Did you know that the most expensive coffees in the world are produced with animal excrement? Well, the goal of this topic is to help you learn how, for several years now, an exclusive market has emerged for coffee made with the feces of certain mammals. So, let's get started.
The civet or luwak
Kopi means coffee, and luwak is the Indonesian name for civet. It's a small, cat-like animal that lives on various Indonesian islands: Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and Bali. These regions produce the civet variety that gives rise to Kopi luwak, one of the most expensive coffees in the world.
Kopi Luwak is a gourmet coffee obtained from coffee cherries at their optimal ripeness after being digested by the civet cat. The coffee plant produces fleshy, red, purple, and distinctly yellow fruits called cherries. These contain two kernels or pits, each containing a coffee bean. The pits are semi-rigid, transparent shells with a parchment-like appearance. When they are removed, the green coffee beans are obtained, ready for roasting and packaging.
Civets are mammals that feed almost exclusively on coffee. They have the ability to select the best beans for consumption and often gorge themselves on them after selecting them according to their optimal ripeness. After eating the coffee, the beans pass through the digestive system, where some changes occur: the internal coffee bean is not digested, but it appears to be chemically modified by enzymes present in the civet's stomach, which add flavor to the coffee by breaking down the proteins that produce its bitterness.
The resulting beans are collected by local farmers, who wash them and lightly roast them to minimize their flavor. This entire process results in a full-bodied coffee with a strong aroma and light color, neither bitter nor acidic, leaving a caramelized aftertaste. This unique process and its pleasant flavor are what make Kopi Luwak so expensive around the world.
The elephant
The Blacky Ivory Coffee company collects coffee beans from the animals' droppings, which, once washed and roasted, become one of the most expensive blends in the world. They call it Black Ivory Coffee. In the heart of the hills of northern Thailand, the wives of elephant keepers collect coffee beans from the animals' droppings. Once washed and roasted, they become a unique coffee, one of the most expensive in the world.
Canadian Blake Dinkin discovered that elephants would occasionally eat coffee during periods of drought in Southeast Asia. At first, he thought that giving the elephants some beans would make good coffee. But this idea didn't work out. It took him nine years to find what he was really looking for.
The elephant's stomach functions like a slow cooker, where the coffee beans marinate with the other herbs and fruits the pachyderms consume. The gastric juices, in turn, help eliminate the coffee's bitterness.
Coffee connoisseurs and owners of famous coffee shops in Europe consider this type of coffee to be of little interest. It's a curious coffee, but it's not the best product. To make truly good coffee, you have to know how to ferment it, and when this process takes place in the stomach of an animal, it's even more complicated, as the final mixture has a rather inconsistent flavor.
However, the fact that the beans come from the belly of a Thai elephant is what has given this particular coffee its fame, which, due to its high price, is only sold in luxury Asian hotels and restaurants.
The coati
In Peru, one of the world's most expensive coffees is produced by harvesting Arabica beans from the dung of a small raccoon-like animal called the coati. Copying the method used in Indonesia with the civet, coatis eat the ripe beans and expel them, partially fermented, in their dung. The coffee is then washed and roasted for export.
The weasel
At the beginning of the 20th century, around 2001, coffee production from the droppings of weasels, a small mammal found especially in Asia and the Americas, became very popular in Vietnam. Since the late 20th century, this popular type of coffee has been known for its savory and sensual flavor. The process involves feeding weasels ripe coffee beans, which undergo fermentation in their stomachs through the digestive process and then expel the beans along with part of their husks. Farmers then collect the strings of processed beans, wash them, and roast them to produce a smooth, almost chocolatey coffee. This coffee has been distributed more locally than outside the country, and over time, its production has declined due to the reduction in weasel numbers, leading producers to employ other methods using enzymes that they claim resemble weasel gastric juices.
I hope this topic has been of interest to you, and at the same time serves as an incentive to investigate a little more about this curious way of producing coffee, even with other mammals of the many that exist, whether domestic or wild.