Indonesian civet coffee (Kopi Luwak) Kopi Luwak

Most friends who like coffee are familiar with the name "civet". On the one hand, it is its "craftsmanship", and the other is its price, which seems to cast a mysterious veil over the civet coffee. Let the world, let many friends who love coffee are difficult to see in person.

Civet poop left in a bottle

Musk cat, Indonesian Luwak, is a small animal growing up on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It naturally likes to eat ripe and fresh coffee berries, as well as worms and other local tropical fruits. When this magical elf ate the coffee berries, the core of the berries could not be digested in its intestines and stomach, but could only be excreted with the feces. It may have been an accident a long time ago that the locals disposed of the coffee beans in the feces, and finally fried them into ripe beans for drinking and found their special flavor, so they gradually began to collect this kind of "cat shit".

At present, civet coffee is mainly divided into two categories, one is natural civet coffee, mostly Robusta beans, the output is very small, the price is expensive, and it is very difficult to see on the market; and the other kind is captive civet coffee, basically Arabica beans, this is also most of the civet coffee on the market, the price is also very expensive.

Captive civet coffee, Arabica species

Natural civet coffee Robusta species

Friends who know a little about coffee may ask why the natural, higher-quality civet coffee is Robusta, while the captive one is the better Arabica species. The reason is very simple. Civets are small creatures living in the subtropics and are not cold-resistant themselves, so they basically live in the low elevations of Sumatra, while coffee trees growing at low elevations are mostly robusta coffee, which is resistant to diseases and insect pests. So robusta coffee has naturally become a delicacy for wild muskcats. We do not rule out that some flexible civets go to the highlands 1500 meters above sea level for coffee during the day and to the low elevations at night to avoid the cold, but they are still very few. So if you want civets to eat more delicious Arabica coffee, you have to catch them and pick high-altitude Arabica coffee for them to feed.

Musk cat poop under natural conditions, because under natural conditions, civets eat other things in addition to coffee beans, so the color of the poop is darker, but this kind of civets are healthier and the coffee taste is relatively better. and this kind of natural poop, the production is very rare.

The picture above shows the poop of a captive civet. Because the food fed is relatively clean, there is no food such as insects in the wild, mainly a variety of tropical fruits and coffee fruits, so the civets' poop is also much cleaner. Civets are generally fed with Arabica coffee rather than robusta coffee under natural conditions.

As for why civet coffee has an unusual taste compared with many coffees, many institutions seem to have studied it. I remember an American institution said that due to the unique digestive enzymes in civets, coffee beans undergo a special fermentation process, thus forming a special flavor. For the chemical explanations given by these institutions, let's not say for a moment that the elf can already determine the high quality of this "cat shit" just by eating fully ripe coffee fruit. I heard my friend in Indonesia tell me that this little guy only eats the coffee fruit that just fell that day, and his keen sense of smell allows him to tell whether the coffee is fresh or not. I think this evolved instinct is better than any coffee picker who decides which red fruits should be picked by hand and visually, let alone batch harvesting machines.

The production certificate produced by the village and town that produced the civet coffee (English translation)

The production certificate produced by the village and town that produced the musk cat coffee (Indonesian original)

Civet poop under natural conditions

Captive civet poop