Within the coffee industry, kopi luwak is widely regarded as a gimmick or novelty item. The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) states that there is a “general consensus within the industry…it just tastes bad”. A coffee professional compared the same beans with and without the kopi luwak process using a rigorous coffee cupping evaluation. He concluded: "it was apparent that luwak coffee sold for the story, not superior quality…Using the SCAA cupping scale, the luwak scored two points below the lowest of the other three coffees. It would appear that the luwak processing diminishes good acidity and flavor and adds smoothness to the body, which is what many people seem to note as a positive to the coffee.” Professional coffee tasters were able to distinguish kopi luwak from other coffee samples, but remarked that it tasted “thin”. Some critics claim more generally that kopi luwak is simply bad coffee, purchased for novelty rather than taste. A food writer reviewed kopi luwak available to American consumers and concluded "It tasted just like…Folgers. Stale. Lifeless.
I’ve had it a number of times both in the states and in SE Asia. It’s different but it is really good. Like yeah it is a different coffee and if you judge it to the same criteria as a coffee style that it isn’t, of course it will fail. If a “good coffee” needs to be aggressively acidic with strong notes of papaya, pineapple, Maracuja…this is not that. It is very smooth and subtle and that is what makes it nice and different.
Don’t forget blueberry. You have to be able to taste a hint of blueberry. Did you taste blueberry? Because if not, your extraction process has gone horribly wrong, you’ve bought the wrong beans, you’re using the wrong water,and you probably bloomed for 32 seconds instead of 29.6.
I think modern coffee is judged by how much the tastes reflect its distinct characteristics, which includes physical characteristic of the farm (altitude etc), fermentation process, and roasting process.
It takes a lot of work to produce good coffee, and the end result should let these efforts shine. Acidity, fragrance, and funk are great ways to communicate the life of the coffee to the taster. That is why they are typically the standard to determine good coffee, instead of generic and monotone"smoothness" that is shared across kirkland signature, peets, starbucks, and gas station coffees.
Another part of the equation is that civets were very particular about the cherry beans they ate, so only the best beans at just the right time were eaten and shit out.
Well after it started becoming known as good tasting, people started capturing and feeding the civets crappy cherry beans that weren’t at the proper ripeness instead of gathering the shit from out in the wild where the civets got to be particular.
So now, if you buy it, it’s “shit tier” civet shit beans.
What comes out of that animal on the photo doesn’t look to different from what went in. So my guess is, you’ll just get ordinary beans mixed with some civet intestine lining and stomach acid and whatever else they ate during that time.
I read that what happened is that the workers on the coffee farms weren’t allowed to get coffee for themselves, so they started using these coffee cherries, but then, of course, someone had to take that away from them too so it could be monetized.
I had the opportunity to try this when I was in Indonesia. The place I was at was a cafe advertising the most expensive coffee in the world, I think it was approximately USD$30 for a cup at the time (almost 10 years ago).
I remember seeing the example cages with civets inside them and a description of how it’s made (plus a conversation with a friend I was travelling with), and decided not to try it.
I think it’s important to know that humans treat these animals like absolute shit to literally drink their shit that doesn’t even taste good, but it’s expensive
So I have a story related to this. I teach English in Korea. One time, two 11-year-old students chose kopi luwak as a topic for their in-class (no research) project. I asked what that is, as I had never heard of it. They explained in pre-intermediate English that there is a cat that poops coffee beans. I didn’t believe them at first, because it sounded so silly. But they urged me to look it up. At first, I got confused between ‘kopi’ and ‘coffee’, because Korean has no ‘f’ sound and substitutes a ‘p’ sound. But when I finally found the Wiki page, I was blown away. The fact that this is real would be so funny if it weren’t for all the abuse another user pointed out.
I remember reading that wild animals just eat the best cherries, it has nothing to do with the digestion. The caged animals are just making shit beans.
A big part of this story is that the civets are very picky and only eat the best coffee cherries. There might of course also be other factors, but the pickiness is key.
I remember an episode of QI where someone brought up the fact that Stephen Fry once bought (then) Prince Charles some Kopi Luwak as a present. His response was, “I thought I would get him something he didn’t already have.”
A story I heard was that it was the poor indigenous farmers who were forced to cultivate coffee for the Dutch. They weren’t allowed any of the beans they grew, but were able to collect it from the dung of civets that prowled around near the plantation. Of course, once the colonizers learned that it tasted “good”, it was commoditized too.
