LUWAK COFFEE FARM

I have to admit that when I saw it listed on the itinerary, I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to visit. I don’t drink coffee too much and I thought, how interesting can a coffee plantation be? Wrong!!! It turns out, we were going to see a Luwak coffee farm. Now, I had never heard of Kopi Luwak before, but it is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling in New York and London for up to $100.00 a cup! We entered the gates and were led along a pathway meandering down the hillside, where the process for making the coffee was explained. The civet cat is a nocturnal tree cat in Indonesia which snacks on the ripest coffee beans in the field. The civet cat eats the coffee berry but doesn’t digest the hard stone, which is the coffee bean, which is then excreted in its poop. The story is that the process “lowers the bitterness of the coffee imparting a musky smoothness”. The poop is collected, the beans are washed, roasted and then ground up. Then we were offered a sampling of 8 teas and coffees for free or 1 cup of Luwak coffee for $5.00. Bags of coffee were sold there for $60.00 for 150 grams ….. We bought 2 bags of coffee that costs $120 plus the Mangosteen tea and other teas. so guess who won’t be bringing a bag home!