I had the incredible experience of visiting Indonesia long before I was a coffee professional. One of the bucket list items was visiting a coffee farm. It was a great experience! We got to learn about everything. Picking, processing, and roasting (little did I know that a few years later, this would be my entire life), and at the end, we got to try the famed Kopi Luwak coffee. This was over 10 years ago and—this might come as a shock—I wasn’t a big coffee drinker then. The coffees I was exposed to were cheap diner-style coffee, which pretty much tasted like burned popcorn, that I usually drank to stay up and study, or when driving late at night. I remember not tasting any difference between Kopi Luwak and any other coffee I had drunk. I thought, as most do, that my palate was just not sophisticated enough. So, I bought some to bring back as a gift to a friend who was more of a coffee drinker than me. He wasn't an expert by any definition, he was just someone who appreciated good coffee.
I remember giving it to him with such pride and a sense of accomplishment. Here I was, on the other side of the world buying this incredible (and expensive) premium coffee product. Something Jack Nicolson offered to Morgan Freeman on his private jet (see film 'The Bucket List' 2007). My friend enthusiastically accepted the gift but when I later asked him how it was, he, in a friendly and cordial way essentially said it wasn't for him and he didn't really understand the hype.
For those unfamiliar with kopi luwak, kopi in Indonesian means coffee, and Luwak is an animal native to various parts of Southeast Asia. So it's the coffee of the luwak. It's often called "cat poop coffee" but the luwak isn't a cat. There are plenty of cats in Indonesia, and surprise surprise, they don't eat fruit. It's actually a type of civet, more closely related to a weasel or mongoose. The luwak eats the coffee cherries, poops out the seeds (coffee beans), and then the feces is washed, roasted, and sold for exorbitant amounts. And though this sounds disgusting... well, it is disgusting... it really doesn't seem to deter people at all. In the aforementioned film 'the Bucket List', Jack Nicholson's character offers Morgan Freeman's character a cup of this coffee, but he refuses. Later in the film Morgan Freeman reveals to Nicholson the fancy coffee's gag reflex-inducing origins and they share a laugh. When this film came out in 2007, kopi luwak actually peaked in popularity.
So, why am I talking about this? Well, as you might imagine, quite literally since the day I became a coffee professional—and exponentially more since I began selling premium coffee—I've been asked again and again about kopi luwak. I don't think a month goes by that I'm not asked about it at least once. Well, I have some thoughts, but first let's answer the immediate, burning question I know you all have…
Is it good?
No. As my friend and specialty coffee pioneer, George Howell, so eloquently put it; “It’s coffee from assholes, for assholes.”
In all seriousness, it’s literal shit. You’re grinding, brewing, and drinking actual excrement, of course, it isn’t good. The vast majority of us who are professional coffee tasters find this coffee to be pretty bad. And by vast majority I mean I have not met a single coffee taster who likes it or has anything positive to say about it.
The History
While the popular historical narrative holds that coffee was introduced to Indonesia by the Dutch in 1696, I'm quite confident that it had been there long before. Indonesians were drinking coffee for at the very least, a century before the Dutch ever arrived. There are numerous writings by Indonesian Muslim scholars from the early 1600s extolling the virtues of coffee and those who consume it.
“My teacher, may God be pleased with him, used to say: Coffee without sugar relieves stomach ache and helps to stay awake, and every day he had about fifteen cups of it when he woke up from a nap, and the same amount when he woke up from sleeping at the end of the night. And if a guest stays with someone, he does not sleep until he has gathered coffee supplies.”
Abdullah ibn Shaykh Al-Aydarus (d. 1609)
This is one of many narrations that show at least a century of Indonesian consumption of coffee before the Dutch. Arab traders, Muslim missionaries, and Indonesian scholars in the region had a flow of immigrants between the Middle East and the Nusantara (Muslim Southeast Asia) for centuries bringing with them all manner of goods, including coffee. Coffee was a very important drink, particularly amongst scholars and students. Additionally, Indonesian Muslims had been traveling to Yemen and Mecca from as early as the 13th century. Coffee had been consumed in the Arab world at that point for well over 500 years.
In particular, Yemeni Muslims from the region of Hadramout in southern Yemen had a particular fondness for the region and immigrated to and from there for centuries. There exists today sizeable a sub ethnicity of Hadramis throughout Muslim Southeast Asia. These Hadhramis occupy a beloved place in the cultures of the Nusantara as a large portion of them descend from the great Hadhrami Sayyid (descendants of Prophet Muhammad) families. Who, in the region produced a sizable portion of the most beloved Muslim scholars, mystics, preachers, poets, activists, academics, and leaders. It’s quite common in the region to meet people bearing the Hadhrami Sayyid surnames Al-Juneid, Asaggaf, Al-Aydarus, Al-Attas, Al-Habshi, and others. It’s also quite common to find Hadhramis in Yemen who look well… for lack of a better term, Asian. No doubt likely having maternal genetics from southeast Asia. It’s a truly beautiful and fascinating story of centuries of cultural exchange where both peoples grew, changed, and influenced one another. A history I’ve been fascinated by for a long time. I’ll perhaps do a blog post in the future where I delve more into this.
All of that said, coffee was definitely in Indonesia before the Dutch. At the very least, coffee consumption. I would love for a historian to reach out and share their two cents because I actually think it’s highly plausible that the Dutch arrived in Indonesia and found coffee plants already growing there. From that perhaps they propagated them widely. But, of course, this is just my own speculation, would love to hear from an expert on the topic.
Following Dutch colonization, commercial coffee plantations were established, whereby they enslaved the local population to work and harvest their crop. As the legend goes, these enslaved Indonesians were forbidden to consume the fruits of their labor, but they noticed that these wild luwaks were consuming many coffee cherries and when they pooped it out, the bean remained intact. The locals then took these beans, roasted and brewed them. When the Dutch colonists later caught on to this, they noticed the coffee tasted better than non-luwak coffee and thus kopi luwak was born.
There’s actually, as far as I can tell, very little evidence of the sequence of events as illustrated in the legend and I’m not entirely sure what the truth of the matter is. The legend is definitely plausible but there appears to be very little evidence to support it. Granted, I’m not a historian and would love for someone to reach out and correct me here if I’m wrong. That said, as far as my research has taken me, the very first time kopi luwak was ever exported, sold or marketed was in 1991. Before that, there are only two things I could find regarding it.
The first, and I believe the earliest mention of Kopi Luwak is from German Zoologist Alfred Brehm in 1853. He makes brief mention of “the Javanese” telling him that the best coffee came from the excrement of the luwak due to them only picking out the ripest cherries. Was it the Dutch then who were consuming this or the native Javanese? It’s unclear.
The second is an article from 1981 in National Geographic about coffee all over the world. In the article, the author mentions briefly that she was served kopi luwak by the plantation owner she was visiting.
I’d love to know at what point this was sold in Indonesia as a delicacy or if it was just consumed in small portions by farmers, or if it was indeed the treasured secret of the plantation owners. I really can’t pin it down.
Regardless, what we know for sure is that in 1991 a gentleman by the name of Tony Wild brought one kilo of kopi luwak back from Indonesia while working as coffee director for the tea and coffee retailer ‘Taylors of Harrowsgate.’ Mr. Wild learned of the existence of Kopi Luwak after reading the aforementioned National Geographic article. From there, it completely blew up. It was featured on Oprah, numerous news outlets, and reached its peak with ‘The Bucket List’. It’s now a source of national pride for Indonesia, a major tourism draw, and a 6.5 billion dollar industry.
Interestingly enough, in 2010 a council of Indonesian clerics convened to determine whether consumption of Kopi Luwak was permissible in Islamic Law. Indonesia is, of course, a Muslim-majority country and in fact represents the largest single ethnicity of Muslims in the world. The default assumption for consumption of excrement of any kind in Islamic law is impermissability. Kopi luwak though, as it turns out is a special case. The council ultimately decided that it was permitted, so long as the bean was unbroken, still plantable, and was thoroughly cleaned and removed of all else besides the pristine seed. It’s worth noting that a smaller contingency of Muslim legal scholars maintain that it’s forbidden to consume.
Animal Cruelty
As is the case with most industries that rely on animals for their product, the luwaks are unconscionably mistreated. They’re kept in cages, force-fed coffee cherries (often to the point of malnutrition and death) and the whole operation is really horrible. Any Google search of Kopi Luwak's mistreatment will turn up dozens of articles from reputable sources telling the story of these horrible mistreatments. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have been fighting against kopi luwak for close to a decade.
What is even worse is that we’re now seeing this ridiculous poop coffee trend extending to other animals. Elephant poop coffee is now a thing and I can only imagine what might happen if that takes off. I’ve also heard rumors of certain field-dwelling animals in South America potentially being primed for this type of use. There’s actually a bird in Yemen that eats coffee and poops it out in this same fashion and I’ve heard rumblings about it becoming a product even there.
I've spent a large portion of the last decade of my life on coffee farms. Every coffee farm, in every coffee growing region in the world has animals that make their way into the crop and eat coffee cherries. Naturally, many of these animals just swallow the bean and when it comes out the other side, it technically can be roasted, ground, and brewed. Point being, this trend needs to stop now and not extend to other origins. Because I promise you, the potential for it exists in every single coffee origin.
Last, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the simple reality that countries and farmers who engage in this practice are not wealthy. They’re most often post-colonial, economically struggling nations whose wealth and natural resources have been plundered for centuries. It’s very easy for us to look at situations like kopi luwak, cocaine in Colombia, poaching in Sub-Saharan Africa, or others and cast a privileged, often racist judgment upon them. We need to avoid that. People need to make a living, and if you offer to buy shit, they’ll sell you shit. That doesn’t excuse them, but let’s also not pretend like the economic, and political policies of the countries where we reside, in the developed world—that keep developing nations in cycles of debt and poverty—aren’t also very much to blame.
What about Indonesian Coffee?
Now, Indonesian coffee is a different story altogether and is easily one of my favorite coffee origins. Fun fact, the first coffee to ever be labeled “specialty coffee” was actually a Sumatra, sold by Erna Knutson (who coined the term ‘specialty coffee’.) The culture among specialty producers in the region is exceptional. Some of the best, most complex, unique, and sensational coffees can be found there. In addition to this, some of the most experimental and cutting-edge farming techniques are being developed by Indonesian specialty coffee farmers.
Indonesia is extremely unique as a coffee-producing country because it’s one of the the few that has both a vibrant cafe, coffee roasting, and coffee consumption culture living right next door to coffee farms. What this has resulted in is a direct and rapid interaction between coffee drinkers, coffee roasters, cafes, farmers, and farm owners. These people share the same language, same culture, and are often a short inexpensive flight or drive away from one another. What this results in, is rapid experimentation and market validation for all sorts of coffee innovations. It’s unfortunate that so much of the attention that Indonesia receives for its more premium coffee offerings goes to this kopi luwak scam. Point being, if you’re a coffee lover planning on traveling to Indonesia, there are A LOT of amazing coffees to try and fall in love with. None of which are kopi luwak.
I would highly encourage anyone who loves coffee, and definitely those who are into specialty coffee to seek out coffee from any of the following farms and regions (not an exhaustive list, please comment if you have more suggestions I can add to this list):
Java Frinsa Estate
Toarco Jaya
Solok Radjo Cooperatives
Indonesia Gayo
Indonesia Aceh
Any specialty coffee shop carrying coffee from these places will more than likely be sourcing great stuff and I promise you will not be disappointed.
All in all…
All in all, what I really think about kopi luwak is simple. Some smart businessmen saw an opportunity to go pre-internet viral with a novel product that had a shocking and intriguing origin story. For some reason, we derive great enjoyment and excitement from these strange exoticized products and stories. Enough enjoyment and excitement that a product like kopi luwak was able to take on a life of its own and spawn into a massive cottage industry. The reality is that the coffee is not good, relies on the abuse of animals, takes valuable attention away from real coffee farmers/innovators, and is a complete waste of money.
You have to admit though… turning shit into gold is a helluva hustle.
Comentários