Kopi luwak. Or civet coffee. Better known by a few less flattering names.

Kopi luwak is coffee made from beans eaten and then expelled by the Asian palm civet, a solitary nocturnal mammal. The beans used for kopi luwak are collected from the droppings of the civet, who’s spent nights creeping coffee plantations to steal ripe coffee cherries. The civet then eats the entire cherry, which includes a tasty fruit wrapping and a large seed or bean in the center. Since the beans, themselves, are undigestable, the creature poops them out, where they’re collected and washed. The beans’ passage through the animal has imbued them with subtly unique flavors. Obviously, if this process is left unmolested — to occur completely naturally — a very limited supply of these beans is produced. This means they’re very expensive, over $600 per kilogram. So a cup of kopi luwak might cost you as much as $50.

I first tried kopi luwak in the mid-1990s, relatively soon after it had begun being imported to the U.S. in small commercial quantities. It was a medium-bodied coffee, reminding me of a better Sumatra Mandheling — good coffee with a pleasant layered flavor profile but not worth $50 based on its taste alone.

Unfortunately for the civet, popular culture throughout the U.S. and Europe made kopi luwak a prized luxury item for people with money to burn on things that really aren’t worth the cost but help to showcase their wealth. Since there are far more of those people than there are civets to make their coffee beans, industrious farmers throughout Asia began producing kopi luwak using caged, force-fed civets kept in deplorable conditions.

At some point, the free-for-all that kopi luwak had become ran out of steam as counterfeiters joined the melee and news of greed-motivated animal mistreatment leaked out. But even in the face of declining popularity, kopi luwak is available at luxury retailers.

Do not buy kopi luwak. Do not even taste it. It’s not worth it on many levels. And let’s face it: it’s poop coffee. You didn’t really want to try it anyway, right?

Thanks for A2A, Alex Koren.