If you've been following us for a while, you may remember us as Kopi Luwak — we named ourselves after the world's rarest coffee, which we were among the first in the Czech Republic to bring from wild civets in Indonesia. Later, you shopped with us at kawio.cz.

As we grew — our own roastery, shops, a coffee stand — we needed one name to bring it all together. That's how Kopi Bean was born: "kopi" means coffee in Indonesian, and "bean" speaks for itself. A name that goes back to where our story began.

And the kawio brand? It's not going anywhere — it just has a clearer role. Today it covers our coffee brewing equipment for home and professional use. And the civet coffee that started it all? We still roast it.

Our plantation travels began back in 2005. The timber trade originally had me travelling regularly across the Indonesian islands. The trips took weeks, and free time on the beaches soon bored me. That's when friends told me about the world's most expensive coffee — Kopi Luwak civet coffee. I cast my nets among friends from Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Bali — and my coffee journey began.

Indonesia: searching for wild civets and first roasts

After many false leads, on a plantation near Semarang in Java I touched my first civet and tasted my first civet coffee. But caged civets were not my goal. I kept searching until, in 2008, I came across plantations in southern Sumatra with wild-living civets — and got my first coffee from wild animals, Kopi Luwak liar Robusta. That's the coffee I learned to roast on: a small 250-gram Gene Cafe air roaster. Today we roast on modern IMF hot-air technology. Persistence was finally crowned by finding wild Kopi Luwak Arabica in the now-famous Aceh region of northern Sumatra.

Brazil: star-guided coffee and Jacu birds

In Minas Gerais we compared small family plantations with farms of hundreds of hectares. An unforgettable moment was a cupping at an organic plantation where the owner grew coffee by the position of the stars — and where we collected coffee from Jacu birds, which, much like civets, feed on coffee cherries.

Kenya: learning from the masters

The Dohrmans coffee laboratory below Mt. Kenya is an experience for anyone serious about coffee. Cupping the twenty-five best coffees of the current harvests and long talks with experienced Q-graders vastly expanded my understanding of roasting African coffees — they are among the best in the world.

Cuba: the joy of discovery

A country producing excellent Arabicas even in difficult conditions. Together with local farmers we roasted their freshly dried samples to a medium level — locals usually roast very dark. Their excitement at the tasting was like children with a new toy.

And those were far from our last journeys. We keep travelling, discovering, and selecting the best for you.

We roast all our coffee ourselves in Brno-Královo Pole, in small batches to order, and exclusively to a medium roast — enough to develop sweetness, not so much that the roast drowns out the taste of origin. For every coffee we know the farm it comes from, how it was processed, and its cupping profile. You'll find the roast date on every bag.

You can taste our coffee for free at all locations. Opening hours and maps are on the Where to find us page.

Frequently asked questions about Kopi Bean