Kopi Luwak

Last week I crossed a culinary line from which there is no coming back from, I drank a $20 glass of poo poo.

Kopi Luwak coffee beans come from the island of Bali in Indonesia. Here the tropical climate along the equator is perfect for growing coffee. Within the jungles that surround these coffee plantations live a small cat called a Luwak. Typically these cats typically subsist off of fruit growing in the jungle. However when the coffee beans ripen, the Luwak cat comes out of the jungle and helps itself to the coffee beans growing in the plantation.

When the Luwak cat eats the coffee beans, it is only able to digest the red fruit that surrounds the coffee bean. The coffee bean itself passes through the cat’s digestive system intact and is left as poo poo around the coffee plantation.

Though no one is willing to say why, someone began collecting the Luwak’s poo poo, drying it out, and using the coffee beans to make coffee. Since there are not a great number of these cats and their little digestive systems can only handle so many coffee beans, Kopi Luwak coffee is exceedingly rare and therefore rather expensive and difficult to find.

My experience last week was not with a pure glass of Kopi Luwak, but rather with a bend which including it. When I ordered the coffee, the owner of the coffee shop invited me to smell each type of coffee that was included in the blend. Though Kopi Luwak looked like ordinary green coffee beans, its smell attested to its origin.

Upon my first sip, I was rather surprised by the funny sensation it set off on my tongue. For you see as the coffee bean passes through the Luwak cat’s digestive system it absorbs the cats “inner juices”, which I assume are what my tongue reacted to. The coffee itself was also quite different in taste. Though I drank the blend black, it was very smooth and had a mild, but full aftertaste.

Now had I finished this cup of coffee anywhere else in the world, I would have just paid the bill and walked out the door. However the Japanese have a fanatical way of taking things to the next level. As I began to leave the coffee shop, the owner called after me, and then handed me something. I looked down to find a surgical mask in my hand. For a moment I had no idea what was going on.

That was until the owner told me that the coffees aftertaste could last for nearly 12 hours, but that strong smells would overwhelm the aftertaste. Thus if I wore the mask, I could preserve the coffees aftertaste for the rest of the afternoon.

For a moment the idea sounded ridiculous. Who would want to wander around in a surgical mask all afternoon to prolong the taste of poo poo coffee in their mouth? But then again who was going to care. So with surgical mask in place, I strolled into the streets of Tokyo with the smell of Kopi Luwak enlivening my every breath.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak