Kopi luwak

Guess which of these two coffees comes from beans excreted out of an animal's rectum.

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Kopi luwak ("civet coffee" in Indonesian) is a heinous tasting coffee resulting from the finest forms of animal abuse and unequaled smooth marketing. For those connoisseurs who prefer their coffee to be adventurous, kopi luwak is boldly part fantasy and part romanticism. Who wouldn't prefer their coffee beans to be digested and shat out of the rectum of a small mammal? Digested coffee bean lovers prefer their beans popping out of the anus of a civet over all other animals combined! How could that many people be wrong?

Rags to riches?

No. The story goes that people in Indonesia started collecting civets' waste (specifically, the Asian palm civet), to secure animal droppings that had perfectly good coffee beans inside. The excrement could be mostly cleaned off and the beans would not only roast but still brew a black colored coffee. It's a great tale of rags to riches how desperately poor people searching for anything they could sell in order to live another day, would discover something that bored rich housewives in Manhattan would pay $1000 per kilo for. Since then, the narrative claims that those in the kopi luwak industry in Indonesia live a prosperous life and connoisseurs can enjoy the most sought-after and succulent brewed drinks ever… seriously… if you don't try it right now I'll never invite you over for tea again it is that good! The digestive process turns what are ordinary beans into super-atomic-amazeballs-beans due to the acids or something in the civets' innards or whatever which infuse all those detoxing antioxidants that naturally brew in the civets' innards and fuse directly into the beans somehow! When the beans finally escape they are overflowing with all the life-enriching substances Dr. Oz says we all need.

Unveiling the scam

Who wouldn't want to cage this animal and torture it through force feeding?

The real story goes that the industry is one of kopi luwak workers still making appalling wages whose product is eventually marked up on such a scale that even the petroleum industry or jet printer ink couldn't compete with. To make it all the more charming, many civets are housed in battery cages and force-fed coffee berries. This makes faeces collection all the easier as they shit on each other all in one space. It saves the tedious work required to hunt around through jungles getting mud on your shoes. Add to this the less than sanitary conditions and we have a simply ideal career description for everyone who works at the bottom of a very long distribution chain. Civets are born and die in a cage while being slowly tortured to death, low-end workers shove food in animals' mouths and clean through their excrement for peanuts, middle-end suppliers gather up the product and mark it up selling it wholesale to Western buyers, Western buyers place them in fancy packaging making the sweetest killing of all as their marketing gurus convince rich people bored of quinoa bars to buy animal waste coffee. The magic of globalization and capitalism cannot be more beautifully illustrated.

Claimed health benefits

Those with the least integrity also claim the liquid that comes from these coffee beans cures every horrible nasty disease or ailment one can think of. These range from preventing breast cancer to putting your chi in order. Want better skin… then Oprah knows how:. Or… you can chase after muscle pain reduction, ulcer reduction, cure diabetes, protecting teeth, or liver protection. You can also enjoy its powerful antioxidants. Kopi luwak has even inspired human-poop-coffee of which we can only imagine the incredible health benefits.

The most flavourful coffee that tickles your tastebuds?

No. Coffee tasting experts generally are of the consensus (based partly on blind taste tests) that it is a poor quality coffee which is bought for the fantasy rather than actual qualities which should count (considering where the beans came from) such as taste and consistency. As with most food based incredibly-super-duper claims, little actual analysis has been done on the coffee beans themselves. Naturally this should create enough healthy scepticism to keep the media from getting carried away. The BBC has recently aired an expose on animal cruelty within the industry. Harrods Department Store has (in principle) called for tighter regulations on the beans. Supposedly this would mean only beans found in jungle hunts would be acceptable which, of course, would be very easy to verify and regulate.

See also

• Caffeine