The Origin Story of Expensive Kopi Luwak Coffee and How It Became Famous: How Many Types of "Poop Coffee" Exist Beyond Just Cat Poop Coffee?

A few days ago, an article from Coffee Workshop mentioned that coffee has laxative effects, discussing both bowel movements and coffee. Today, I'd like to overlap these two elements again and explore something else.

Seriously, if it's considered perverted for cute cats to enjoy sniffing smelly shoes, then aren't humans who enjoy drinking "poop coffee" even more perverted than cats?!

What exactly are the processing techniques behind these coffees that emerge from animal digestive tracts? They differ from the commonly encountered methods we're familiar with: natural, washed, semi-washed, and semi-natural processing.

These coffee beans utilize in-body fermentation, employing lactic acid bacteria and digestive fluids from animal digestive tracts to remove the coffee cherry's pulp and the mucilage attached to the surface of the parchment beans.

Civet Coffee

In the 18th century, when Sumatra and Java were still part of the Dutch East Indies colonies, Arabica coffee was introduced as an economic crop.

Dutch plantation owners prohibited local workers from tasting the fruits of their labor. However, the locals' sharp eyes noticed that civets would steal their harvested coffee cherries. Eventually, the coffee beans would be excreted in their feces, maintaining their shape.

So, they cleaned these coffee beans, roasted them themselves, and brewed and tasted them.

Therefore, civet coffee was once considered coffee for the poor. What ultimately brought civet coffee into the public eye was an article published in National Geographic in 1981, which caught the attention of a man named Tony Wild, who worked at Taylors of Harrogate, a British company specializing in tea and coffee. He first bought a kilogram of civet coffee locally and then contacted local media, but he never expected that various media outlets would extensively report on such a bizarre novelty, which made civet coffee famous.

Those who have tasted civet coffee say it has nutty and herbal flavors with a hint of earthiness, and the coffee liquor is smooth, viscous, and full-bodied.

Monkey Coffee

According to Han Huaizong's introduction to monkey feces coffee in "World Coffee Studies," as early as the 19th century, Indian coffee plantations were plagued by macaque monkey groups. Macaques specifically selected the ripest, sweetest, and highest-quality coffee cherries to eat, causing significant losses to local farmers. When eating coffee cherries, macaques chew them and then spit out the remaining fruit and parchment beans together.

Its flavor supposedly covers the entire flavor wheel, from citrus to nutty cocoa notes, with a viscous mouthfeel and rounded acidity.

Black Ivory Coffee

In an Asian elephant base located in Thailand's Golden Triangle region, keepers feed elephants coffee cherries mixed with other fruits. The enzymes in the elephants' digestive system break down the proteins in the beans during digestion. After 15 to 70 hours of digestion in the elephants' bodies, the coffee fruits are excreted along with other food digestive residues.

According to Han Zonghuai's introduction in "World Coffee Studies," an elephant sanctuary in Sri Lanka also had the idea of making elephant dung coffee, but no trace of it has been found.

Foreign netizens who have tried it say Black Ivory Coffee has flavors of malt, chocolate, floral notes, cherry, tobacco, and leather, with even a hint of grass!

Bird Dropping Coffee

Due to the global popularity of Indonesia's civet coffee, Brazil didn't want to fall behind. It's said that one morning in 2009, the owner of the Camoquin estate in Espírito Santo, Brazil, woke up to find that wattled jacana birds had invaded his coffee plantation. He could only sit and watch as the birds pecked at the delicious red fruits, which gave him the idea of using this organic processing method.

Unlike civets, which are omnivores, jacana birds are herbivores, so the probability of the excreted coffee beans acquiring off-flavors is smaller.

After the parchment beans are excreted along with the droppings, someone specifically collects the droppings, washes out the parchment beans, and stores them for three months before they can be sold.

Specialty bean expert Tom Owen's cupping notes are: low fruit acidity, mellow aroma, heavy nutty and sweet notes, with a slight black pepper fragrance.

Bat Coffee

Bat coffee beans come from a species of bat in the forests surrounding the Divisa estate in the Brunca region of southern Costa Rica. However, bats are small and cannot swallow entire coffee cherries, so they only bite off the outer shell of mature coffee fruits, then lick the pulp and suck the juice to obtain the sugar inside. The remaining parts are wrapped in saliva and left on the coffee trees to ferment while naturally drying.

All the above coffees are remembered by the world because of their novelty, and targeted because of this novelty. They are either caged for eating or excreting. Imagine being watched while you defecate - would you be nervous? They're worth trying for novelty, but for long-term drinking, Geisha is still more fragrant, don't you think?

Image source: Internet

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