THERE are certain culinary delicacies in human culture that make one wonder, “Who in the hell was the first person to look at this and have the thought, ‘Hey, I wonder if that would taste good?’” Coffee made from cat shit, a discovery of some unknown Filipino, or Indonesian, or Vietnamese lost in the mists of history, is one such example.
Civet coffee, called kape alamid in the Philippines, kopi luwak in Indonesia, and whatever Vietnamese words mean “coffee made out of weasel shit” in that country, is coffee produced from the scat of the Asian Palm Civet, which is also colloquially (but incorrectly) called a Civet Cat – hence, cat shit coffee. A civet is a small, omnivorous mammal that somewhat resembles a cat, but seems to be more related to animals such as mongooses or raccoons. The little creatures seem to regard the fruit of coffee plants as quite a treat, and eat them in large quantities. The civet can digest the softer berry part of the coffee fruit but not the hard seed – i.e., the coffee bean – inside, and so these are passed, thence to be collected by people who must have one of the worst jobs in the world.
The digestive chemistry of the civet affects the beans, so when they are cleaned – thoroughly, one would hope – dried, roasted, and ground, they produce a rich, unique flavor that is actually a bit hard to describe. I’ve read descriptions of it as earthy, with somewhat sweet notes of chocolate or caramel, which is not at all how I would describe it, because even though I live in one of the most fantastic coffee-growing regions on Earth and probably drink more coffee than I do actual water, I’m not a pretentious asshole about it. I would say, imagine the best cup of freshly-ground arabica coffee you have ever had, but without any hint of the acidic or ashy bite to it so that you can actually taste the smell.
It's really good stuff, is what I’m saying, and I would unquestioningly drink it exclusively if I could afford it, and if I didn’t know where it actually came from – not the cat shit part, I can look past that, but the industry that produces it. More on that in a bit.
Civet coffee is wickedly expensive, even on the Southeast Asian scale where one can enjoy the finest (non-cat shit) coffee in the world for hardly more than the cost of a cup of that boiled bat piss from the machine at 7-11 that they never clean. A pound of dark-roast arabica beans from the mountains of Sagada Province – the very best produced in the Philippines – will cost you about $7 at the current exchange rate. The same amount of kape alamid costs about $26, and that’s only if you know where to look for a bargain. It’s two or three times as much in the usual tourist spots, and it is apparently the most expensive coffee in the world by several orders of magnitude if imported to other countries; I found a listing for it on Amazon for $13.50 per ounce, which works out to $216 a pound.
Given the somewhat exotic way in which it is produced, one would assume that the high price of civet coffee is a consequence of its rarity. The picture painted by the usual description of civet coffee is that an average coffee farmer has to wait for a specific wild animal to cruise through his coffee patch, snack on the almost-but-not-quite ripe coffee berries, and take a dump somewhere the farmer can find it. That’s not a mass-production kind of setup, and the price reflects that.
The problem is, it’s complete bullshit.
Almost all civet coffee – absolutely all of it produced in the Philippines and Vietnam, and almost all of it from Indonesia – is produced by farmers with captive populations of palm civets. The only reason it’s “almost” in Indonesia is that Indonesia is surprisingly progressive in many respects, and has exerted some effort to curb the inhumane farming practices. In Vietnam, and especially the Philippines where enforcement of anything having to do with the environment or biodiversity is a complete joke, the natural palm civet population is being absolutely decimated for the sake of producing the prized coffee.
Wild civets are captured and kept in filthy, cramped pens, where they are fed a diet exclusively consisting of coffee fruits. This is fatally unhealthy for the poor animals, which left on their own would have a sustainable, varied diet of coffee, other fruits and plants, bugs, and even the occasional rodent or small bird. Within a few weeks, the captive civet dies of malnutrition, and is simply replaced by another captured in the wild, often by children, who are paid a few pesos or rupiah or dong by the farmers for each new animal delivered.
It's a damn shame, really. The coffee is so good, and part of what makes it so is the idea that it is one of those little wonders of nature, but that turns out not to be the case at all.
So, I have drunk my last cup of cat shit coffee, and so should you. And if you’ve never tried it, I’m sorry you missed it, but don’t be an enabler of an unnecessarily cruel business.
(Image: An Asian Palm Civet. I understand this one's name is Kikko, and that he is a resident of the Hopefield Animal Sanctuary, located in Brentwood, England, about halfway between London and Chelmsford. I hope the good folks at Hopefield and Kikko don't mind my using his picture here.)
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