Kopi luwak, or civet coffee, can cost around $80 a cup and is made from coffee beans that have passed through the Asian palm civet. This episode goes back to 19th-century Java, where Dutch colonial rulers banned local farmers from picking coffee for themselves, so the farmers gathered and roasted beans the civets left behind.

We explain how the civet’s choice of ripe cherries and its digestion change the beans’ proteins, and how professional tasters rated the coffee in blind tests. We then look at the cruelty and fraud in the modern trade, including caged civets and fake wild-sourced labels, and at lab fermentation, bearcat coffee, and bat coffee.

• How digestive enzymes and germination change the Maillard reaction during roasting and reduce bitterness
• Why the coffee scored lower than regular coffees in blind cupping tests
• How pop culture, including The Bucket List, helped make kopi luwak a status symbol
• What undercover investigations revealed about civets kept in battery-style cages and force-fed coffee cherries
• Why Tony Wild, who helped bring the coffee to the West, started the Cut the Crap campaign