Civet Coffee Production

The luak, that’s a small catlike animal, gorges after dark on the most ripe, the best of our crop. It digests the fruit and expels the beans, which our farm people collect, wash, and roast, a real delicacy. Something about the natural fermentation that occurs in the luak’s stomach seems to make the difference.

Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee. Luwak is a local name of the Asian Palm Civet in Sumatra.Palm civets are primarily frugivorous, feeding on berries and pulpy fruits such as figs and palms. Civets also eat small vertebrates, insects, ripe fruits and seeds.

Early production began when beans were gathered in the wild from where a civet would defecate as a means to mark its territory. On farms, civets are either caged or allowed to roam within defined boundaries.
Coffee berries are eaten by a civet for their fruit pulp. After spending about a day and a half in the civet's digestive tract the beans are then defecated in clumps, having kept their shape and still covered with some of the fleshy berry's inner layers.

Despite being in contact with faeces and pathogenic organisms, the beans contain negligible amounts of the enteric (pathogenic) organisms associated with feces. Moreover, the "cherry" or endocarp surrounding the bean is not completely digested by the luwak, and after being collected, the farmer performs thorough washing and removes the endocarp.

Sumatra is the world's largest regional producer of kopi luwak. Sumatran civet coffee beans are mostly an early arabica variety cultivated in the Indonesian archipelago since the 17th century. The major Sumatran kopi luwak production area is in Lampung, Bengkulu and Aceh especially the Gayo region, Takengon.