For Christmas, my wife gave me Kopi Luwak coffee, from Animal Coffee. Basically, the palm civet (or Kopi Luwak) eats ripe coffee cherries off of coffee trees. (Coffee beans come from the cherry, sort of like the pit of a cherry fruit.) The Luwak eats and digests the cherries and expels the beans. Not all the beans are masticated and some portion are expelled hole, with the pergamino (the thin husk surrounding the bean) intact. The excrement of the Luwak is collected by Indonesians, who also clean, dry, and separate the beans, which from that point follow a normal process to become coffee. These become Kopi Luwak coffee.
The key to this story is that the Civet’s digestive system removes the proteins from the cherries/beans, and protein is what gives coffee its acidity. As a result Kopi Luwak coffee is exceptionally smooth. Below are some tasting notes, and I would mostly agree.
The coffee is very earthy and rich, and also distinctly smooth and non-acidic. It has a fabulous aroma and quality. I am not sure that I would rank it among the best coffee that I’ve had. But, it has a unique and pleasant character.