Jackie's Point of View: Civet coffee gains popularity [Updated, April 2012]

By Jackie, Researcher

Type of business industry: Food & beverage

Product: Civet Coffee/ Kopi Luwak/ Kopi Musang

“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.

Introduction

The objective of this week's research is to find out which type of coffee is considered the most expensive coffee in the world. A deep discovery and understanding was done through viewing a number of media news including CNN to find out the processes involved to make this coffee, the global market price of this coffee, the customers' response after drinking this coffee, the issues related to this coffee, and the potential of doing this type of coffee business.

"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]

Price and availability

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].