Right now, deep in the forests of South Asia, a small creature known as the Asian palm civet is pooping out what might be the most expensive cup of coffee on Earth.
It’s called kopi luwak, and a single kilo of it can fetch upwards of a thousand bucks. It’s all because someone over a century ago decided to brew a pot of coffee from beans that had literally been s**t out by an animal.
Kopi luwak has been marketed as the champagne of caffeine. It supposedly produces a smooth and complex brew that will invigorate your mornings, as long as you can push aside the thought that you’re drinking something that fell out of a small furry creature’s a**hole.
No one really knew why this coffee tasted unlike any other. So, some researchers at the Central University of Kerala, publishing their findings in Scientific Reports, decided to find out what makes civet coffee chemically unique, aside from the whole poop part.
Scientists Finally Know Why The $1,000 Cup Of Poop Coffee Tastes Good
Their study compared regular Robusta coffee beans to those recovered from wild civet droppings. Turns out, the post-civet beans were slightly larger and fattier, possibly because the animals are picky eaters who only go for the ripest cherries.
The real discovery, though, was that these beans contained higher levels of caprylic and capric acid methyl esters. That’s a lot of nonsense, but it essentially translates to the compounds that add buttery, creamy notes to the flavor.
In short, the civet’s digestive system acts like a tiny fermentation tank, subtly remixing the bean’s chemistry and giving kopi luwak its rich, dairy-like aroma.
There is a dark side to all of this: most kopi luwak isn’t made by wild civets. It’s mass-produced by civets kept in tiny cages, force-fed nothing but coffee cherries until they’re basically s**tting money.
The Kerala researchers hope their findings can help create lab-grown or synthetic methods to replicate that signature civet flavor that don’t require locking animals in cages and force-feeding them coffee beans just so rich people can swoon over a ridge-and-buttery cup of Joe that will make them s**t in due time.
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