Coffee is one of the world’s most popular drinks. Billions of people all over the globe start their day with a cup of freshly brewed coffee, and coffee shops and cafes can be found in every corner of the globe.
The world runs on caffeine, and coffee has quickly become a part of our global culture. We drink it at home, at work, and socially, and there are hundreds of different ways to drink it. There is also a coffee bean for every occasion, and gourmet beans grown and harvested that offer some of the finest brews you can buy.
Kopi Luwak coffee, sometimes called Civet Coffee, is one of the world’s most prized beans, and a unique coffee drinking experience. This coffee, primarily from Indonesia, has a very special taste that comes from a natural process discovered hundreds of years ago. It is sometimes called cat poop coffee and is possibly one of the world’s most exclusive and luxurious coffee beans.
First, We Need to Get to Know Coffee a Little Better
Though we call it the coffee bean, coffee is actually a seed held in a fruit that is a lot like a cherry or berry. This fruit is grown on trees across the world, and the different varieties produce different seeds with unique flavors.
The seeds are harvested from the fruit and roasted and dried to produce the coffee beans that we can find in supermarkets, or they are pre-ground into different grades of coffee powders. The finest grinds of these powders are then freeze-dried to make instant coffees.
The Cats Eat the Berries, and We Roast the Seeds
The Civet Cat is a similar size to a typical house cat and lives in the wild around Indonesia. These cats climb the trees and eat ripe and nearly ripe fruit straight from the branch.
The Civet Cats cannot fully digest the seeds, or beans, in the fruit and so these are passed in their droppings, which is why it is also known as cat poop coffee. This partial digestion process has a unique effect on the beans that preserves their flavor in a way that cannot be replicated by any other method. These beans are then cleaned, thankfully, and roasted to make coffee just like any other bean.
How and Why Was This Discovered?
How and why people started picking coffee beans from cat poop is a fair question, and the simplest answer is that desperate times call for desperate measures. What would you do for a cup of coffee if you really needed one?
When the Dutch colonized Indonesia, they forbade the locals from harvesting coffee for their own use. Coffee was one of the most highly-priced resources in the world at the time, and the Dutch wanted to sell as much as possible to profit from the islands.
The locals noticed that the Civet Cats would eat the berries in the trees and that there would be beans left in their poop. Unable to harvest their own beans, and in need of some coffee, some enterprising Indonesians collected beans from the cat poop and washed them well before roasting the beans and trying a brew. Not only did this method work, without leaving a trace or scent of cat poop, but it also made an amazing cup of coffee.
If you are a big coffee fan, then Kopi Luwak coffee should definitely be on your list of beans to try. This incredible flavor is one of the world’s finest coffees, and don’t worry; it is completely cat poop free.
