Luwak Coffee comes from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, an area well known for its excellent coffee. Also native to the area is a small civet-like animal called a Paradoxurus. The locals call them luwaks. These little mammals live in the trees and one of their favorite foods is the red, ripe coffee cherry. They eat the cherries, bean and all. While the bean is in the little guy's stomach, it undergoes chemical treatments and fermentations. The bean finishes its journey through the digestive system, and exits. The still-intact beans are collected from the forest floor, and are cleaned, then roasted and ground just like any other coffee.
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| Luwak |
One must wonder about the circumstances that brought about the first cup of Luwak coffee. Who would think to (or even want to) collect and roast beans out of animal feces? Perhaps a native figured it was easier to collect the beans from the ground this way, rather than having to work harder and pick them from the trees. Our local source says the Sumatran villagers discovered that civet droppings ultimately produced a smooth cup of coffee centuries ago, when they were forced to work on Dutch plantations, and hand over everything they picked to their colonial masters. Civets provided the only coffee the workers could scrounge for themselves. Because of the strange method of collecting, there isn't much luwak coffee produced in the world. The average total annual production is only around 500 to a maximum of 1000 pounds of green coffee beans. The roasting process reduces the volume up to 20%.
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| Luwak Feces |
Because of the rarity of this coffee, the price is quite outrageous. If you can find a vendor, the current cost for a pound of Luwak Coffee is around $120 or more. Some more adventurous coffee houses are selling it by the cup for $15 - $30. Is it really worth of the price? Well, you are paying for the experience of enjoying such an unusual phenomenon. The famous actors Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman even mentioned this unusual coffee from Sumatra on the Bucket List movie. Please keep in mind, the luwak coffee produced from any caged luwak farms and the human interference in the beginning of their process, will not give you the true meaningful experience. Prior to the broadcasting and Hollywood movie twist, these luwaks went around freely picking the best ripest cherries, along with the other fruits from surrounding coffee plantations: such as mangos, bananas, papaya, & guava, etc. Luwaks are well known as the very picky eaters, and their nature creates such an unimaginable result. Unfortunately, there are now too many greedy humans out there in Indonesia, that are capturing & trapping these poor luwak animals (feeding them with human picked cherry beans).
Sadly, in order to capitalize their market, there is one macro coffee roaster in Semarang (Central Java) that has been producing a blend for this coffee then mass-producing this product under the brand of Luwak Coffee (it is just a FLAVORED coffee blend; not the Luwak coffee beans that you are looking for). That's why they claim to have an unlimited supply (Real Luwak Coffee can only be produced to a maximum quantity of 1000LB/year).
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| Luwak Coffee Beans |
The other operation is in East Java, which is now utilizing these animals and producing a massive production of luwak coffee(with HUMAN interference of this animals normal diet). This non-natural & inhumane process of luwak coffee, is now being offered in almost every coffee house of major cities in Indonesia. The “RARE” term is no longer applicable for this type of coffee, because with current human interference, and farmed luwak production, the total production of this coffee now can be unlimited. It is NO LONGER pronounced as the rare coffee beans of the world, it is just another way to insanely mark up the coffee price (and what you are actually drinking is just another mass-produced coffee from Indonesia).
These Sumatran luwaks never migrate from Sumatra to any other islands, neither are they caged to produce the same type of "washed material". A couple of native Indonesians named their business practice as: Indonesian Grocery, Inc., and they claim to have their own plantation for this type of coffee in Toraja, Java, and Sumatra. Everybody can claim that they have their own coffee plantation on the Internet; but, not everyone will misrepresent the truth. You have to understand that there are not any legal organizations, under the goverment of Indonesia, that allow a company to register a name with "Inc". When any organization that operates on Indonesian soil claims their company name in the form of "Inc", then you need to question their credibility. Gather as much information about the Indonesian organizational structure, and find out about their business culture. In order to legally own a coffee plantation in Indonesia, that organization needs to be properly registered first (especially when we are talking about owning several coffee plantations on 3 different islands that are far apart from each other).
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