Humor Columist Wayne Chan
By Wayne Chan
Northwest Asian Weekly
Sometimes, these columns just kind of write themselves.
In the last year, I wrote about tea leaf plucking monkeys in China that supposedly know how to pick tea leaves when they are good and ready. With my active mind, I immediately conjured up thoughts of the training process involved in training monkeys to pluck and deliver tea leaves and not other things like, say, a pair of shoes hanging from a telephone wire, an errant hub cap, or an old TV Guide from the 1970s.
But that bit of primate/beverage trivia can’t hold a candle to the latest beverage I’ve recently discovered.
A few days ago, a friend of mine dropped by, and our conversation went something like this:
Friend: Sorry I’m a little late, but I had a hard time getting up. I feel sick.
Me: What’s the matter?
Middle image: Asian palm civet droppings. Bottom image: Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee, and luak is a local name of the Asian palm civet (above).
Friend: Well, last night, my wife made some coffee we got from a friend who just came back from a trip to Asia. I had some last night, and I’ve had a headache ever since.
Me: Does it have a lot of caffeine? What kind of coffee is it?
Friend: It’s called Kopi Luwak, and it comes from Indonesia. It’s really expensive, almost $300 a pound.
Me: I think I’d get a headache just paying for $300 coffee.
Friend: No, it’s supposed to be special. There are these squirrel-like animals called Luwaks who eat the coffee beans, and something happens to the bean while it’s in the animal’s stomach, and once the Luwaks leave their droppings, the harvesters pick up the scat, clean off the beans and …
Me: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Backup, backup, backup …
The rest of our conversation consisted of my friend telling me that the stomach acid in the Luwak’s intestines supposedly enhances the flavor of the bean so that the coffee is extra smooth with a slightly bitter aftertaste.
This, of course, was not where my attention was focused.
I am, by no means, a food-prude. I have consumed turtles, rattlesnakes, pigeons, alligators, and even tea plucked by the aforementioned Chinese monkeys. But even being the reasonably adventurous person that I am, I still have major reservations when it comes to drinking coffee brewed from the beans extruded from the bowels of an Indonesian squirrel.
I’ve always been fascinated with the origins of various activities, this one especially.
At some point, someone was walking around Indonesia, perhaps a farmer, or maybe even someone who was cleaning up their backyard. The person sees the Luwak scat all over the yard, and suddenly has an epiphany.
“Wait a minute! We could pick up this scat, clean off the beans, and make coffee with it! Nothing like killing two birds with one, er, bean!” Apparently, they didn’t consider other potential uses for it (fertilizer, a game of jacks, paperweights, scat-fights) — no, they decided to clean off the beans and drink it.
This brings up an important question: How clean is clean enough? If I were shopping for some Kopi Luwak coffee, I’d have some serious sanitation queries.
Yes, could you tell me about this bag of Kopi Luwak coffee? How is it washed? Water? That’s it? No bleach? No sulfuric acid? No radioactive wave treatments? Hmm … I think I’ll pass.
On the other hand, the existence of this coffee shouldn’t really surprise anyone. We live in an age where capitalism is king, and we have become a population interested in all kinds of new things. If it’s something new, people want it and they will pay through the nose to get it.
Wait a minute! We have pets. I could be sitting on a goldmine. ♦
Wayne Chan can be reached at info@nwasian weekly.com.