INDONESIA: A rare brew made of civet cat droppings delights the palates of Indonesian coffee connoisseurs

While most of the employees at this coffee plantation in Indonesia are picking red coffee cherries clustered on branches, there are a few who are sent out into the forests surrounding the fields with plastic buckets. Their mission? To find cat droppings. Combing through the undergrowth, the workers look for little mounds of white coffee beans which have been excreted by the luwak or Asian palm civet after snacking on the ripe berries. The enzymes in the cats' stomachs break down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste, thus enhancing its flavour, and a brew made from these beans is superb, connoisseurs say. The beans may look like any other green coffee bean before it is roasted, but peer down an infra-red microscope at the surface and you will see that the bean is not green, but red, with many small holes. "Kopi luwak" or civet cat coffee only accounts for about five percent of the 500-tonne annual coffee-bean output at this arabica coffee plantation in Sidikalang, some 100 km from the North Sumatran capital of Medan. "Civet cat coffee is very hard to obtain. Our maximum production here is only 200 kilograms to 300 kilograms per year," said Plantation Field Manager Nusamba Wurintara. Part of the reason is that the cats cannot be kept domestically and roam wild around the plantation and collecting the droppings is a time-consuming chore. "You can't keep a civet cat in captivity. We caught one once and tried to keep it, but it died. It's impossible," said Hasan Widjaja, Chairman of Indonesia's Coffee Exporters Association. Where the beans are found and how they are roasted are also crucial to achieving the unique fragrance and flavour of kopi luwak, experts say. "Coffee has a tendency to pick up flavour, taste and aroma. I mean, if the luwak poop in a wet area then the coffee will be very earthy and sometimes it is overwhelming. Other than that, sometimes the roasting is not right. If you do not roast the coffee correctly the flavour would not come out," said coffee consultant Adi Taroepratjeka. A cup of the special coffee luwak brew sells for as much as 50 Australian dollars in trendy cafes Downunder while hip New Yorkers pay around 75 U.S. dollars for a quarter pound. But many insist it's worth it. "If you drink this coffee the taste is perfect and the fragrance of the coffee will stay in your mouth even after you have finished drinking," said one satisfied customer at "Kopi Bali" cafe in the Bali capital of Denpasar. The name kopi luwak may be seen in many coffee shops in Indonesia, because recently, it is increasingly used as another word for "premium coffee". But the real thing doesn't come cheap. At Kopi Bali, a pot costs 200,000 rupiah (21 USD) which is 10 times the price of a pot of arabica coffee which costs between 10,000 - 25,000 rupiah.

ITN Source | August 29, 2007

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