Civet Coffee: A Thousand per Cup

Yesterday, I took another sip of the coffee that is allegedly worth a thousand pesos per cup. This type of coffee is known by many names: Kape Kubing, Kape Alamid, Kape Luwak and more formally known as the Civet Coffee. This coffee was derived from the droppings (poop!) of the wild Civet cat.
Dr. Dulce Flores, the head of UPMin’s Department of Food Science and Chemistry, promotes that Mindanao has the potential of being a major exporter of Civet coffee since the Civet cat is also endemic in the region.
But, what is the correlation of all of these? Why all the fuss?
Civet coffee is supposedly one of the best tasting coffees around the world. It is also one of the most expensive. In the country, just a cup of Kape Alamid is worth a thousand pesos.
But what is more peculiar about this type of coffee is how it is produced. The Civet cat eats coffee berries in the wild, and then defecates (as would other normal creatures would do) leaving the coffee seeds in its feces (poop!) still intact. The farmers then pick those coffee beans from the animal’s feces, clean it (of course!), grind it, and it is eventually brewed into the expensive coffee that we know now. This might have sounded disgusting, but it’s true.
It is fascinating how the Civet cat plays a big role in all of this. Dr. Flores explains that the Civet cat only picks the best ripe coffee berries in the wild, in contrast to human coffee berry-pickers who just haphazardly pick berries that seem to be ripe enough. Moreover, she also said that something in the digestive track of that animal might have facilitated in fermenting the coffee beans.
An initial idea to mass-produce Civet coffee would be to breed in captivity several Civet cats in order to obtain a lot of the necessary coffee beans; however, this might go against animal welfare. A solution, brought up by Dr. Flores, is to investigate on the processes involved in the Civet cats body in order to know what really happens with the coffee beans, and then ultimately simulate the same process in the laboratory. In this manner, we can do away with capturing the Civet cats, but still be able to produce the Civet coffee – same taste, same aroma, and same price.
Interesting, isn’t it?