Who thought that the most expensive coffee could come from the waste of an animal? Yes, you read it right, the most expensive coffee is the Kopi Luwak found mostly in Indonesia. Kopi an Indonesian word for coffee and Luwak a name of an Asian Palm civent found in Sumatra when combined named the world’s most expensive coffee. The coffee is made from the beans of coffee cherries which have been eaten and digested by the Asian Palm Civet. This cat-sized mammal came from the family Viverridae native of South-east Asia, South India and southern China. Also known as Toddy Cat, Common Palm Civet, , Motit, Marapatti, Uguduwa, or Maranai, this mammal is the one responsible for creating the said aromatic yet less bitter coffee.
Asian Palm civent likes to eat the ripest and reddest coffee beans, which turns out to be the ones best for brewing. After the beans were eaten, in the mammals’ stomach, they produce proteolytic enzymes that seep into the beans, they then travel to its intestine where they are defecated. The internal digestion adds a unique flavor to the beans and thus removing the bitter flavor. The mammal also digests the soft outer part of the coffee cherries but left undigested the inner beans which it excretes.
After the beans were released from the mammals’ body, they still undergo series of processes such as thorough washing, sun drying, light roasting and the brewing. The coffee is produced mainly on the islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, Philippines and East Timor. It also came to be known in other names such as Moti Coffee, Kape Alamid and kafé-laku.
These most expensive coffee beans can cost up to $600 a pound, and up to $50 per cup. Nowadays, Kopi Luwak sells for about $30 a cup in select coffee shops in Japan and the US. Well, this fact doesn’t seem disgusting or horrible to me, it even sounds amazing and exciting and really made me curious and eager to taste the coffee from the poops of these mammals to know whether it really worth a drink.
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