Kopi Luwak, also known as Luwak coffee, is known as "the rarest coffee in existence." Specifically, this coffee comes from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where coffee trees have a long growing season. When the coffee berries are ripe, local farmers intentionally release cats into the coffee plantations to let them feast. Not all cats are lucky enough to enjoy coffee dinners. Local farmers believe that only a kind of palm cat unique to Indonesia can do the job.
After the palm cats were full, the local farmers bent down and covered their noses to look for cat feces. Once they find their target, they get down on their knees and dig like archaeologists, and with luck, they find a few whole beans that haven't been digested by the cats. Palm cats can digest most of the coffee beans. Those "survived" coffee beans have thicker and harder shells and are not easily digested, which is exactly what farmers want.
After the collection is complete, farmers wash these special coffee beans thoroughly. After several processes such as deodorization and processing, these coffee beans are ready to serve people's taste buds.
Strict collection and processing standards make Nouwak coffee production very small. In the international market, the price of Nouwak coffee is always around US$1,000 per kilogram, making it a veritable luxury product.
Perhaps because most people are out of reach, drinking Kopi Luwak coffee has become a fashion. However, even those who can taste Nouwak coffee cannot accept its exaggerated "origin". At a tasting meeting, many celebrities carefully tasted every fragrance of Nouwak coffee without being told the truth, and tried to describe their sensory reactions in gorgeous words. Some say the coffee has a strong vanilla flavor, some say it has a pure chocolate flavor, and still others say it is mixed with the flavor of honey and tobacco. However, when people learned about the origin of this drink, they invariably felt stomach discomfort. The two expressions of 32-year-old American fashion designer Dennis Basso clearly reveal this somewhat embarrassing secret. The salesperson of Nouwak Coffee suggested that if you want to serve this kind of coffee to a guest, you should either never tell him the truth or tell him the origin of the coffee in advance and let him decide whether to drink it or not to avoid overreaction.
Is the delicious taste of Kopi Luwak coffee really directly related to the palm cat? The answer given by scientists is yes. According to Canadian researchers, the digestive juices of palm cats can break down the proteins in the coffee beans into very small particles, which in turn enhances the aroma of the coffee during the grinding process. In addition, the intestinal tract of palm cats can filter out some specific proteins, thereby reducing the bitter taste of coffee.
The researchers said that the process of Kopi Luwak coffee beans passing through the intestines of palm cats is very similar to the wet processing process of coffee fermentation, and lactic acid bacteria play a key role in both processes.