Cat Poop Coffee – A Review of Kopi Luwak

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Review of Kopi Luwak coffee. Indonesian Grocery Inc./Paradise Coffee Inc.

I’m not sure I’d ever heard of Kopi Luwak, the so-called cat poop coffee. But I have an adventurous palate, so when I got sent a sample for review, I had no qualms about tasting it.

My fiancée, though, sat decidedly on the other side of the fence. “If you make that in our French press, the wedding is off,” she said.

Civet Kopi Luwak coffee is made from beans that have been eaten and shat by the civet, a catlike animal native to parts of the world where people apparently think it’s cool to pick things out of animal poo and eat them.

The beans are washed, and then they are roasted as any other coffee, but the these particular beans carry a price reportedly as high as $600 a pound, presumably because there aren’t many civets or humans in this line of work.

Review of Kopi Luwak

Before I dive into my own review, first take a look at what others have said. Here’s a quick video review from the folks at Tested:

Now, back to my own observations. I got a few friends, actually my co-workers, to help.

The coffee is packaged like any other. My sample is labeled “Kopi Luwak, High Class Coffee.” Indeed. It’s a medium roast. There’s no mention of the production method on the label.

It doesn’t look unusual; nor does it possess a foreign scent. My dogs did not attempt to sniff or pick up the beans.

I had to borrow a coffee machine from some curious friends (and I used an old coffee grinder I keep as a backup). I brewed enough to fill a large Thermos to take to work to see if anyone there was interested.

To my surprise, co-workers were clamoring for a sip, with a few exceptions.

There was one tense moment about 30 minutes after consuming the drink when a colleague asked me, “You haven’t experienced any ill effects from the coffee, have you?” No, I hadn’t. She decided her own queasiness was from the caffeine, and nobody else noticed any sort of glitch.

Moving on, the coffee itself is quite smooth, with not a hint of bitterness. This is truly very fine stuff! It has a rich, almost caramelly flavor and retains the typical kick of coffee that hasn’t been passed through the digestive tract of a wild animal. There’s no taste or aftertaste of cat crap.

Good, But Not Worth the High Cost

Would I pay $600 a pound for it? Probably not, but I’ll drink it on Pets Adviser’s dime any time I can.

All this has me thinking. I’ve got two cats. Maybe I can turn out my own brand of domestic cat poop coffee and get in on the $600-per-pound action. What about dog poop coffee? Are there other food items that can be fed to animals, collected from their stool and then consumed?

And where does PETA stand? This product is non-vegan, I presume. (Update: PETA certainly does not approve, objecting especially to the way that civets are often raised in wire cages.)

Further testing may be in order.

By the way, did you know that quite a few common foods have been passed through a living animal’s digestive tract? Yech!

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Tags caffeine coffee odd peta poop weird