An Asian palm civet
Kurit Afshen/Shutterstock
Coffee beans harvested from civet feces have a unique chemistry that may explain why these beans are prized for their flavor.
Asian palm civets (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) are mongoose-like animals native to South and Southeast Asia. Civet coffee, also known as kopi luwak, is one of the most precious and strange luxury drinks in the world. A kilogram of beans that have passed through a civet’s digestive tract can be worth more than $1,000.
Kopi luwak is produced mainly in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, but is also made on a smaller scale in other countries, including India and East Timor. However, animal welfare groups are urging consumers to avoid the industry, accusing it of keeping thousands of civets caged in appalling conditions.
To learn how coffee beans are processed after passing through a civet, Palatty Allesh Sinu of the Central University of Kerala, India, and colleagues collected coffee samples from five coffee-growing farms near Kodagu, in India’s Western Ghats mountain range.
Civet cats live wild on these farms and none of the farms keep the animals in cages. Workers regularly collect the beans from the dung and then add them to the crop of coffee beans grown in the trees. “The places we worked show a harmonious interaction between planters and civets,” says Sinu. “We want to provide planters with information on the chemical composition.”
The researchers collected nearly 70 civet droppings containing coffee beans as well as beans hand-harvested from the plantations’ Robusta coffee trees, before carrying out a series of tests looking at key chemical components, such as fats and caffeine.
Total fat was significantly higher in civet grains than in those harvested from trees, while caffeine, protein and acid content were slightly lower. The lower acidity was likely due to fermentation during digestion, the researchers say.
Volatile organic compounds in civet coffee also showed significant differences compared to regular coffee beans. Some of these components, commonly found in regular coffee beans, were either completely absent from the civet beans or present in minimal amounts.
The team suggests that the higher fat content of civet coffee could contribute to its unique aroma and flavor profile, and that the lower level of protein could lead to decreased bitterness.
Sinu says that caging civets to make kopi luwak is cruel, and the hope is that further work could help develop artificial fermentation processes that result in coffee with an identical chemical composition.
“We hypothesize that the gut microbiome might contribute in some way to the fermentation process,” says Sinu. “Once we know the enzymes involved in digestion and fermentation, we may be able to artificially make civet coffee.”
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