Is Kopi Luwak an Arabica Coffee? Varietal Characteristics, Flavor Profile, and Taste Description of Kopi Luwak Coffee Beans

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When it comes to the most expensive coffee in the world, Blue Mountain and Geisha each stand their ground, while there's another household coffee name—Kopi Luwak. Because the coffee beans undergo in-body fermentation, Kopi Luwak's flavor carries special herbal notes and excellent body, making it a favorite among the wealthy circle. Additionally, due to its low production volume, its price is quite substantial.

Kopi Luwak

Kopi Luwak, also known as civet coffee, doesn't refer to a coffee variety but rather a processing method. Originally, wild Indonesian civets would eat coffee cherries, and because their digestive systems cannot completely digest the coffee beans, they would excrete "feces"—hence the origin of the name Kopi Luwak.

In the civet's digestive system, coffee cherries undergo a combination of acidic, enzymatic, and fermentation processes. During digestion, digestive enzymes and gastric juice penetrate the cherry skin and break down storage proteins, producing shorter peptides. This alters the amino acid composition and affects the coffee's aroma. It's believed that civets select the most mature, flawless coffee cherries to eat, which ensures the quality of the coffee beans.

Civets mainly inhabit tropical rainforests and subtropical evergreen broadleaf forest margins at elevations below 2100 meters, including hills and mountainous areas. They choose rock caves, soil burrows, or tree holes as their habitat sites. Civets are omnivorous animals—their animal-based diet includes small mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, crustaceans, and insects such as mice, small birds, snakes, frogs, fish, crabs, bird eggs, insects, earthworms, and wild fowl. Their plant-based diet includes stems and leaves of solanaceous plants, various fig seeds, as well as other fruits. However, civets have poor digestive ability for plants, so eating berries is essentially their dessert, while their main food source is meat.

Early on, local people would collect wild civet feces from the forests, extract the undigested coffee seeds, and process them into green beans. Due to low production and unique in-body fermentation methods, many businessmen later spotted the business opportunity and began large-scale capture and caging of civets. The originally carnivorous civets could only eat coffee cherries, but the nutritional content in coffee cherries cannot maintain the health of civets.

They believe that although coffee beans are not digested in the civet's digestive tract, the highly corrosive digestive fluids have already corroded their surface. These digestive fluids contain a special protease that can break down the original protein chains of coffee beans, decomposing long-chain protein structures into small particles, forming short-chain peptides and amino acids.

But in reality, because they only eat coffee cherries long-term, civets excrete coffee beans perhaps just one or two hours after consumption. Coffee beans remaining in the civet's stomach for only one or two hours is insufficient to produce the series of changes mentioned above. The beans are still the same beans as when eaten—even if there are flavor changes, they are minimal.

FrontStreet Coffee Indonesia Kopi Luwak

Origin: Sumatra, Indonesia
Variety: Arabica
Processing Method: Civet in-body fermentation
Grade: G1

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Suggestions

To better express the herbal flavors and rich mouthfeel of Kopi Luwak, FrontStreet Coffee uses medium-dark roasting for Kopi Luwak beans. Medium-dark roasted beans generally have higher moisture loss rates, making them lighter in weight. During brewing, the grounds don't completely sink to the bottom—water is immediately absorbed upon initial pouring. Due to vigorous gas release, bubbles form around the grounds, creating channels. The fresher the beans, the longer these channels persist, causing water levels to drop rapidly. I typically use a coarse water flow and circle slowly.

For brewing Kopi Luwak, FrontStreet Coffee chooses the KONO dripper because this dripper's only exhaust area is those quarter ribs. When the water level passes the rib area, the water volume in the dripper continuously increases, creating pressure through the water's weight. Because the outlet is relatively smaller, it can extend the contact time between coffee particles and water. As the water flow drives this process, it can more effectively extract soluble substances, generally achieving the high body thickness expected by customers.

Brewing Parameters: Water temperature 86-87°C | Grind size: White sugar | Powder-to-water ratio: 1:15 (15g grounds to 225ml water)

1. First pour 30g of water for a 25-second bloom.
2. After the bloom ends, pour the second portion of water until the scale reads 125g. Wait for the water level to drop by half after pouring.
3. When the coffee bed is about to be exposed, pour the third portion of water until the scale reads 225g. Total coffee extraction time is approximately 1'50"-2'00".

Kopi Luwak Flavor Description: Herbal, nutty, with smooth texture and rich body.

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