 |
How to "drink" Kopi Luwak?Kopi Luwak is expensive at $75 for 100 grams, is not something that people would spent on coffee. And at less than 250 kg of production annually, even with money you might not be able to get it. Kopi is Malay for coffee and Luwak means the place where the coffee comes from arounf the island of Java and Sulawesi. And for those that are not in the know, it actually comes from the dropping of a small marsupial known as the paradoxurus. Yes, Asians are pretty amazing folks with Chinese paying thousands for bird's vomit call "bird nest" and now hundreds of civet cats' droppings. These cats climb the tress and eat only the ripest, reddest coffee cherries and when they excrete, it would be your kopi luwak. Somehow, he enzymes in the cat add some additional flavor to the coffee through fermentation. The harvesting is simple but time consuming. The natives look in the jungle for the droppings, that are the coffee cherries wrapped in layers of the cherries mucilage. 
When you brew the coffee, you would get a heavy body with a slight caramel taste. The aroma is musty and smell like jungle. But, how do you brew such a coffee? Before that, while there are growing number of followers for kopi luwak, I must add that what the civet cats eat in Indonesia is still Robusta coffee cherries. So, unlike Blue Mountain or Kona where the geographical location affects their taste, this coffee taste is primarily altered due to passing through the civet cats' stomach. Now, to brew "civet cat poop" coffee you need to be easy on the extraction and the roast. These beans because they are cover with some elements, are easy to burn, so a light roast would do. And as the taste is pretty heavy, doing a coarse ground and using a French press or drip filter would extract the flavor that would do justice to the kopi luwak. Brewing this fellow is definitely easy, but getting your hand is not that easy and definitely not that cheap. However, do try one and see if with all these buzz, is the beans worth the price...
|
