Touring for Authentic Green Coffee Beans

Ms. Tanya Lai said," I would like to get green coffee bean. Must be green, not roasted."

Here it came again. Another authentic Bali coffee tour, a bit different from the last tour that I did with Karl. But besides those places now in Seribatu, and Perean village in Bali, I did not know any people who can supply good quality coffee beans.

So, here was the adventure again.

Roasted coffee only last for about two weeks, she told me. Raw green coffee can last up to a year. Well, if you roast your own coffee, definitely you must get the green bean.

Going to the village was no issue for me. For her, it was a nice experience. I thought she really enjoyed walking through the village road and enjoying the views of coffee being dried in front of every villagers in this village. As long as you can see, you will only see coffee beans put on mats made of bamboo being exposed to the sun light.

As we walked down the village road, we stopped at one of the coffee farmer house because we heard there were a lot of children shouting. We were curious what was going on there. Passed the wooden house, into the inner yard behind the house building, we could see there were more than twenty children, (maybe up to age 10) boys and girls, playing foot ball.

Tanya snapped many pictures of the children with her Nikon D something (it could be D60). The children also posed for her. There was a man, mids 40, at one of the corner cutting a boy's hair. He was one of the coffee farmer. But he did not work at the moment. "Where are they from?" He asked me. I answered, "canada."

We said good bye to the children and the farmer to resume our journey to the coffee warehouse in the heart of the village.

At the warehouse, there was a man who was roasting coffee. I asked him if we could buy coffee. He said there was no stock ready to sell. Hmm, that's odd. So much coffee, but he could not sell any. And he seemed not to be so interested in making any business.

I asked him what coffee he was roasting. "Luwak coffee." he answered shortly.

I walked back outside to meet Tanya who was still busy taking photos. The coffee was not ready, I told her. But at that time, there was another coming down on a motor bike from the village road. He parked his motorbike, and when I saw his face, I tought he looked very familiar. We had conversation with him and said Tanya wanted to buy about 6 kilograms of green coffee beans and 1 kg luwak coffee. He said, he could provide it but he needed some time to prepare them. Especially the luwak, (animal coffee) because he needed to sort which one was the poo and which was the coffee beans (actually I am exaggerating this a bit.)

Tanya paid him a little deposit and he said that he would delivered the coffee to the hotel she stayed. (After some time, I remembered where I met this guy before (his name is Wayan), I met him when he was selling coffee at my other Bali coffee adventure which you can read here.

Note: "Coffee Beans" and "Kids Playing Football" are courtesy of Tanya Lai Photography