BioCoder #9

Chapter 1. Afineur

Glen Martin

In the realm of coffee, kopi luwak is the ne plus ultra, the best of the very best, a coffee that transcends superlatives. At least, that’s what people who have tasted it claim. Admittedly, that’s a rather small and select cohort, due to the fact that kopi luwak sells for up to $600 a pound; a single demitasse of the revered brew can cost $90. Why so much lucre for a simple cup of joe? Three words: Indonesian civet cats.

To make kopi luwak, you need these small and rather adorable omnivores as much as you need coffee beans. In their native Indonesia, civet cats roam freely through the nation’s vast coffee plantations, gobbling the ripening “cherries” directly from the trees. They digest the flesh of the cherries readily enough, but the seeds—the coffee beans—pass through intact. And yet, they are not the same beans that hung on the tree prior to ingestion. Not surprisingly, considering the dynamic environment of a typical civet gut, their flavor and aroma profiles have been transformed. 

Somewhere, at a time lost in the misty annals of coffee culture, an Indonesian plantation worker looked down at a pile of civet excrement brimming with undigested coffee beans and wondered: Could you brew that? That moment evokes Jonathan Swift’s rumination on certain shellfish, viz., “…It was a bold man that first ate an oyster.” In any event, a gelatinous and gelid raw oyster ultimately slid down the gullet of an adventurous human, who found it good. And at a particular point, somebody picked out the beans from a clump of poop produced by a highly caffeinated civet cat, cleaned them, roasted them, brewed them, and hailed the resulting beverage as ambrosial. It was determined that civet coffee was far less bitter than regular coffee, evincing an abundance of disparate and appetizing overtones. It was, in short, delicious.

And yet—let’s face it—the idea of getting your coffee from the digestive tract of a civet cat is rather unsavory (though it also admittedly has a certain madcap marketing appeal). Too, the supply perforce is limited: there are only so many civet cats around that you can harness for coffee production. Moreover, animal cruelty issues are involved. Civet cat farms in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam—where the animals are housed in batteries of cages and fed a steady diet of coffee beans—have been slammed by animal rights groups.

So how do you get the supernal flavors of civet cat coffee without civet cats? Enter Booklyn-based Afineur, producers of “cultured” coffee. Kopi Luwak isn’t really about civet cats, says Camille Delebecque, the company’s co-founder and CEO. It’s about fermentation: the process that occurs in civet cat intestines. Duplicate the fermentation process in a controlled environment, and you should be able to produce kopi luwak sans civet cats.

Indeed, says Delebecque, who took his PhD in synthetic biology at Harvard, that’s just what Afineur has done. The company uses standard biofermenters to transmute green coffee beans prior to roasting.

“We were very successful with the first coffee we produced in greatly reducing astringency and bitterness,” says Delebecque.  “We found that those two flavors tend to mask other, more interesting flavors very effectively. Once we were able to reduce them, we found all these floral notes and fruity qualities coming through.”

Along with minimizing bitterness and enhancing desirable flavors, says Delebecque, Afineur’s proprietary fermentation process also improves the nutritional value of coffee. “Fermentation increases the vitamin B and antioxidant content,” Delebecque says.

Afineur employs a variety of microorganisms collected from different sources, says Delebecque; none have been genetically modified.

“We haven’t manipulated any microbes directly, but the microbiological communities we establish are completely synthetic,” he says. “You wouldn’t find them in nature. We adjust the ratios (of various microbes) depending on the flavors we’re trying to emphasize.”

Afineur’s staffers aren’t just thinking of fermentation-induced flavors as they fine-tune their microbial communities. They also have the flavors and aromas associated with the Maillard reaction in mind: the reduced, caramelized qualities created by toasting. They work with green beans in the biofermenters, but they are always aware that the final product will come out of a roaster.

“I think the symphonic analogy is a good one to use in describing our work,” Delebecque says. “We think we can produce a whole array of profiles in our coffee, depending on how we ‘conduct’ our creative microbes.”

Taste, of course, is—well, a matter of taste. So how do you maintain quality control with a cup of coffee? Delebecque combines two approaches: gas chromatography and organoleptic testing (i.e., the employment of the human senses). Gas chromatography pinpoints the precise ration of volatile organic compounds in specific flavor profiles, and the human nose, palate, and tongue determine whether those flavors taste good.

Delebecque acknowledges that it’s no coincidence that he and Afineur’s co-founder, Sophie Deterre, are French. It’s not just the Gallic love and respect for good food that drove their interest in making a better cup of coffee, he says; it’s also the fact that many of the iconic foods and beverages associated with French cuisine are predicated on fermentation.

“Fermentation is essential to our cheese, wines, and beer,” he observes. “So it’s really about culture. Like all French men and women, I grew up on fermented foods. They’re part of who we are, essential to what we value in life.”

In fact, it’s likely that Afineur will move beyond coffee. There’s a whole world of comestibles out there, Delebecque believes, that can be improved by his stable of creative microbes.

“We think tailored fermentation can be applied widely,” Delebecque says. “We’re setting up a platform technology that will ultimately enhance the flavor and nutrition of many foods.”

The Afineur gospel, certainly, seems to have wide appeal. The company recently launched a Kickstarter campaign. As of this writing, with 20 days to go, Delebecque and crew have received pledges of $41,301 from 716 backers:  $26,301 above their $15,000 goal.

Glen Martin covered science and environment for the San Francisco Chronicle for 17 years. His work has appeared in more than 50 magazines and online outlets, including Discover, Science Digest, Wired, The Utne Reader, The Huffington Post, National Wildlife, Audubon, Outside, Men’s Journal, and Reader’s Digest. His latest book, Game Changer: Animal Rights and the Fate of Africa’s Wildlife, was published in 2012 by the University of California Press.