Fermentation is key to coffee beans gleaned from civet feces

In 2007’s The Bucket List, Jack Nicholson’s billionaire magnate is a fan of a luxury coffee called kopi luwak, only to be informed that the beans first pass through the digestive tracts of civets and are harvested from their feces prior to roasting. The implication is that the billionaire just liked drinking gimmicky expensive coffee without realizing its less-than-luxurious origins. It’s one of the most expensive coffees in the world, ranging from $45 per pound to $590 per pound, depending on whether the beans are farmed or collected in the wild.

Whether kopi luwak is worth that hefty price tag depends on who you ask. A Washington Post food critic once compared the beverage to stale Folgers, memorably describing the flavor as “petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water.” Yet kopi luwak has many genuine fans who claim the coffee has a unique aroma and taste. Based on a new chemical analysis, they might have a point, according to a paper published in Scientific Reports.

Technically, kopi luwak is a method of processing, not a specific coffee bean variety. Asian palm civets hang around coffee plantations because they love to feast on ripened coffee berries; the berries constitute most of their diet, along with various seeds. The consumed berries undergo fermentation as they pass through the animal’s intestines, and the civets digest the pulp and excrete the beans. Coffee farmers then collect the scat to recover the excreted beans and process and roast them to produce kopi luwak.

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