Why Bali Coffee Tours is Better Than Kopi Luwak Coffee Tours

Indonesia is known for producing kopi luwak coffee, also called civet coffee or even poop coffee, which has been popular since the 19th century when Indonesia was under Dutch colonial rule. The story goes that the native Indonesian farmers were forbidden from harvesting the coffee they farmed for their own use. So, they had to get creative.

In scrounging around for coffee, Indonesian farmers and plantation workers discovered that the civet (a small wild animal native to Indonesia) was fond of the coffee cherry plant, which has a coffee bean as its seed. The civets would eat the cherries, then pass the seeds without digesting them. The farmers brewed these seeds and realized the resulting coffee tasted better than conventional coffee of the time. The plantation owners soon caught wind of this and, as you may have guessed, decided to make a profit off of it.

The tradition of selling kopi luwak coffee for extremely high prices continues at several coffee plantations and coffee shops in Indonesia. When you’re in Indonesia, you’ll see advertisements for kopi luwak everywhere. But buyer beware! Here’s what you need to know before you spend your money on a cup of civet coffee or a kopi luwak tour.

Selling kopi luwak coffee is big business for industrious scammers who know that tourists are happy to pay a lot of money for a unique experience. The problem is, it’s incredibly difficult to cultivate true kopi luwak. To do so, you would need to essentially scavenge for civet droppings on the forest floor. This labor-intensive task is noted as the reason why wild civet coffee is so expensive (as much as $80 USD per cup!)

If you go on a kopi luwak tour, you won’t see wild civets running around. Instead, you’ll see caged civets, often forced to exist on a diet of only coffee cherries. You’ll be offered a sample cup of coffee, which might taste great. But it probably isn’t kopi luwak. When you buy a bag to take home with you, you’ll likely be very surprised and disappointed by the difference in quality. By that time, you’ve already spent your time and money.

Civets are wild animals. They naturally have a well-rounded diet that includes cherries, bugs, small reptiles, and other fruits. The kopi luwak industry, though, thrives on animal cruelty for the sake of profit. Kopi luwak coffee plantations keep civets in cages, often only feeding these animals coffee cherries and forcing them to stay awake by making them stand on a wire floor.

Imagine if you were trapped in a cage and forced to only eat one thing for the rest of your life. The civets aren’t able to interact with each other and live a sad, solitary life, all so plantation owners can charge unknowing tourists $300 USD a pound for it.

Even worse, there’s no standard for when plantations can label kopi luwak as “wild.” So, even if you only buy wild kopi luwak, you might still be contributing to these horrific conditions.

In fact, it might be worse. While this coffee may very well have served the farmers and plantation workers at the time, today we know that the process the beans go through as they pass through the civet cat’s digestive tract isn’t superior to the modern roasting process. The civet coffee beans lack acidity, which can rob the coffee of its flavor.

Plus, when left to their own devices, civets naturally only eat the best cherries and therefore pass only superior coffee beans. By being force-fed cherries, they aren’t able to be picky, and so the coffee beans that go into a cup of kopi luwak aren’t necessarily high-quality.

Don’t contribute to animal cruelty or waste your money on what is literally “crap coffee.” If you’re a coffee-lover, spend your time touring a real coffee plantation and enjoying delicious, naturally-grown coffee from the heart of Bali.