Bali: Kopi O Coffee

i used to be a coffee drinker...well once upon a time, long time ago...  now, i only drink coffee occasionally...if there are no other drinks or plain water available that is. i can go high on coffee with or without milk. on top of that if i were to drink it in the morning, it will basically lead me to toilet trips every 5-10 minute throughout the day...it's just so tiring so i stopped.

during our so called honeymoon in Bali recently, a visit to Domba Coffee company was somehow unplanned but we learned quite a bit about coffee which is interesting.

 

Balinese women sorted coffee beans into different grades at the entrance

here are all the coffee beans sample they have on display.

the different kind of beans that they grade from the cheapest to the most expensive. according to the guide the beans are categorized to female (flat beans) & male beans (peaberries).  female beans are the cheapest & mild tasting while the male beans are a lot more stronger and more expensive because male beans, quantity wise when the coffee cherries are harvested, between 5% to 10% of the cherries will contain only one bean.

coffee trees produce red or purple cherries which typically contain two seeds. Open the fruit and you’ll find two green coffee beans, face to face.

female beans/ flat beans

 

male beans/ peaberries

~it’s simply the description of a coffee cherry which contains not the usual two green coffee beans (female beans/ flat beans), but one (male beans/ peaberry).

moving on to a more interesting coffee topic &muck talk about just recently is the coffee luwak

 coffee luwak beans

coffee cherries are eaten by a civet for their fruit pulp. After spending about a day and a half in the civet's digestive tract. the beans are then defecated in clumps, having kept their shape and still covered with some of the fleshy berry's inner layers. They are gathered, thoroughly washed, sun dried and given only a light roast so as to keep the many intertwined flavors and lack of bitterness yielded inside the civet.

according to the guide again, i'm not sure how true, but if they want to have the coffee flavored, they'll feed  the civets with fruits like strawberries or jackfruit or vanilla then the coffee produced will have the  said natural fruit flavour. at $400 to $1,000 per pound, kopi luwak is said to be the most surprising and unique morning wake up you'll ever taste....thanks but no thanks...i guess for that amount of  money i'd rather extend my stay in Bali instead...lalalala....;D

Bat Fruit beans

claimed to be more rare then coffee luwak. unlike coffee luwak where it comes of civet poo, this particular beans basically collected from the fruit bats' vomits. hmmm...how interesting!

during our coffee tasting session...& of course i went high the rest of the day & trip after trip to the loo at every stop points.

we did buy some...the cheapest one of course to give away...(a package of 6 packs flat female beans- & u have a choice of payment~if u pay in Rupiah it's Rp300,000.00 but if u pay in Ringgit Malaysia it's RM120.00...that's how they sell it unfortunately, to buy just one pack is considered a sin ;P)

it's  kinda weird that just a few days after we came back from Bali an article came out  in the utusan newspaper on kopi luwak aka  kopi tahi musang. but it's ok, we're not that crazy over coffee & definitely not willing to pay so much for a cup of coffee anyway so~Pass...;P

there another topic covered.