Coffee Luwak ( Kopi Luwak)

While birds and other wildlife find homes on coffee plantations, any creature that actually eats the crop would necessarily be considered a pest. Right? Well, not entirely. On coffee plantations in the south and southeast Asian range of the common palm civet, these coffee-eating carnivores are welcome members of the work force.
Weighing four to 11 pounds, the common palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphrodites) is a smallish carnivore that lives largely in the trees, where it emerges at night to forage alone for a mixed diet of fruit, insects, and
small mammals.


While often described as catlike, palm civets could probably better be thought of as an Asian version of a raccoon or one of the raccoon's tropical relatives like a coati or kinkajou.
Like our raccoon, this palm civet has no problem co-existing with people, and is happy to take advantage of the fruits of human labor. In Asia, the palm civet is also known as the toddy cat, for its fondness for the palm juice that is tapped to make a sweet liquor called toddy. It also eats fruit crops such as mangos, melons, and bananas. On coffee plantations, palm civets dine heavily on coffee cherries. However, they are not pests because palm civets digest only the outer pulp of fruit, passing the coffee beans unharmed through their digestive systems. And because palm civets repeatedly deposit their droppings in piles at the same spots, the coffee beans are easily collected.
In some areas, these beans are merely added to the day's harvest as they are found. In others, however, workers collect these beans separately so they can be roasted then brewed into kopi luwak--civet coffee. Kopi luwak is reputedly the best of all coffees because palm civets pluck and eat only the most perfectly ripe cherries!
Virtually unstudied, the palm civet's foraging habits are unknown. (Few mammals, however, eat unripe fruits, so the palm civet's selectivity is not surprising.) Whether the beans are affected as they go through the animal's gut is also unknown. For that matter, there is some debate about whether coffee called kopi luwak was ever anywhere near a palm civet. In any case, coffee marketed as kopi luwak is sold--at very high prices--in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Recently, kopi luwak hit American shores, not surprisingly in California. Imported from a dealer in Europe by M.P. Mountanous in San Francisco, unroasted kopi luwak beans sell for $110 a pound. Roasted, a pound of the beans goes for $175 (!) at a Mendocino gourmet coffee shop. Asked how he knew the beans were really collected from civet scats, M.P. Mountanous representative Tom Kilty says, "We operate on trust." As for the taste, Kilty says distributor Mark Mountanous describes the brew as "gamey."

Best Regards:
Radja Kopi Luwak
email : chris.crador@gmail.com
web : http://www.radjachivetcoffee.blogspot.com