Kopi Luwak: Why we don’t sell it.

Kopi Luwak is controversial

Kopi Luwak, or civet coffee, is pretty controversial. It’s one of the most expensive coffees in the world, and it’s made from beans that have been passed through the digestive system of a civet cat (aka luwak).

Asian Palm Civets (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) are small, catlike creatures that live in Southeast Asia.  name comes from the Malay word for “musk” because they smell like musk. They’re kind of cute and cuddly looking, with big eyes, rounded bodies and long tails.

Civets are omnivores — they eat both meat and plants. They’re also fussy eaters. In the wild, they only eat the choicest, ripest coffee cherries and will spit out anything else. They can access the highest branches of the most remote coffee plants that humans can’t reach. So when you drink Kopi Luwak, you know you’re getting some extraordinary beans. The whole coffee beans pass through their digestive system, and the droppings are collected, washed and roasted to make Kopi Luwak!

Kopi Luwak is extremely expensive; Kopi Luwak is usually sold for 300-600 USD/Kg and is one of the most expensive coffees in the world. It has been marketed under various names; Kopi Luwak, civet coffee and weasel coffee. It is produced in a few countries in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines.

Kopi Luwak is as smooth as silk.

I’ve been lucky enough to have sampled a decent amount of Cambodian Kopi Luwak. A friend lived in Cambodia for about 10 years until 2019 and he would bring home ethically sourced wild civet coffee when he came back at Christmas, and his dad would bring me some from time to time when he visited. We used to drink it black and also in the traditional Cambodian way, with a little touch of condensed milk.

I love it, but it’s not because of the flavour or the aroma. For me, the defining characteristic of Kopi Luwak is its smoothness. Absolutely as smooth as silk. The flavour is not very exciting and definitely not forward at all. It’s beautifully smooth on the tongue and then it’s gone, with very little finish. I find the flavour pleasant but not all that interesting. The nose is very flat.

What’s really unique about it is the “glow” you get for about half an hour after drinking a cup. Now, I’m a bona fide, stone-cold caffeine fiend. I can (and do) drink coffee all day and even just before bed so it’s not a caffeine hit that causes the glow, and in any case it’s completely different. This is a beautifully subtle, nuanced all over-wellness or contentment with a little added energy. It’s not like caffeine at all and it’s hard to describe. It doesn’t really feel like you’ve added anything, rather that whatever you had already was amplified just a little. It’s very subtle but it’s very good. To me, this is what’s extraordinary about Kopi Luwak, not the taste or the aroma.

We don’t sell Kopi Luwak to avoid mistreatment of the civets.

Kopi luwak was originally discovered by plantation workers in Indonesia who took home coffee beans that civet cats had eaten and passed, because they could not afford to buy their own coffee. The workers noticed that the beans were less bitter after having passed through the civet’s digestive tract. When Kopi Luwak became known around the world at the end of the 1990s, prices started to rise and inevitably, this led to people capturing civets and keeping them in cages to produce Kopi Luwak.

In the wild, civets are choosy about which fruits they eat. They only eat ripe coffee cherries, which contain the best quality beans. By contrast, farmed civets are fed a monotonous diet of any old cherries regardless of their ripeness.

Civet farming is a major welfare problem for these animals. A 2015 study found that around half of all caged civets had some form of disease or injury. It also highlighted how poorly suited they were to life in captivity – their poor diets, lack of access to water and other health issues may all be linked to their limited freedom of movement.

Civet coffee production is also a threat to wild civet populations as it encourages poaching – either through deliberate hunting or through habitat loss as more land is cleared for farms.

Civet cats are put under immense stress, and they suffer tremendously both physically and psychologically due to the conditions they are kept in. They lose their ability to behave naturally because they are confined to cages, unable to roam freely or engage in any kind of natural behaviour. The cages are extremely small and overcrowded, which prevents the civets from being able to move freely or interact socially as they would do in the wild.

Some farmers have reported that hundreds of civets have died from stress related diseases following capture. Many caged civets die prematurely because of poor diet (civets eat only the best coffee cherries in the wild) and stressful confinement conditions that lead to disease.

For all these reasons, and more, we have always refrained from selling Kopi Luwak. Even with the best supply chains in the world, it is difficult to ensure that what you are buying has been produced in an ethical way. Whereas I would encourage anyone who likes coffee to try a cup if they are certain it is not produced by caged, farmed civets, I think it is very difficult to make that determination unless you have someone on the ground in the producing country who knows what’s going on.

By Pat McArdle