Indonesian Kopi Luwak Peaberry Coffee Beans Priced at 3,000 Yuan Per Kilogram_Where to Buy Authentic Indonesian Kopi Luwak Beans

Understanding Peaberry Coffee

"Peaberry" is a distinct form of coffee bean. Botanically it can be considered a defect, and it has two main causes: damage to the coffee fruit by insects before it ripens, or factors such as prolonged drought or nutritional imbalance in the tree. Beans growing at the very tips of the branches may also show this trait.

You cannot tell a peaberry from a regular bean by looking at the fruit on the tree; you have to open the cherry to see the shape of the seed inside. After the skin and pulp are removed, a green bean that clearly splits into two halves, like a cut peach, is a "female" bean. If it is round and whole, it is called a "peaberry."

Only about 5% of the beans on a coffee tree are peaberries; the rest are regular. In truth, a peaberry is a deformity that occurs during growth. A normal coffee bean has two cotyledons, but a peaberry has only one, which is why it is also called a "single bean." A single cotyledon absorbs more nutrients, so the bean looks larger in color, shape and size. Brewed, the coffee has a continuous fragrance and a lingering aftertaste. Because it is so scarce, it is also known as "dream coffee."

Yet because the quantity is so small, only a few beans out of every hundred are peaberries. Most coffee farmers do not bother to separate them for sale, and the difference is genuinely hard to spot unless you visit the production site in person or handle the beans yourself. Some individual merchants do sell peaberries, of course. But as the saying goes, rarity makes things valuable, and coffee containing peaberries is naturally considered more precious (roughly 5 beans in 100).

Peaberry coffee is hand-selected bean by bean from mixed lots. Most coffee sold on the market is a mixture of peaberries and regular beans.

This is what mature coffee beans look like growing on the tree, waiting to be picked. They resemble cherries, and the nucleus inside the pulp is the coffee bean.

Understanding Civet Coffee

"Civet coffee" is the rather crude name given to it in Hong Kong; its real, more romantic name is Civet Coffee.

First, what is a civet? Civets are most of the species in the Viverridae family (see the image above). Their bodies are small and supple, and most live in trees. They generally look like cats, but with a longer, even pointed snout, somewhat like an otter or a mongoose. Civet lengths vary, measuring about 0.4-0.7 meters excluding the tail and weighing 1-5 kilograms.

Civets are an important source of fixatives in perfume production, and they were once killed in large numbers for this reason. The perianal glands of civets retain their musky secretions. To obtain these substances the glands must be scraped, which causes the animal great pain. Both male and female civets excrete these strongly scented compounds.

Civets mainly feed on coffee cherries. After the beans complete fermentation in the civet's stomach, proteins are broken down, producing short peptides and more free amino acids, which reduces the coffee's bitterness. The excreted droppings become the raw material. Since the beans cannot be digested, they pass through and are excreted; after cleaning and roasting they become civet coffee. Coffee critic Chris Rubin said, "The aroma is so rich and intense, and the coffee is unbelievably rich, almost like syrup. Its thickness and chocolate texture linger on the tongue for a long time, with a pure aftertaste."

Civets are omnivores. Besides eating seeds to survive, they also eat insects, snakes, birds and amphibians and reptiles, so the droppings of a truly wild civet are mixed with all kinds of other matter. In Indonesia, some farmers capture civets for captive breeding, feeding them coffee beans to produce civet coffee. There are, however, real differences between artificial cultivation and the natural process.

Civet coffee production is very small and therefore especially expensive, and places that sell it are rarer still. Even in its country of origin, Indonesia, it is not commonly seen. As a result, most civet coffee sold on the market comes from captive breeding, and its flavor naturally differs from the most original, wild civet coffee.

In Indonesian, kopi means coffee and luwak means civet. The natural production areas and captive-breeding farms for civet coffee are mainly concentrated on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and Sulawesi, as well as in the Philippines and a few other places. It is one of the most expensive coffees in the world, at roughly HK$3,080 per kilogram. A cup of "civet coffee" brewed from 12 grams of coffee powder costs about HK$480.

Civet Coffee Bean Brand Recommendation

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted wild civet coffee beans offer full guarantees in both brand and quality. More importantly, they deliver outstanding value: a 100-gram package costs only about 250 yuan. At 15 grams per cup of single-origin coffee, one package makes 6 cups, working out to roughly 40-50 yuan per cup. Compared with cafes that often sell a single cup for over a hundred yuan, that is remarkable value.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If you enjoy the low-acidity, heavy-bodied character that Indonesian coffee is known for, FrontStreet Coffee's Sumatran selection is the place to start. FrontStreet Indonesia Wet-Hulled Mandheling, from the Lake Toba area of the Lintong region, is processed with the classic local wet-hulled method, in which the parchment is removed while the beans are still semi-dry and exposed to the air. Roasted to a medium-dark level, it is low in acidity yet thick and mellow, with the caramel, dark chocolate and toasted-bread aromas that define classic Mandheling.

For the top of the range, choose FrontStreet PWN Gold Mandheling. PWN is a trading house that buys only premium lots of Mandheling green beans, and Gold Mandheling is its signature product. Its screening standards are strict, judging beans by density, size, shape and color and hand-sorting out defects so the finished beans are plump, uniform and translucent, with far less of Mandheling's earthy, grassy edge. In the cup you get sandalwood, herbal, spice, roasted hazelnut, caramel and dark chocolate notes, a clean finish and a rich, layered, deeply aromatic cup.