The Complete Guide to Kopi Luwak Coffee in 2024
Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee or cat-poop coffee, has been made famous by its appearance in the media as well as in Hollywood movies. But what exactly is kopi luwak coffee?
Kopi luwak is a coffee drink made from coffee beans that have been eaten and excreted by the Asian palm civet. The enzymatic process from inside the civet’s digestive tract is said to improve the coffee’s flavour. It is mainly produced in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
So why on earth would people part with good money for a cup of coffee that has come out of an animal’s backside?
How kopi luwak is produced and processed
People refer to coffee made from beans that have passed through the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) as kopi luwak coffee.
Kopi luwak is not a specific variety of coffee bean. Instead, the name comes from the process the coffee beans undergo whilst inside the Asian palm civet. Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee, and luwak is the local Sumatran name for the Asian palm civet.
Wild civets consume coffee cherries as part of their natural diet. The coffee cherry, so-called due to its resemblance to normal cherries, is the fruit that houses what we know as coffee beans.
Civets are very selective when it comes to which coffee cherries they choose to eat. They always look for the ripest and most delicious cherries, something which is essential for great-tasting coffee.
Since the civets cannot digest the coffee beans inside the cherries, they pass the beans through their digestive tract whole and defecate them in clumps.
The civet’s stomach acid and enzymes digest the outer coffee cherry fruit covering and ferment the beans before excretion. This fermentation process is what gives kopi luwak its unique flavour.
The enzymatic process that the beans undergo inside the civet’s gastrointestinal tract breaks down and alters the protein structure of the beans. As proteins are partly responsible for the bitterness in coffee, the decreased protein level means that the drink is less bitter.
Popularity of kopi luwak
The rise in popularity of kopi luwak, due to its uniqueness, has led to its mass production on farms to meet demand.
However, farms often keep Asian palm civets in appalling conditions, confining them to tiny cages and force-feeding them nothing but coffee cherries to maximize profits.
About a day and a half after consuming the cherries, the civets defecate the beans. Workers collect the faeces containing the coffee beans and process them on the farms.
Through meticulous sorting, cleaning, washing, and drying, the workers prepare the beans for roasting, after which they sell them to consumers to make into a cup of coffee.
Some believe that passing through the intestines of the civet gives the drink a smoother and richer taste, which they think justifies the staggeringly high price of this coffee.
Despite its alternative name of cat-poop coffee, the Asian palm civet is not a type of cat of the felidae family. Palm civets are small, slender-bodied, mostly nocturnal mammals of the viverridae family, which are native to Asia.[1]
Where is kopi luwak produced?
Kopi luwak is mostly produced on the islands of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The annual production of genuine kopi luwak is around 500 – 700kg (1100 – 1500lbs) per year.[2]
The Indonesian islands that produce kopi luwak are Bali, East Timor, Java, Sulawesi, and Sumatra. The island of Sumatra is the world’s largest producer of kopi luwak.
In the Philippines, the coffee goes by different names depending on the region. People know it as kape motit in Cordillera, kapé alamíd in Tagalog-speaking areas, kapé melô or kapé musang in Mindanao, and kahawa kubing in the Sulu Archipelago.
In Vietnam, kopi luwak is known as cà phê chồn, which translates into English as weasel coffee. Vietnam produces the least quantity of kopi luwak of these three countries.
What does kopi luwak taste like?
Advocates of the drink claim that it has a unique taste owing to the process that it undergoes whilst inside the civet. The drink is said to be a coffee that contains less bitterness and less acidity, contributing to a smoother flavour with a complex aroma.
It is worth noting that the taste of kopi luwak depends on many factors, such as the quality, origin, and type of beans that the civets ingest.
The process that follows the collection of coffee beans by farmers, such as roasting and brewing, also has a big effect on how the coffee will taste.
The taste will also vary according to the health, diet, and overall condition of the civets themselves. For example, if the animals experience constant stress, the beans that pass through their digestive system taste very different from those of animals with low stress levels.
Kopi Luwak recent studies
Recent assessments of the taste of kopi luwak have produced rather shocking results. The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) drew the conclusion that kopi luwak simply tastes bad.
The SCAA cupping scale showed that kopi luwak received the lowest score of all the coffees tested. Still, experts admitted that the reduced acidity and smoother body of kopi luwak may appeal to some coffee drinkers.[3]
Another coffee professional compared kopi luwak coffee beans with ordinary beans and his findings were very similar. He stated that there was nothing that would make kopi luwak superior in comparison to other types of coffee.
Other food critics agree that kopi luwak is not good coffee. In addition, when professional coffee tasters held a blind cupping taste test, they were unable to find anything extraordinary about the taste of this coffee.
Though they found the taste of kopi luwak to be noticeably different, noting that it was thin and less acidic, there was nothing that would make them prefer this type of coffee.
It can be concluded that people do not purchase kopi luwak because of its exceptional taste. In contrast, they buy it because it is so rare and unusual. Most people would agree that paying such a high price for this coffee is simply not worth it.
How much does kopi luwak cost and why is it so expensive?
A one-pound bag (454 grams) of wild kopi luwak coffee can cost as much as $600 ($1300 per kilo). Kopi luwak is one of the most expensive coffees in the world.[4]
In large Indonesian supermarkets, the price of farmed kopi luwak, considered to be of low quality, starts at $100 per kilogram (2.2 lbs). In comparison, high-quality local arabica coffee costs about five times less.
Specialty coffee shops outside of Asia also offer kopi luwak. There, a single cup of brewed kopi luwak can cost anywhere between $35 – $100.[4]
However, in Bali, a region that produces kopi luwak and a popular destination to try it, the price of a single cup is $4.[5]
The reason why kopi luwak is so expensive is that it is very unusual and in high demand. Because producers must process it in a very specific way, the supply remains very small.
Due to its rarity and the mystery surrounding it, there is a lot of demand for kopi luwak, which keeps the price high.
In addition, the production of kopi luwak is very labour intensive, no matter whether it is wild or farmed. Another issue is that the population of civets has decreased in recent years, meaning that production is even lower than before. All these factors contribute to the high price of kopi luwak.
The history of kopi luwak
The islands of Sumatra and Java are where this coffee first appeared at the beginning of the 18th century when Indonesia was under Dutch colonial rule.
The Dutch did not allow the native, Indonesian plantation workers to collect the coffee cherries for their own use.
It wasn’t long before they realised that the wild civets’ droppings contained undigested coffee beans. Unable to drink the coffee they were working so hard to produce, the natives decided to collect the coffee beans from the droppings.[6]
After cleaning, drying and roasting, they managed to brew their own coffee. They were amazed when they discovered that this drink was better than anything they had tasted before.
This new and original coffee beverage could not be kept a secret
When the Dutch plantation owners heard about it and tried it for themselves, they too preferred it to traditionally processed coffee.[6]
It quickly became a sought after product, which caused the price to rise dramatically. Its popularity continued to grow, and producers began exporting the coffee to Europe. The European demand for this novelty product further increased its price. But what was so special about it?
The reason the coffee that passed through the Asian palm civet tasted better than the coffee they were used to was due to the poor production methods commonly found in the 18th and 19th centuries.[7]
Firstly, Asian palm civets are a lot more selective than coffee pickers when it comes to choosing coffee cherries. Coffee pickers, paid by weight, would often pick under-ripe cherries to boost their earnings. In contrast, civets only picked the ripest cherries to eat. Just as with any fruit, a riper piece will always taste superior.
Secondly, beans that pass through the civet’s intestines do not have any fruit pulp remaining as the enzymes break them down during the digestion process.
When producers don’t fully strip the coffee beans of the fruit pulp and mucilage, fermentation and mold can form, impairing the flavor of the coffee. In the past, poor processing techniques often caused fermentation and mold.[7]
So, the civet solved two issues found in coffee production back then, which of course resulted in a superior-tasting beverage that would have been a surprise to all who drank it.
Is kopi luwak safe to drink?
Even though the coffee beans come in close contact with pathogenic organisms associated with faeces, they do not contain significant amounts of these organisms and is therefore safe to drink.[8]
The farmer removes the endocarp that surrounds the bean when washing the beans, as most of the bacteria are on the endocarp.
In addition, when the beans are roasted, all the remaining bacteria are eliminated completely. Therefore, drinking kopi luwak is just as safe as drinking any other type of coffee.
Is kopi luwak coffee cruel?
Kopi luwak production is very cruel. To maximize the production of kopi luwak, farms keep civets in terrible conditions. They live in tiny battery cages with no space to run around or get any exercise.[9]
The civets also end up fighting with each other, even though in the wild they tend to be very shy and friendly creatures.
As investigations show, these conditions lead to abnormal behaviours, causing the animals to pace, circle around, and bite the bars of their cages. Many civets lose their fur and, to make things even worse, many even die.
Being omnivores, the diet of wild civets is usually very rich and includes a vast variety of foods such as small mammals, insects, and different fruits.
However, the farmers of kopi luwak are only interested in force-feeding them nothing but coffee cherries. The result is poor health due to an unbalanced diet.[10]
This approach has certainly increased the production of kopi luwak but at what cost? Tens of thousands of Asian palm civets are suffering on these farms just to produce coffee that, as various assessments and professional tastings show, is not even good.
Why you should NEVER buy kopi luwak
The first reason to avoid buying kopi luwak is the animal cruelty that producers inflict during its production. Purchasing this coffee supports an industry that neglects the ethical treatment of animals.
The second reason is that the kopi luwak you buy today is not the same as the coffee admired by the Dutch in the 18th century. Producers often create modern kopi luwak under conditions that differ vastly from the original, traditional methods.
The original kopi luwak used coffee beans that passed through the digestive tract of civets that lived freely in the wild, and they are very different from those that live on farms in captivity.
The diet of wild civets, as well as their overall condition, is a lot better as they are completely free to roam and pick the coffee cherries to eat.
Due to the awful conditions in which civets live in captivity, the coffee that they end up making is different and worse than the original.
Thirdly, most of the kopi luwak available on the market is fake. It has never gone through or even come near a civet. In fact, experts believe that up to 80 percent of the global kopi luwak market is fake.[11]
And don’t let the ‘wild-sourced’ label fool you either. As PETA and the BBC found, it often appears on coffee that comes from a farm with caged civets.[9]
It is very likely that you will end up paying a high price for a fake version of the rare coffee that you’re after.
Lastly, even if you manage to find authentic kopi luwak produced honestly and without animal cruelty, you still cannot justify the price. Are you willing to spend over a thousand dollars on a kilogram of coffee?
Kopi luwak style coffee without animal involvement
Researchers at the University of Florida have developed a method to replicate the civet’s digestive process, creating a kopi luwak-style coffee without harming animals. They have received a patent for this innovation.
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Afineur, a start-up based in Brooklyn, uses patented fermentation technology to improve the taste and nutritional value of coffee beans, mimicking the taste of kopi luwak.[12]
In an effort to return to the original method of producing kopi luwak, several Vietnamese companies have developed processes to create kopi luwak-style coffee without involving civets.
They produce their coffee with the use of an enzyme soak that, as they claim, has exactly the same effect on the coffee beans as the digestive process of civets.[13]
The reasons for this initiative of creating kopi luwak without animal involvement are straightforward. On the one hand, it stops cruelty towards civets while still providing all the fans of this type of coffee with their favourite beverage.
On the other hand, it also increases the production of an imitation kopi luwak as this new process does not require as much time or effort, which in turn lowers the price.
This leads to a kopi luwak style coffee becoming more affordable and more attractive for those who didn’t want to buy it because of how unethical it is.
