We are very pleased with the results when prepared through the Cona vacuum coffee maker. If you have not yet acquired one of these I would seriously recommend that you do at some point.

Still sold by Cona of Wimbledon, London with the design unchanged since inception circa 1920. You might want to opt for the stove top model as the meths burner edition that we have is certainly not the weapon of choice for that ‘quick coffee before you rush to work’. However as an after supper spectacle where time is less pressing the meths burner is ideal.

In the past we have used a fairly coarse grind and an awful lot of coffee. Realising the economics wouldn’t really work where Kopi Luwak was being deployed we opted to try a fine (espresso) grind & use considerably less coffee. It has the added benefit of not having to alter the espresso setting of the grinder which is always a bonus in our book.

The Cona instruction manual says to follow the 7g a cup standard, although I suspect the envisaged traditional ‘English’ coffee cups of perhaps 100ml, i’m not exactly sure as I dont have one to hand at the moment to measure the internal volume. We tried 8g/cup for 2 × 200ml cups (i.e. 16g in 400mls of water) and found the result was rather weak.

On our second attempt we opted for 50% more, using 24g in 400mls, and it was probably a little on the strong side. 20-22g in 400ml is probably about right for most people’s taste, and if nothing else represents a good starting point so you don’t find yourself wasting copious amounts of Kopi Luwak before you come up with an agreeable cup of coffee.

Unsurprisingly it tastes like a Sumatran coffee, although very smooth & delicate, as it is through the Swissgold process, but the Cona method just elevates the smoothness and sweetness to a completely different level. We also use Volvic water in the Cona to standardise our results as much as possible.