Civet Coffee, a Pre-Digested Delight

For this year's A-Z challenge, I'm posting juicy tidbits of researchy goodness for your interest and edification. I intend to use these as story prompts for the terrifying writing challenge Story a Day in May. You may use them however you wish.


I love a cup of coffee - one might say I am a devotee or even a coffee snob. I love the ritual of grinding beans, the scent of coffee, and, as a writer who delights in burning the midnight oil, I rely on a good solid daily caffeine kick to focus my mind.

There is one type of coffee I've never tried: the infamous kopi luwak. I understand this was on Oprah a while back? You might have heard of it.

Kopi luwak is coffee that has passed through the intestinal tract of this little guy, the luwak, or palm civet, who has a wonderful latin name: paradoxurus hermaphroditus. Isn't he cute?

 Source

The luwak eats the red fruit of the coffee tree ("coffee cherries"). It digests the outer fruit part, and poops out the seeds / beans, which have fermented due to their exposure to the luwak's digestive enzymes. Fermentation is one type of normal coffee processing in order to separate the fruit from the desirable bean, but usually this is done in water.

Richard Karno of The Novel Café in Santa Monica describes kopi luwak as "the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. It’s really good, heavy with a caramel taste, heavy body. It smells musty and junglelike green, but it roasts up real nice."

On a sad note, while kopi luwak is typically foraged in its naturally occurring Sumatran environment, the nutso craze for it has created a factory farming scenario for palm civets, which is just about the grossest and most excessive manifestation of supply-and-demand sickness I've encountered. There is apparently a cruelty-free option based on synthetic enzymes that mimic the luwak's digestive traits. (If you decide you just try this coffee, please buy it responsibly.)

On a more story-promptish note, this whole deal has me thinking about rare culinary delights; about foods that depend on a rare creature for their processing; about geese who lay golden eggs; about fountains of youth. Could be a good story in here.