Drinking a Cup of Coffee that Came Out of an Animal's A** (Literally!)

After a morning of touring the Borobudur Temple, under the hottest sun I've experienced thus far in Indonesia, I was pleased to be driven back to the villa in air-conditioned comfort.

Somehow the conversation the driver and I were having landed on the topic of coffee, which is strange, because I don't particularly enjoy coffee.  

"How would you like to try the most exclusive coffee in the world?" he asked.

"No, I don't want to go out of our way," I replied, hoping we could get back to the villa as soon as possible, so I could enjoy that cooling dip in the pool I was craving.

"Actually this place is on the way," he enthused, always eager to please his client. As I could not gently convince him to proceed directly to the villa, and I hesitate to be an aggressively assertive American, we ended up at Coffee Luwak Mataram. 

It turns out, "Luwak" refers to an animal that in English is called the Asian Palm Civet. It is a nocturnal creature that feeds on berries and fruit and it looks like it is related to a weasel or mongoose.

It turns out Asian Palm Civets also eat coffee berries, but don't digest them fully and crap them out of their bodies mostly intact. In the 19th Century some coffee growers in Java, for some inexplicable reason, probably boredom or heat-induced delirium, thought it would be a magnificent idea to take these petrified, half-digested coffee berries they found in the luwak feces and clean them, roast them, and drink them. And so Kopi Luwak, coffee enhanced by the luwak's digestive process, was born.

In the last decade, the popularity of Kopi Luwak has expanded greatly, particularly in Japan and China. In the pictures below you can see baskets of the berries that have been excreted from the Luwak's posterior in their petrified form and baskets of the cleaned and roasted Luwak Coffee beans. 

My driver was extremely excited that we would be served cups of this rare treat. He asserted that the digestive and enzymatic process of the coffee beans traveling through the Palm Civet's intestines makes the coffee smoother tasting and much healthier somehow. Something about less caffeine and being easier on the stomach.

I did try a cup and it seemed smooth and tasty enough, novice coffee drinker that I am, though I would suspect any cup of coffee tastes reasonably good when accompanied by a pitcher of sweetened, condensed milk such as the one we were given to add to the brew.  To be truthful, I was more impressed by the rich Javan decor of the place.

The proprietor of the coffee shop was overjoyed to meet me.  It turns out, I was the first foreign customer she's had in over a year thanks to COVID, or so she said. She took a dozen pictures of me and then recorded my answer to whether I liked the coffee that comes out of a Palm Civet's a**,  a film clip she said she would place on Instagram to try to lure tourists back to her shop.

I didn't really wish to purchase a bag of a** coffee, but she begged and pleaded and I felt that, being the only tourist to have consumed Luwak Coffee in over a year, and that I had inadvertently filmed a commercial praising a** coffee while just trying to be polite, that I had to at least purchase the smallest possible bag. Perhaps I could give it as a gift to a coffee lover in the U.S., maybe someone that I didn't particularly like, and then tell them, after the fact, that their coffee beans had come from where the sun doesn't shine.

On the way out of the coffee shop, I encountered a real, live Palm Civet cowering in a dingy cage. As I went to take a picture of him, he scowled at me ominously and made a noise that sounded to me like an unhappy snarl.

After finally returning to the villa and completing my dip into the pool, motivated by that snarl, I decided to research Kopi Luwak a little more closely. It turns out this rare coffee, if harvested in the wild, can sell for as much as $1300 a kilogram.  I haven't watched a lot movies about drug cartels, but that seems to be the kind of price a cartel boss would quote for his finest product, and also pretty steep for coffee that comes out of an animal's a**, no matter how rare it might be.  

What truly was shocking, though, was the information that Palm Civets are being captured, caged, and force fed coffee berries in a new Kopi Luwak farming industry.  No wonder the little civet I met was snarling at me, as I can't imagine that being force fed coffee berries while living in a cage is a pleasant existence.  And the fact that the tiny package I purchased was more in line with the $100 a kilo that farmed Kopi Luwak sells for and it became quite clear whose crap I had been drinking. 

Yet, what does one do in a country where many people are underemployed or not employed at all?  Clearly the woman from the coffee shop was suffering economically and from the agitation in her voice, seemed desperate and near her breaking point. Without her reliance on a** coffee, how would she make a living?  In the modern world, is anyone untainted by questionable moral choices, especially in the realm of money and consumerism?

Although I am now an unofficial spokesperson on Instagram for non-cruelty free Palm Civet a** coffee, might I recommend purchasing only certified Fair Trade Coffee, and avoiding coffee that comes from a Palm Civet's a** or anyone else's.  

As for me, I have decided that I will stick to drinking tea.