According to legend Kopi Luwak (Indonesian: coffee from [the] Luwak—Civet cat) was discovered in Indonesia under Dutch colonial rule. During that time, native farmers and plantation workers were forbidden from harvesting coffee for their own use, and were left to scrounge around for it.
They soon discovered that the civet cat would eat coffee cherries and pass the seeds—the coffee beans—without digesting them (which, coincidentally, is what happens with the seeds of most fruits, and just so happens to be the evolutionary purpose of most fruits). Upon brewing coffee made from these beans, they discovered it tasted much better than the conventional coffee of the time.
There are two obvious reasons this would be the case: selective picking and thorough “washing”. The civet cat, free to graze on these cherries, would naturally consistently eat only the ripe cherries, while coffee pickers back then were much less discriminating. The beans would also have all the extra fruity bits stripped off by enzymes during digestion, resulting in a thoroughly clean result; leaving fruit pulp or mucilage on the beans can lead to fermentation or mould during drying, something that would have been quite common for regularly processed coffee in the mid-19th century.
What Kopi Luwak was is no big mystery: well-processed beans from uniformly ripe coffee cherries. It’s a near-certainty it would have been appreciably better than what was processed by humans back then, and that’s what has created the myth that still surrounds it today, and what people who peddle it insist still remains the case.
Join us for a Friday morning Coffee. Refreshments will be for your own account.
Date: Friday, 9 November 2018
Time: From 07h00 to 08h00
Place: Brioche, 181 Main Rd, Walmer
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Bahasa Indonesia baku is the official language of Indonesia. However the pure form is seldom spoken and the various dialects of different regions often complicate communication for tourists. Logs in Indonesian would be appreciated.