Kopi luwak is a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cheries, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet. It is also called civet coffee. The cherries are fermented as they pass through a civet'sintestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected.
Kopi luwak is produced mainly on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Sulawesi and in East Timor. It is also widely gathered in the forest or produced in farms in the islands of the Philippines , where the product is called kape motit in the Cordillera region, kapé alamíd in Tagalog areas, kapé melô or kapé musang in Mindanao, and kahawa kubing in the Sulu Archipelago. Weasel coffee is a loose English translation of its Vietnamese name cà phê Chồn.
Producers of the coffee beans argue that the process may improve coffee through two mechanisms: selection – civets choosing to eat only certain cherries, and digestion – biological or chemical mechanisms in the animals' digestive tracts altering the composition of the coffee cherries.
