I Tried Kopi Luwak Coffee. How Was It?

Coffee out of animal poop.

The Unknown Professor of Financial Rounds is a blogging colleague from “the old days,” also known as the mid-2000s decade. His blog is still up and running in 2025 as I write this, which is extraordinary. (I also have no clue who he is, so I'll assume he's still around and speak of him in the present tense.)

He posted waaay back when on one of the world's rarest and most expensive coffee bean.

At the time of the post (end of 2005), Kopi Luwak coffee was horrendously expensive, at $175 per pound. In 2025 dollars, that's pushing $300/pound!

Why kopi luwak coffee is so expensive

The method of harvesting the coffee is what likely accounts for the price. It's more involved than simply picking the coffee from the plant.

The Asian palm civet pre-processes the coffee a bit in a way that is difficult to duplicate: It eats it and poops it out.

The palm civet cannot fully digest the coffee cherries, and they pass through partially digested. This fermentation process is what ends up giving the coffee beans their distinctive taste.

The harvesting, then, is not from the coffee plants, but from the ground. (Ground coffee beans, in the truest sense!) Workers harvest the palm civet droppings for further processing, which adds to the expense.

Differences in kopi luwak harvesting

In my journey on Amazon to try some kopi luwak coffee, I found several brands with substantially different prices.

The more affordable kinds harvest the palm civet droppings with them in captivity. The coffee cherries are harvested and fed to them.

The more expensive kinds come from wild foraging of the scat, which amounts to going where the palm civets are. There's more labor, but the coffee is arguably better because the palm civets will choose which coffee cherries they eat, rather than settling for what they're given.

Trying kopi luwak coffee for myself

I got some MATINÉE Wild Kopi Luwak coffee beans to see what all the fuss is about.

I ground the beans in my Cuisinart burr grinder to the same coarseness I normally grind the Colombian beans we get at Costco.

Then we brewed a pot of kopi luwak in our OXO Brew, which has been our primary coffee maker for a couple of years now.

(Here's a review of the OXO Brew.)

The first pot was … an experiment.

We were a bit impatient and wanted to try the coffee as soon as possible. As a result, we drank it hotter than we normally do. We might have dulled our taste buds. (We bought the OXO Brew because it offered a consistent brewing temperature, so hot coffee is a feature, not a bug.)

It was hard to tell whether the coffee was weak or just really, really smooth. I was sure that I brewed with the same amount of coffee I usually do, but my wife told me I may have used too little.

Fared better the next day

The next day I tried again, but used more coffee for the pot. I also let it cool a bit before drinking it.

There was definitely more flavor this time around. The best way to describe it would be “understated.”

Not bitter at all but not strong, and I had to hunt for the taste a bit.

Overall …

I'm glad I tried “the world's most expensive coffee.”

In doing so I found that I like a bit stronger taste in my coffee than what the kopi luwak offered.

(This post was originally published December 31st, 2005, and has been updated. Header image credit)