Kopi Luwak- the most expensive coffee

Well guys ever wondered what the most expensive coffee in the world is? Well i sure have and have known for some time, thank to Discovery channel. So I just decided to post a post about "Kopi Luwak" here too.

    Its a coffee that i will never want to taste probably or maybe just once or twice, o well to be honest depends on if i like it that much or not.

    There is a small catch with this special coffee production, or should i say a small cat. You see in order to get Kopi Luwalk a kind of cat like creature (check 2 picture) must eat the coffee berries. And well you guessed it the Kopi Luwalk coffee is really the poop of this small animal.

This small cat like creature name is Asian Palm Civet. A civet eats the berries for their fleshy pulp. In its stomach, proteolytic enzymes seep into the beans, making shorter peptides and more free amino acids. Passing through a civet's intestines the beans are then defecated, keeping their shape. After gathering, thorough washing, sun drying, light roasting and brewing, these beans yield an aromatic coffee with much less bitterness, widely noted as the most expensive coffee in the world.

Kopi luwak is produced mainly on the islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, and also in the Philippines (where the product is called motit coffee in the Cordillera and kape alamid in Tagalog areas) and also in East Timor (where it is called kafé-laku). Weasel coffee is a loose English translation of its name cà phê Chồn in Vietnam,  where popular, chemically simulated versions are also produced.

The origin of Kopi Luwak is closely connected with the history of Coffee production in Indonesia. In early 18th century The Dutch established the cash-crop plantations in their colony in Dutch East Indies islands of Java and Sumatra, including Arabica coffee introduced from Yemen. During the era of Cultuurstelsel (1830—1870), 

the Dutch prohibited the native farmers and native plantation workers to pick coffee fruits for their own use. Yet the native farmers desired to have a taste of the famed coffee beverage. Soon the natives learned that certain species of musang or luwak (Asian Palm Civet) consumed these coffee fruits, yet they left the coffee seeds undigested in their droppings. The natives collect these Luwak's dropping coffee seeds; clean, roast and grind it to make coffee beverage. The fame of aromatic civet coffee spread from locals to Dutch plantation owners and soon become their favorites, yet because of its rarity and unusual process, the civet coffee was expensive even in colonial times.

In the coffee industry, wet processed or fermented coffees are known to have superior flavour to dry-processed coffee, he said. Lactic acid bacteria are preferred in wet processing systems. Lactic acid bacteria happen to be major colonizing bacteria in the civet’s digestive track.” The unique Kopi Luwak flavour could be due to the type of wet process the beans undergo in the animal’s digestive tracks, he said.

Although certified blinded human tasters could find little difference in the overall flavour and aroma of the beans, an electronic nose machine could detect that the aroma of the civet coffee beans is also affected.

So it tastes good, but is the coffee, having travelled trough an animal’s digestive track, safe to drink? Marcone found that although civet coffee beans are significantly more contaminated than regular beans, the civet beans on the market are actually quite clean.


So well that the history of the Kopi Luwalk i personally would give it a try once i got used to the production quirks.