$80 Cup Of Coffee: Civet Pooped Kopi Luwak Beans

Eiichiro Fukusaki and colleagues point out that Kopi Luwak (Indonesian for “civet coffee”) is the world’s costliest coffee, often fetching $150-$200 per pound. Palm civets eat coffee berries, digest the soft fruit surrounding the bean and excrete the bean. Workers retrieve the coffee beans and clean, ferment and roast them. The price makes Kopi Luwak a tempting target for fraud, with ordinary coffee sold as Kopi Luwak or real Kopi Luwak adulterated with cheap beans. Fukusaki and his team decided to find a way to scientifically identify the real deal.

They describe identifying unique chemical fingerprints that can be used to identify authentic Kopi Luwak and distinguish pure Kopi Luwak from Kopi Luwak that has been mixed with cheaper coffee. “This is the first report to address the selection and successful validation of discriminant markers for the authentication of Kopi Luwak,” the scientists state.

Michael Bernstein
American Chemical Society