Civet Poo Coffee

Kopi luwak, or civet coffee, is a rare, expensive, and low-production variety of coffee. A rather unusual process is required to produce the coffee. First, the Asian Palm Civet, native to the Indonesian Archipelago, selects and eats certain wild coffee cherries. The civet consumes the cherries for their outer pulp, and the the bean there enclosed passes through the civet’s digestive tract intact, but having been altered by the cats’ stomach enzymes. The resulting, defecated coffee beans are collected, cleaned, roasted, and exported. Thus the pet name “civet poo coffee.”

There are some farmed civet coffees, but the free-range varieties are far preferable, not only for the benefit of the cats, who are allowed to roam wild (free-range civet poo coffee is vegan-friendly), but also because they are then free to choose which coffee cherries they eat, which should result in better quality beans.

I received some civet poo coffee as a holiday gift, and I finally had a chance to try it over the weekend. Products like these risk being mere luxury goods, delicacies with absurd cost meant to speak to the buyer’s snobbery than anything else. They work like ostentatious accessories or brand names, like diamonds or Bentleys.

But unlike caviar or truffles or foie gras or whatever, civet poo coffee isn’t unusual in form or nature. It doesn’t have an exotic taste or composition, and one doesn’t prepare it in an unusual way—just grind and brew (I use a french press). The roasted beans don’t smell particularly interesting (or even very good), and the resulting appearance is nothing special, just ordinary black coffee.

It’s just damn good ordinary black coffee. It doesn’t taste woody or nutty, it just tastes like coffee. Very smooth and somewhat dense in the mouth, with almost no acidity whatsoever, either on the tongue or in the aftertaste. It’s a humble sort of luxury product, one that just says, I am a very good version of an ordinary product. Nothing more to see here. No flash, no bling. That’s really the best review of civet coffee—it’s a really good cup of joe.