Coffee flower to cherries
Just like any other coffee, kopi begins its life as a fragrant white flower, and then turns into glass marble-sized green cherries where each cherry consists of a couple of coffee beans. Months later, the fruits turn ripe and appear as beautiful darkish-red cherries that are good to be harvested or eaten.
The animal process
This is an interesting phase. Civets love to eat seasonal fruits. When the cherry season begins, they don’t miss to crunch on delicious red cherries. Coffee cherry formsan important part of Luwak’s diet during this time. The civet prowls along coffee plantations during the night and munches on the ripest, juiciest berries while ignoring the not-so-tasty ones. The digestive process lasts about 24 hours during which the seeds remain soaked in the Luwak’s stomach acid. A few changes take place– the fleshy fruit of the cherry is digested, the seed is left undigested, the protein content of the undigested seed is broken down and expelled out. The result of the dropping is what we see as darkish brown coffee seeds popularly called the “kopi luwak,” that is formed after cleaning and roasting.
Taking the good stuff
While the animal process involves altering of taste and excretion, human process involves cleaning, selecting, washing, roasting, and packaging.