Kopi Luwak

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Kopi Luwak or Civet coffee is coffee made from coffee cherries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The animals gorge on the ripe berries, and excrete partially-digested beans in their feces, which are then harvested for sale. This process takes place on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, in the Philippines (where the product is called Kape Alamid), in the country of Vietnam, and the coffee estates of south India.

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for up to $600 USD per pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and United States, but it is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though supplies are limited. [1]

Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee, and luwak is a local name of the Palm Civet. The raw, red coffee berries are part of its normal diet, along with insects, small mammals, and other fruit. The inner bean of the berry is not digested, but it is believed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee's flavor by breaking down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste. The beans are excreted still covered in some inner layers of the cherry, and locals then gather them and sell them to dealers. The beans are washed, and given only a light roast so as to not destroy the complex flavors that develop through the process. One small cafe in the hills outside Townsville in Northern Australia has Kopi Luwak coffee on the menu at A$50.00 per cup. The locals line up for it, and it has gained nationwide press. This, however, is the only place it is available in Australia.

A 2004 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) scare led to thousands of Chinese civets being exterminated [2], [3], but the demand for the coffee was not affected.

Vietnam has a similar type of coffee, called weasel coffee which also comes from the droppings of weasels after they eat the coffee cherries. In actuality the "weasel" is just the local version of the Asian Palm Civet. Some sources erroneously claim that the beans are regurgitated instead of defecated. A synthetic process intended to simulate the weasel's digestive system is used to meet demand.

An alternate theory to justify this coffee's reputation proposes that the beans are of superior quality before they are even ingested; though this is not to say that the digestive enzymes play no role. At any given point during a harvest, some coffee berries are not quite- or over-ripe, while others are just right. It is assumed that the civet has evolved as a frugivore of this fruit for hundreds of thousands of years, and is by now adapted to forage on—and later excrete—only the cream of the crop. When the fruit is at its peak, the seeds (or beans) within are equally so, with the expectation that this will come through in the taste of a freshly-brewed cup.