Brown Nectar

Speaking of coffee, this morning I had my first cup of Kopi Luwak, which is, apparently, the most expensive coffee in the world. Around 500 kilos are produced each year and a standard 250g bag retails at around £20. Some enthusiasts have been known to fork out $50 for a single cup. What makes the coffee unusual, and ridiculously expensive, is its partial fermentation in the gut of the wild Indonesian civet cat or Luwak, which looks not unlike a raccoon.

In its post-cat, pre-retail phase, Kopi Luwak looks like this:

 

It isn’t entirely clear whether the coffee is indeed superior or just a masterful marketing gimmick, but Massimo Marcone, author of Composition and Properties of Indonesian Palm Civet Coffee and Ethiopian Civet Coffee, offers the following explanation:  

During the night, the civet uses its eyesight and smell to seek out and eat only the ripest coffee cherries. The coffee cherry fruit is completely digested by the Luwak, but the beans are excreted in their faeces. The changes in the beans show that during transit through the civet’s gastro-intestinal track, various digestive biochemicals are actually penetrating the outer coffee cherry and reaching the actual bean surface, where a chemical colour change takes place… The civet beans are lower in total protein, indicating that during digestion, proteins are being broken down and are also leached out of the bean. Since proteins are what make coffee bitter during the roasting process, the lower levels of proteins decrease the bitterness of Kopi Luwak coffee. When coffee cherries are processed through the digestive track, they actually undergo a type of wet processing due to acidification in the stomach and fermentation due to the natural intestinal microflora. Lactic acid bacteria are preferred in wet processing systems. Lactic acid bacteria happen to be major colonizing bacteria in the civet’s digestive track.

So how does it taste? Well, it’s rich and smooth and it does have a distinct hint of caramel. Quite pleasant, in fact, and thankfully without even a whiff of feline anus. Though once this bag has been consumed, I think I’ll revert to the sharper caffeine kick of Taylor’s Hot Lava Java. 

Comments

[virgil xenophon]

As a denizen of New Orleans might I suggest a local little known brand (even to many New Orleanians) called "Try-Me" Brand--it is positively addicting--slightly sweet, not bitter.
AT:
http://local.picayuneitem.com/Try-Me+Coffee+Mills.262134.101352938.html

[virgil xenophon]

For some reason the above link doesn't work, so just Google, which is how I arrived at the above address from Google.

[Anna]

The photo convinced me.

[David]

Thankfully, it doesn’t look like that when it comes out of the bag. I don’t have the palette to offer a more detailed analysis, but I found it agreeable and, dare I say it, rather chocolaty.

[georges]

DId you drink it as an espresso, Americano, cafe au lait, or some bizarre Starbucks compilation (venti skinny mocacino thingamajig...)?

[David]

With a drop of milk. Pure heathenism, I know.

[BackwardsBoy]

Have you hallucinated yet?

[John D]

Okay, I'm game. Where did you get it?

[David]

John,

“Where did you get it?”

It was a gift. But you could try the following:

http://www.smithscoffee.co.uk/

Or,
http://www.animalcoffee.com/
http://www.kopiluwakonline.com/kolucobe1.html
http://www.baliorchidgardens.com/coffeeluwak.html

BackwardsBoy,

“Have you hallucinated yet?”

Not so far as I know. But then I only had the one cup.

[John D]

Thanks!

[Franklin]

Civet cats were an infection vector for SARS. I'm just saying.

[Steve Skubinna]

I can't believe there's anybody left who has not read Dave Barry's piece from about ten years back on luwak coffee. Google it, it's all over the place.

[David]

Franklin,

“Civet cats were an infection vector for SARS. I’m just saying.”

I thought SARS was more of a bat thing.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2005/2005-10-05-01.asp

I gather there are Chinese species of civet that have been associated with SARS, rightly or not, but the coffee production involves a different, wild species. So far as I’m aware no SARS case has ever involved the drinking of Kopi Luwak. I’m also assured that cleaning, roasting, grinding and brewing should eliminate any theoretical risk.

[Steve Skubinna]

You're right, David, there's no reason that drinking coffee brewed from Indonesian weasel poop should be a health risk.

[clazy]

I think if this were much more than a marketing gimmick, someone would be making the same beans in big reactors. But though people will pay £20 for 250g of beans extracted from civet droppings in Indonesia, they would probably not pay £10 for a kilo of beans processed by a chemical company in Manchester.

[swag]

Enough with the gag novelty coffee for the scatalogically-obsessed coffee tourists already.

[thiaCyn]

Sicccccccccc

[-J]

Thus giving a new slant to the old expression, "the cat's ass..."

[Alberto]

I want to warn you that between 80 % and 90% of Kopi Luwak (Civet Coffee), which is available at coffee stores and on the Internet is not 100% Kopi Luwak and it sometimes does not contain anything of the genuine coffee, especially when it is advertised with the following slogan: “This coffee is so good that even the Luwak would like to try it”.
Having said all this, I would recommend that you should investigate where the coffee comes from and who sells it. You should buy the coffee in small quantities and from serious sellers. After trying the different brands decide which one you prefer.
Like any other expensive product, Kopi Luwak is not free from fakeness and tricky mixtures, that is why buying Kopi Luwak is an act of trust to the producer.
If you want more info about Kopi Luwak or just want to try it, drop me a line to: info@realkopiluwak.com