they look to see where it goes and kidnap babies from the same family nest.

Roasted kitty litter:

Komang invites me to sniff it.  Very pleasant. Like conte crayon and roasted mushrooms.  Here she shows the three parts: the skin, the shell, and the bean.   The animal digests the skin. Then the digestive enzymes ferment the shell, which amazingly passes intact.  The fermented shell is what supposedly flavors the bean inside.

Here's the roasting oven.

She invites me to try my hand at grinding roasted beans with a mortar and pestle that was my height.  Hard work.

Max sifts the grounds.

She lets us smell the Luwak, then the regular Arabica grounds.

Max says he prefers the Arabica. Then again, he is quietly freaking out from the food-from-poop concept.  I prefer the Arabica because the Luwak smells medicinal.  When I ask Komang which she prefers, she winks and whispers, "definitely the Arabica!"

Finally, she takes us to a little hut where we sample a variety of the coffees they sell.  Ginseng coffee and turmeric coffee were the best.

Luwak thankfully not included!