From last night onwards at 9pm every Sunday, Astro Wah Lai Toi channel 311 is airing Coffee Confidential.

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This TVB programme is hosted by Moses Chan, a well-known HK TVB artiste.

Episode I brought Moses Chan to Indonesia where he experienced Kopi Luwak.

So what is Kopi Luwak & why it is so great?¹Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee. Kopi Luwak comes from the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi (formerly Celebes), which are part of the Indonesian Archipelago’s 13,677 islands. (Only 6,000 of these islands are inhabited.)

But it’s not strictly the exotic location that makes these beans worth their weight in silver. It’s how they’re “processed.”

On these Indonesian islands, there’s a small marsupial called the paradoxurus, a tree-dwelling animal that is a kind of civet. These catlike animals were long regarded as pests because they would climb in the coffee trees and eat only the ripest, reddest coffee cherries.

What these animals eat, they also digest and eventually excrete. Some brazen or desperate locals gathered the beans, which come through the digestion process fairly intact, still wrapped in layers of the coffee cherry mucilage. Apparently the enzymes in the stomach of the animal add something unique to the coffee’s flavor through fermentation.

Simply said, ²the civets eat the berries, but the beans inside pass through their system undigested.

As Kopi Luwak is so unique, Kopi Luwak has become the most expensive coffee (before, it was Jamaican Blue Mountain) in the world, ³selling for between $100 and $600 USD per pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and the United States by weight, and served in coffeehouses in Southeast Asia by the cup.

It is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though supplies are limited; only 1,000 pounds (450 kg) at most make it into the world market each year.

Is worth that price to pay? In the programme, Moses showed 2 feces, 1 is natural while the other is human raised civet’s. The human raised civet is also fed with other food. Even then, it is still the natural that is better. So in the end, it is the hype that you are paying for.

So what are the strong points of Kopi Luwak?

Firstly, after going through the civet’s digestive system, the bitterness of the coffee is reduced (but the coffee also has less body after the same process)and therefore preferably be lightly roasted.

Secondly, civet cats (the wild ones) only chooses the best & ripe cherries. So it is like humans choosing the best beans only for the premium Kopi Luwak.

Lastly, critics argue that the exceptional aroma and lack of bitterness is highly desirable, which I partly agree. But if the coffee beans that went into the civet’s are mediocre, how good will it be?

In my opinion, Kopi Luwak is overhyped and not worth that price though I would like to try one some day.

Kopi Luwak, anyone?

¹Kopi Luwak, An Indonesian Island Treasure (excerpts taken from a special article in Cafe Olè magazine by Chris Rubin) – http://www.thecoffeecritic.com/fusion3/html/kopi.shtml
²Kopi Luwak, Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak
³Sweet, Leonard (2007), The Gospel According to Starbucks – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781578566495

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