Gauss-Telegraph: Indonesia

 
 
Indonesia: culinary adventures
A few things I didn’t know until last Tuesday:
– Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world
– The Indonesian people consists of approximately 300 ethnic groups and more than 1340 tribes, of which each has their own traditional clothing and dances
– The komodo dragon is a very friendly animal when not hungry
– Coffee is a central component of Indonesian culture
The history of coffee in Indonesia goes back as far as the 17th century, and in the early 18th century Indonesian coffee was already being sold in Europe.
A typical type is coffee Arabica, which is grown on the island of Java and which you can still buy today almost everywhere in Germany. The berries of coffee Arabica are picked by hand and washed. Then they are fermented for 12 to 36 hours and sundried for 7 to 9 days to guarantee the special aroma.
Apart from this relatively well known type of coffee, Indonesia offers another, more extraordinary, coffee specialty: Kopi Luwak, or „civet coffee“. The production process might sound a little bit daunting: Civet cats eat and, well, excrete the coffee berries, which are then cleaned and roasted. This procedure is supposed to give the coffee a very special aroma, which is also called „taste oft he jungle“. If you can’t imagine what this means you can try the supposed best coffee in the world yourself. But be cautious: one kilogram costs between 500 and 1200€ and there is a lot of fake Kopi Luwak on the market.
If this sounds too adventurous to you, you might want to try another of Indonesia’s many coffee specialties. You can get a summary here.