Saturday, 28 January 2012

Luwak Coffee

Luwak coffee is the most expensive coffee in the world and it's exclusive to Northern Sumatra.
In the early eighteenth century the Dutch established coffee plantations in northern Sumatra, planting various varieties of coffee, including Arabica, from Yemen. Then from 1830-1870 the Dutch prohibited the Batak farmers from picking coffee for themselves. The clever Batak farmers noticed small animals, called palm civits, eating the ripe coffee berries, and when they inspected the animals' feaces they found that the coffee beans had been excreted intact. So they collected the excreted coffee beans, washed them carefully, dried, roasted and ground them to make an exceptionally mild, smooth coffee. It was not long before the Dutch heard about this wonderful coffee and started drinking it themselves.

The coffee berries ferment inside the palm civit's digestive tract, where a unique combination of digestive enzymes breaks down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste.

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