Type of business industry: Food &
beverage
Product: Civet Coffee/ Kopi Luwak/
Kopi Musang
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“Kopi” is the Indonesian word for coffee and the
“Luwak” is the indigenous animal
who plays an “active” role in the harvesting of the
raw coffee cherries.
|
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| "Kopi Luwak" or civet coffee is coffee made from
coffee berries which have been eaten and passed through the digestive tract of the civet cat. |
Strange, but true!
Well, it is hard to believe that the most luxury coffee in the world is actually made from “animal dropping”. Yeah, that is true. In order to be more specific, I would say that it is made from Asian Palm Civet’s [and other related civets] dropping. Ideally, these civets are kept in cage and feed on beans of coffee berries as their major diet. They enjoy eating the berries fleshy pulp. Then, those coffee berries are passed through their digestive system and finally defecated. Amazingly, the defecated coffee beans are still in shape. This is because the civets eat the berries but the beans inside the berries which pass through the cat’s digestive system are still undigested. After that, their dropping is gathered and undergoes a series of processes such as washing, sun-drying, light-roasting and brewing. Some customers state that these beans yield an aromatic coffee with much less bitterness.
Coffee
connoisseur Chris Rubin explains what makes "kopi luwak" worth the
exorbitant price:
"The
aroma is rich and strong, and the coffee is incredibly full bodied, almost
syrupy. It's thick with a hint of chocolate, and lingers on the tongue with a
long, clean aftertaste. It's definitely one of the most interesting and unusual
cups I've ever had."
Connie
Veneracion, a consumer who had given a jar of civet coffee beans by her brother
and family who had just came back from Indonesia in 2009 said:
“I tore the seal, opened the jar and the first thing I noticed
was the glossy exterior of the coffee beans as though they were coated with
oil. After dinner, I dumped half of the contents of the jar into the blender
and processed the beans to a coarse grind. The aroma was decidedly fruity and
sweet. The ground civet coffee beans went into the coffee percolator and,
several minutes later, I was excitedly serving civet coffee to everyone who
cared for a cup.”
Expert cupper and Sprudgie Award winner Stephen Vick had this to say on his kopi luwak experiences:
“On the cups that
I didn't present defect I found very mild sweetness and acidity with some
grassy, iodine notes and a pretty rough finish. One of four cups was moldy and
another single cup showed phenol. I tasted band-aids, iodine, and oyster.”
[Again, those comments were only based on their personal opinion and
thus, controversial]
Ranging
from US$120 and $600 (RM400 to RM2,000) per pound.
“One small cafe in Queensland
Australia has Kopi Luwak on the menu at A$50.00 (US$33.00) per cup. Brasserie
of Peter Jones department store in London’s Sloane Square started selling a
blend of Kopi Luwak peanut and Blue Mountain called Caffe Raro for £50 (=US$99.00)
a cup”
(Civetcoffeestarbucks.blogspot.com,
2011)
Sumatra is the world's largest
regional producer of civet coffee, followed by Java and Sulawesi [This data
might have been changed as Southeast Asia’s countries entrepreneurs
such as Malaysia have started to invest heavily in production in their homeland
due to exceptional high market price]. It is mainly sold in Japan, Taiwan,
South Korea and United States. Most of us simply cannot afford it.
Issues
1. Halal or non-halal (vary in different
country)
Indonesia: Majelis Ulama Indonesia
(MUI) declared that civet coffee (locally known as Kopi Luwak) is
Halal and can be consumed by
Muslims as long as the beans are thoroughly cleansed before grinding.
Malaysia: The
exotic and highly-priced kopi luwak (Civet Cat Coffee) has not received Halal status
from
the National Fatwa Council, Malaysia. A Harian Metro report advised Muslim consumers
to refrain from
drinking the coffee due to its unconfirmed Halal
status.
2. Fake Civet Coffee
Due to the lucrative market for
high-priced Civet coffee it seems inevitable that some unscrupulous people
would try to
capitalize through dishonest means, passing off as Civet coffee certain coffee
beans which
indeed had not been consumed and expelled by a Civet.
3. Maligned, abused, and beleaguered
The civet cat has an unknown
future on many fronts. The civet was traditionally hunted as a pest, but a
booming market in civet coffee has changed its fate, turning it from ‘pest’
into ‘producer’.
Business Potential
In term of economic
perspective, this business industry has a bright future due to its high demand,
but limited supply. Franchises like Coffee Bean, Starbucks and etc which are
available globally are selling it at extraorbitant price indirectly
boosting more new entrepreneurs [mostly from Southeast Asia] to venture into
this industry. This commodity has no price control as it is classified under
luxury good, instead of essential items. It is usually considered as small
scale manufacturing business as the current annual output produced from
factories are not very large [usually in pounds instead of tonnes]. However,
the difficulties are the methods to keep those civets healthily, halal or non
halal issue, law constraint [protected species in some countries], and health
benefits [some manufacturers didn’t undergoes the correct cleaning processes,
resulting in producing a harmful output].
CNN News Team Tries Kopi Luwak Coffee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnuelLBQOxY
Tested.com Tests Kopi Luwak Coffee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk8_HabWkW0
Kopi Luwak Coffee - $65 a cup!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV7yvCoI0EY
Kopi Luwak 猫屎 咖啡: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyHBi-jM5N4
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