The Joy and the Guilt in a Cup of Kopi Luwak

I can’t exactly remember when I first heard about kopi luwak, the legendary and exotic coffee that is discussed in hushed tones among elite coffee aficionados, but it was sometime in the early 2000s.

We didn’t call it kopi luwak back then. We called it civet coffee. The less cultured among us just called it poop coffee. Crude, yes. But true. Because that’s kind of what it is.

What is kopi luwak anyway?

Kopi luwak is coffee made from beans harvested from the scat (that’s a fancy word for poop) of the Asian palm civet, also called the common palm civet. It’s often just referred to as a “civet cat” because the animal has a sort of feline appearance. It also looks kind of like a weasel or a ferret. But it’s not related to any of those creatures. Civets are all part of their own distinct family, the viverridae.

Civets make their homes in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. They’re omnivorous but subsist mainly on fleshy fruits and berries. And one of their favorite fleshy berries is the ripe coffee cherry.

After a civet gobbles down a coffee cherry, the skin and pulp is stripped away during digestion. But the seeds of the coffee cherry — what most humans know as coffee beans — pass right through the civet’s digestive system where they interact with proteolytic enzymes in the civet’s gut.

This enzymatic treatment changes the physical surface of the beans with a “micro-pitting” effect. It also alters the chemical makeup of the beans by creating shorter peptides and more free amino acids.

This chemical reaction tends to give the coffee a sweeter, more complex flavor profile. It’s very similar to anaerobic fermentation, a coffee process that’s become increasingly popular among small, independent roasters in recent years.

After all that happens, the civet then excretes the beans out onto the forest floor. And while these beans are conveniently stripped of the coffee cherry’s outer pulp, they are also inconveniently stuck in a mass of civet fecal matter.

The civet’s leavings are then harvested and the embedded beans are removed, cleaned, and roasted.

But wait. Harvested … by whom? We’ll get to that.

Mainstreaming kopi luwak

Kopi luwak entered American culture’s collective conscious in 2007, when the aging protagonists of the comedy buddy film The Bucket List (a movie that also catapulted the phrase “bucket list” into the everyday vernacular) bonded over how these particular coffee beans were sourced.

This awareness dovetailed nicely with the burgeoning “third wave” coffee movement that was starting to flourish in many American cities.

But still, despite my growing appreciation for coffee cultivars and subtle differences in growing regions, I still didn’t have much interest in kopi luwak.

This reticence had nothing to do with a lack of culinary adventure. As a developing coffee connoisseur, the allure of drinking coffee made from beans that passed through the digestive tract of an exotic jungle cat was somewhat intriguing.

Rather, my hesitation was about expense. At the time, a single cup of kopi luwak sold for upwards of $80 in Los Angeles — if you could even find some place that served it.

Now don’t get me wrong. If someone had offered me a cup of freshly brewed civet coffee, I wouldn’t have refused. But overall it felt like an indulgence I didn’t need to seek out.

So, rather quickly, I pretty much forgot about kopi luwak. Until October 2014.

The kopi luwak experience

That year, our family of four set out on a year-long trip around the world, and by late October we’d settled into Bali for an extended period of time. Our leisurely stay opened up many opportunities to explore the unique culture of Indonesia. That meant we went on a lot of tours.

One of those tours included a visit to the Teba Sari Coffee Plantation, an agritourism destination showcasing Indonesia’s tea and coffee culture.

The tour itself was unremarkable. A guide led a rather large group of tourists down a vaguely maze-like path through a patch of Indonesian jungle containing a few scraggly coffee plants as she talked about the company’s environmental-positive approach to farming and its commitment to quality teas and coffees.

Along the way we passed a coffee roasting station, complete with an aged Indonesian woman grinding coffee beans with a large, blunt-end staff after roasting them in a wok. The whole experience felt very performative, offering the sheen coffee theater with the barest essence of authenticity.

Then, just before the end of the tour, we walked by four caged palm civets. These poor beasts did not appear to be enjoying captivity.

These poor beasts did not appear to be enjoying captivity. The guide said something about how these specimens had been injured and were being nursed back to health. She assured us they’d be released into the wild very soon. I don’t think anyone on the tour actually believed that.

At the end of the tour, we were given samples of all the teas and coffees the company produced. All but one. That’s right. There was no way Teba Sari would be giving out civet coffee for free.

If we wanted to try kopi luwak we had to pay an additional 50,000 rupiah (about $4.25 at the time) for a cup made using Kintamani Arabica beans processed via a civet’s digestive system.

We were assured by our Teba Sari tour guide that the company “applied standard sanitation and hygiene but preserved the coffee’s natural, exotic and aroma.”

With a pitch like that I could hardly refuse, so I forked over the additional funds.

I’m no coffee sommelier. I can’t taste taste the hints of black currant and chocolate in a perfectly brewed pour over. So I’m not able to recall any specific flavors that I tasted in that cup of kopi luwak. But overall, I found kopi luwak to be a rich, smooth cup with a peaty, earthy flavor. The oft-touted sweetness and fruitiness were noticeably absent.

But this cup had been brewed in the Balinese style, where the coffee is made by taking finely ground coffee beans and dousing them in hot water. So no matter how smooth the brew is, there’s always a little (or sometimes a lot) of grit left in the cup.

While I’m glad I had the opportunity to try the fabled kopi luwak, as I drank it I couldn’t stop thinking about the palm civets in the cages. It was the cruelest cup of coffee I’ve ever drank.

Economies of scale

On the tour, we were led to believe that every morning a legion of well-trained experts ventures forth into the Indonesian rain forests to search for fresh piles of coffee bean-filled civet scat.

But when one considers that claim, it seems much more likely that this is just some great fiction told to tourists.

At the time, Teba Sari sold a 100-gram bag of kopi luwak for 340,000 rupiah (about $30). Using the Bali method of brewing coffee, this would net you about 10 cups. By weight, this is one of the most expensive things you can buy in Bali.

We went to the local grocery stores quite a few times in the three weeks we spent in Bali. And each one of those stores sold some variety of kopi luwak. These varied wildly in price:

• 150,000 rupiah for 100g
• 211,000 rupiah for 150g
• 281,000 rupiah at the supermarket for two packs of 21 grams each
• 379,000 rupiah for 59g using the “aged monsoon process”

Taking into account just how abundant bags of kopi luwak were on Balinese grocery store shelves and how much kopi luwak is sold worldwide, it’s just not feasible that all those beans are harvested from free-ranging civets in the wild.

Keeping the civets in cages is a lot more economical than wandering around the forest looking for fresh civet scat. It’s much more likely that the kopi luwak you’re enjoying isn’t a free range organic product. Rather, it’s been harvested from captive civets force-fed coffee cherries.

And then there’s the other possibility. That all the kopi luwak being sold isn’t really kopi luwak at all. Instead, it’s just regular Indonesian-grown coffee. Most people, myself included, would never know the difference.

Trying kopi luwak for yourself

If all that doesn’t put you off and you want to try kopi luwak for yourself, you might consider a trip to Indonesia. In the years since we visited the country, Teba Sari has changed its business model, pivoting from the rustic coffee plantation tour to a pour-over demonstration in a fancy-looking hotel. But there are countless other places that will provide you the authentic kopi luwak experience.

You can also travel to Vietnam where you’ll find a similar coffee known as cà phê Chồn. It’s commonly sold from street-side stands as weasel coffee (possibly less appealing than civet coffee) and sometimes squirrel coffee.

But if you want to get some in the comfort of your own home, then there are a few places that sell it online, such as Pure Kopi Luwak ($125 for 100 grams) and Volcanica Coffee Free Range Kopi Luwak ($400 for 16 ounces; about 453 grams).

Just know what you get may be sourced in an ethically dubious fashion — or it may not even be what’s advertised.

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Header image: Civet in captivity in Bali, Indonesia. Photo from the author’s collection.