I never much a coffee lover, though I drink it regularly. I don't know the difference between Sumatra or Java or robusta or anything. The only thing I know is that Java Chip Frappucino uses Javan coffee.

So I was thrilled when a friend gave me this famous coffee, Kopi Luwak, from his vacation to Bali. Night after nights the coffee powder remained unconsumed because I wasn't sure how to make a drink out of it. It was about to change this evening.

After mixing it with hot water (yeah, right genius) the coffee's supposed to be ready. I didn't put sugar in it because the packaging says the coffee is better served without sugar. But it's bittttteeerrr..! My.. I spent couple of minutes thinking what I did wrong. Isn't this coffee supposed to taste heavenly? I mean, hello? Price tag??

Finally I gave up. To hell with original taste, sugar's going in. And then... it tasted really good. Seriously. I googled to find some people says Kopi Luwak is almost like a syrup and it tastes 'clean'. It is and does.

Kopi Luwak is probably the most interesting coffee and especially rare because this coffee is actually made from the beans of coffee cherries which come out from civet's other end after they've been eaten. Gross. But enticing.

According to great-grandfather Wikipedia, civet cats eat the cherries from the freshly pulp. In the stomach, enzymatic reaction takes place. Using proteolytic enzyme, the reaction makes shorter peptides and more free amino acid. Then the beans are defecated but still keeping their shape.

Kopi Luwak is also known as the most expensive coffee beans in the world. The civets could only eats certain amount of cherries, then the very morning the coffee farmers have to search for their 'poops' and wash it clean thoroughly.

I remember last semester I took this class, Food Industry. The lecturer once said his opinion about optimizing production of Kopi Luwak. He opted instead of going traditional and depend production on the civets, we could use research on the proper condition of civet's stomach in which the enzymatic reaction of coffee cherries takes place. By knowing the exact enzyme used and temperature of fermentation, we could produce Kopi Luwak without the civets. It also would cut the time and cost and thus multiplying production.

I don't know if this would work. Because for me, the 'magic' of Kopi Luwak lies on the fact that it's actually come out as undigested product of a living civet. While maybe high-tech Kopi Luwak tastes the same as traditional Kopi Luwak, it's lost the romanticism.

Then again, these cute little civets would lose their jobs.