The Strange Tale of Kopi Luwak

Good morning, everyone,

Since we have a long weekend ahead, I'll be roasting on Monday the 16th and then delivering and shipping on Tuesday the 17th. Please have your direct and wholesale orders in by the end of Sunday night.

I'll run some extras and have them here next week - and there are also a few bags here if anyone needs coffee over the weekend.

This week, I'd like to share what is perhaps the strangest story in all of coffee, that of Kopi Luwak, a coffee roasted from green beans that have (politely speaking) passed through the digestive tract of a cat-like creature living in Indonesia.

I won't take credit for writing what is shown below, and I have attributed the articles and reviews as listed. Also, I have included some links at the very bottom you can use to order your own "poop coffee." Go on, I dare you. In fact, I double dare you. (and if you buy some, can I taste just a teaspoon full so I can say I have tried it?)

If this is not enough adventure for you, I invite you to seek out Kopi Muntjak, coffee extracted from the feces of a "barking deer."

Yuck.

Enjoy your weekend.

Kent

From Wikipedia

Kopi Luwak (pronounced [ˈkopi ˈluwak]) or Civet coffee is coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The civets eat the berries, but the beans inside pass through their system undigested. This process takes place on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, in the Philippines (where the product is called Kape Alamid) and in East Timor (locally called kafé-laku). Vietnam has a similar type of coffee, called weasel coffee, which is made from coffee berries which have been regurgitated by local weasels. In actuality the "weasel" is just the local version of the Asian Palm Civet.

Origin and production

Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee, and luwak is a local name of the Asian Palm Civet. The raw, red coffee berries are part of its normal diet, along with insects, small mammals, small reptiles, eggs and nestlings of birds, and other fruit. The inner bean of the berry is not digested, but it has been proposed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee's flavor by breaking down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste. The beans are defecated, still covered in some inner layers of the berry. The beans are washed, and given only a light roast so as to not destroy the complex flavors that develop through the process. Some sources claim that the beans may be regurgitated instead of defecated.

In early days, the beans would be collected in the wild from a "latrine," or a specific place where the civet would defecate as a means to mark its territory, and these latrines would be a predictable place for local gatherers to find the beans. More commonly today, captured civets are fed raw berries, the feces produced are then processed and the coffee beans offered for sale.[citation needed]

Economics

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $120 and $600 USD per pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and the United States. It is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though supplies are limited; only 1,000 pounds (450 kg) at most make it into the world market each year.[1] One small cafe, the Heritage Tea Rooms, in the hills outside Townsville in Queensland, Australia, has Kopi Luwak coffee on the menu at A$50.00 (=US$48.00) per cup, selling approximately four cups a week, which has gained nationwide Australian press.[2] In April 2008, the brasserie of Peter Jones department store in London's Sloane Square started selling a blend of Kopi Luwak and Blue Mountain called Caffe Raro for £50 (=US$99.00) a cup.[3] It has also recently become available at Selfridges, London, as part of their "Edible" range of exotic foods.

A 2004 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) scare led to the extermination of thousands of these civets in China,[4][5] but the demand for the coffee was not affected.

Research

A popular and intuitive hypothesis to justify this coffee's reputation proposes that the beans are of superior quality before they are even ingested.[citation needed] At any given point during a harvest, some coffee berries are not quite ripe or overripe, while others are just right. The palm civet evolved as an omnivore that naturally eats fruit and passes undigested material as a natural link to disperse seeds in a forest ecosystem. Where coffee plants have been introduced into their habitat, civets only forage on the most ripe berries, digest the fleshy outer layer, and later excrete the seeds eventually used for human consumption. Thus, when the fruit is at its peak, the seeds (or beans) within are equally so, with the expectation that this will come through in the taste of a freshly brewed cup. As this may be true for the beans derived from wild-collected civet feces, farm-raised civets are likely fed beans of varying quality and ripeness, so one would expect the taste of farm-raised beans to be less.

Further research by Dr. Massimo Marcone at the University of Guelph (CA) has shown that the digestive juices of the civet actually penetrate the beans and change the proteins, resulting in their unique flavor.

Similar Coffees

Kopi Muncak (also Kopi Muntjak) is a similar type of coffee produced from the feces of several species of barking deer, or Muntjac, that are found throughout Southeast Asia. Unlike civet or "weasel" coffee, this type is usually not produced from captive deer and most commonly collected in the wild, especially in Malaysia and in the Indonesian Archipelago.

Further information is available online by doing a Google search on "cat poop coffee."

Winter Reading List

Hi Friends!

Brrrrrr . . . it is FOUR outside as I write this today.

We are roasting coffee this weekend on Sunday, February 8 and then delivering locally and shipping on Monday the 9th. Please send in your orders by Sunday morning at 8:00 (though we will roast extras of some coffees and have them available through the week).

I'd like to ask all of you a favor. Tanji and I are always striving to improve this business and to offer coffees and service that are are what you all need. Could you please take just a few minutes and respond to the survey below? This would help us know more about what is going on in your world of coffee, and your input would help us a lot. The survey is complete anonymous, and if you have other coffee lovers you would like to pass this along to, we'd love their feedback too.

Just click this link and the survey should open in a new window.

Special offer! If you live in the Freeport or Yarmouth areas, and you have never purchased coffee from us, we're offering you a single pound of any of our coffees for just $5.00. The small print is that you will need to stop by here at the roastery and pick it up, and this may subject you to my entheusiasm about coffee and a free cuppa or two. Email me back if you'd like to do this (and tell your friends too!).

Giddy Goats Espresso! The alchemists in our espresso lab have emerged with the very amazing Giddy Goats Espresso Blend, and we will be doing our first production run of this one on Sunday if you would like to order some. It is now in the online store and if you are ordering direct, it's $12.50 a pound.

I have a new email address - please change your records to this one. God in a Cup

Since we are now in the depths of winter and are settling in before the fire for another few months, I'd like to share some suggestions with you of some great coffee books. Shown below are some of my favorites, and I have shamelessly borrowed the descriptions here from Amazon. Many of these can be ordered used from them if you'd like to save a few quid (with the couple of exceptions shown).

Enjoy the weekend, everyone! Thanks as always for all your support.

Kent

Books

Uncommon Grounds The History Of Coffee And How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast: Caffeinated beverage enthusiast Pendergrast (For God, Country and Coca-Cola) approaches this history of the green bean with the zeal of an addict. His wide-ranging narrative takes readers from the legends about coffee's discoveryAthe most appealing of which, Pendergast writes, concerns an Ethiopian goatherd who wonders why his goats are dancing on their hind legs and butting one anotherAto the corporatization of the specialty cafe. Pendergrast focuses on the influence of the American coffee trade on the world's economies and cultures, further zeroing in on the political and economic history of Latin America. Coffee advertising, he shows, played a major role in expanding the American market. In 1952, a campaign by the Pan American Coffee Bureau helped institutionalize the coffee break in America. And the invention of the still ubiquitous Juan Valdez in a 1960 ad campaign caused name recognition for Colombian coffee to skyrocket within months of its introduction. The Valdez character romanticizes a very real phenomenonAthe painstaking process of tending and harvesting a coffee crop. Yet the price of a tall latte in America, Pendergrast notes, is a day's wage for many of the people who harvest it on South American hillsides. Pendergrast does not shy away from exploring such issues in his cogent histories of Starbucks and other firms. Throughout the book, asides like the coffee jones of health-food tycoon C.W. PostAwho raged against the evils of coffee and developed Postum as a substitute for regular brewAprovide welcome diversions. Pendergrast's broad vision, meticulous research and colloquial delivery combine aromatically, and he even throws in advice on how to brew the perfect cup. 76 duotones.

God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee by Michaele Weissman: From Ethiopia to Panama to Portland, journalist Weissman shadows today's vanguard coffee guys in their pursuit of the perfect, caffeinated beverage. With increased demand for specialty roasts superior to the mass-marketed offerings at Starbucks, Weissman illustrates how the origin, flavor compounds and socioeconomic impact of a cup of coffee are relevant now more than ever. Alongside industry leaders from some of the U.S.'s top roasters—Counter Culture, Intelligentsia and Stumptown—Weismann treks to the birthplace of coffee, remote plantations, and international competitions where the best coffees in the world are cupped (or tasted), scored and where winners like Panamanian grower Hacienda La Esmeralda's revered Geisha coffee earn $130 per pound. Visiting both ends of the producer-consumer spectrum, she sheds light on the partnership between those who sell premium coffee and the impoverished who farm it—examining how specialty standards enable improved production, exceptional beans, fair prices and fatter pockets across the board. On the imbibing end, Weissman penetrates today's amped-up coffee culture: its sleek coffee bars, tattooed coffee-geeks behind the counters, fiercely competitive roasters working alongside champion baristas. Tagging along behind the main characters in today's specialty coffee scene, Weissman travels from the exotic to the expected to artfully deconstruct the connoisseur's cup of coffee.

Javatrekker: Dispatches From the World of Fair Trade Coffee by Dean Cycon: This surprisingly gripping travelogue is filled with tales from the "coffeelands," barely-on-the-map locales in Africa, the Americas, and Asia where coffee farmers struggle to survive. Written with knowledge and good cheer by the founder of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee, the book reads more like a trippy adventure than a business trip, though the issues Cycon raises are vital, prescient and little known ("99 percent of the people involved in coffee... have never been to a coffee village"). While learning first-hand about the hardships involved in growing and selling coffee beans-the world's second most valuable commodity, after oil-the author finds himself in Guatemala praying to an effigy in a Mickey Mouse tie and cowboy boots; eating armadillo leg in Colombia; working to heal landmine victims in Nicaragua and war widows in Sumatra; and meeting with all manner of farmers, bureaucrats and dignitaries. His dispatches are highly enlightening, demonstrating how few national governments provide coffee growers with water, education, health care or even protection from harmful pesticides; further, coffee growers' income is subject to the whims of financial speculators half a world away. Reading this eye-opening book, it's impossible not to reconsider-and feel grateful for-the myriad people behind your morning cup.

The Joy of Coffee: The Essential Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying - Revised and Updated by Corby Kummer: With coffee bars springing up on every urban corner, this engrossing guide couldn't arrive at a better moment. Kummer writes on food for the Atlantic very well, thanks, because he injects his own physical experience with his subjects into the exposition. Here, he takes us through the coffee bean's progress from tree to tummy, eyewitness-style. He tells us what it's like to pick coffee because he went and picked it, what it's like to cup coffee (the method by which roasted beans are qualitatively sorted) because he cupped with the pros, what it's like roasting coffee because he tried it at home as well as scrutinized it being done as a business, etc. He analyzes and advises on grinding and brewing methods; he appreciates espresso and its appurtenances; he describes the coffees of different growing countries; he discusses caffeine and its health effects; and then, he wraps the book up with coffee-complementary dessert recipes and a resource section. Kummer's Baedeker of the exquisitely bitter brew is, as the old slogan says, good to the last drop.

The Professional Barista's Handbook: An Expert Guide to Preparing Espresso, Coffee, and Tea by Scott Rao: FROM THE AUTHOR: When I began in the coffee business fourteen years ago, I read every book I could find about coffee. After reading all of those books, however, I felt as if I hadn t learned much about how to make great coffee. My coffee library was chock-full of colorful descriptions of brewing styles, growing regions, and recipes, with a few almost-unreadable scientific books mixed in. I would have traded in all of those books for one serious, practical book with relevant information about making great coffee in a café. Fourteen years later, I still haven t found that book. I know many other professionals as well as some obsessive nonprofessionals would like to find that same book I ve been looking for. This book is my attempt to give it to them.

Espresso Coffee, Second Edition: The Science of Quality by Rinantonio Viani and Andrea Illy: "Overall this book serves as a complete overview not only of espresso coffee but also of coffee in general. With its comprehensive overview of the parameters important to coffee quality and coffee consumption on human health it becomes a good reference book for both food scientists and nutritionists in the field." - Massimo Marcone, University of Guelph, Canada for FOOD RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL (2005) "A vital resource for anyone wishing to deepen their knowledge of coffee and its production, this book, with its industrial and historical perspectives, manages to combine the delivery of complex scientific data with pure enthusiasm for the product." - CAFE CULTURE (July 2005) ".the book's precision with the details of coffee science is unparalleled. It balances scientific prowess and readability without overwhelming the reader, whether new to the coffee world or a veteran." - FRESH CUP (June 2005) NOTE: This is a very, very scientific book. I feel like there is no more comprehensive tome on coffee anywhere, but it is not for the faint-hearted. It is also priced more like a textbook, so if you are curious about it, I'd recommend trying to get it first on an inter-library loan rather than buying it sight unseen.

Home Coffee Roasting, Revised, Updated Edition: Romance and Revival by Kenneth Davids: In the past decade, coffee roasting has gone from a fringe trend of true believers to an increasingly mainstream audience. Long considered the bible of the home-roasting movement, Home Coffee Roasting has been completely revised throughout with new, up-to-date sections on the latest developments in home-roasting equipment and provides step-by-step guidelines to the coffee-roasting process. The new edition also features: -A much expanded resources section for green beans and home-roasting equipment -The best techniques for storing green coffee beans -The new home roasters: how to evaluate and use them -Tips on perfecting a roast -Information on how to create your own blend. With over a dozen home-roasting machines newly on the market, and an ever-expanding number of stores and internet sites catering to the home coffee-roasting market, now more than ever Home Coffee Roasting is the essential book for every true coffee lover.

Espresso: Ultimate Coffee, Second Edition by Kenneth Davids: "Kenneth Davids writes with authority and panache. There's no one I'd rather read and learn from. He'll turn your kitchen into the espresso bar of your dreams-and the more aspiring baristas who read this book, the safer the country will be for the new world of lattes sweeping the nation." --Corby Kummer, The Atlantic Monthly "Kenneth Davids's new book blends the myths and history with the technology and culture that create this nouveau art form we call 'espresso.' It's the perfect companion while enjoying the pleasures of this magnificent beverage." NOTE: If you buy this one, make sure you are getting the second edition, as the first is quite outdated.

The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop, Revised and Updated Edition by Gregory Dicum and Nina Luttinger: A freshly updated edition of the best introduction to one of the world's most popular products, The Coffee Book is jammed full of facts, figures, cartoons, and commentary covering coffee from its first use in Ethiopia in the sixth century to the rise of Starbucks and the emergence of Fair Trade coffee in the twenty-first. The book explores the process of cultivation, harvesting, and roasting from bean to cup; surveys the social history of café society from the first coffeehouses in Constantinople to beatnik havens in Berkeley and Greenwich Village; and tells the dramatic tale of high-stakes international trade and speculation for a product that can make or break entire national economies. It also examines the industry's major players, revealing how they have systematically reduced the quality of the bean and turned a much-loved product into a commodity and lifestyle accoutrement, ruining the lives of millions of farmers around the world in the process. Finally, The Coffee Book, hailed as a Best Business Book by Library Journal when it was first published, considers the exploitation of labor and damage to the environment that mass cultivation causes, and explores the growing "conscious coffee" market and Fair Trade movement.

And then, here are some links (from our website) of some great online resources and forums:

Coffee Review: This site is the online presence of the wonderful Ken Davids, whose great books gave many people their first look at the depth of the coffee scene. In addition to reviews of the most outstanding coffees available, the site is an extraordinary resource into the growing regions, preparation methods and nomenclature of the industry.

CoffeeGeek: The CoffeeGeek website, now boasting in excess of five million readers a month, is a portal into community-based features including a user-fed library of consumer brewing equipment reviews (the very best place to start if you are considering a purchase) and a seemingly endless online forum with discussions of every topic you can imagine. Use the search feature to drill down and get answers to your questions.

Espresso My Espresso: This is fun site, with the main attraction a 97-chapter personal journal that charts author Randy Glass' journey from newbie to home roaster to espresso aficionado and beyond.

Home Barista: If espresso has seized you and made you want to know more, this is a great place to start. The equipment reviews go well beyond performance characteristics of machines and grinders and help you really understand why good espresso is worth the investment of time and money. This is also a great resource for learning about the techniques you need to master to produce great espresso at home.

SCAA: The Specialty Coffee Association of America. This important trade group represents the growing sector of the coffee industry that roasts, serves and trades the highest quality coffees. The site has some great resource material and outlines the services and events provided by the association.

ICO: The International Coffee Organization (ICO) was originally started by the United Nations as a vehicle for linking coffee producer and consumer countries. Today, the ICO has a membership of 77 member countries (45 coffee exporting and 32 importing), and their site is a nice source of high level statistics and information about the global industry.

Bikes to Rwanda: The website of an amazing program launched by the owner of Portland, Oregon's famous Stumptown Coffee Roasters that spawned a custom-designed affordable bicycle that enables Rwandan coffee growers to dramatically improve their ability to move their coffees from farm to market.

Starbucks Gossip: Imagine an online forum where Starbucks employees from far and wide share their candid thoughts (good and bad) about the company. Its kind of like spying, but there's some fun stuff here to read.