Differences Between Mandheling and Kopi Luwak Flavor Profiles - Understanding Kopi Luwak's Premium Pricing

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FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to the Expensive Price of Civet Coffee

Civet coffee (Kopi Luwak), originally from Indonesia, is made from coffee beans that have been naturally fermented through the digestive system of civets after they consume fully ripe coffee cherries, which are then carefully roasted. The flavor is rich and mellow, naturally fragrant, with a lingering aftertaste.

In the early 18th century, the Dutch established coffee plantations in the Indonesian colonies of Sumatra and Java, prohibiting locals from picking and consuming their own coffee fruits. Indonesian locals accidentally discovered that civets love to eat these coffee fruits and would excrete the beans intact.

Civets only select the ripest and sweetest coffee beans to eat, which is equivalent to a screening process. Secondly, Indonesians found that coffee fermented through the civet's digestive system is particularly thick and aromatic. Therefore, they collected civet excrement, filtered out the coffee beans, and brewed them for drinking. Due to its scarce production and unique fermentation process, its flavor is vastly different from regular coffee, and it became a sought-after item in the international market through word-of-mouth.

Previously, a bag of civet coffee beans was worth over 800 yuan, weighing 50 grams, which could brew 4-5 cups of coffee. Based on this calculation, a cup of civet coffee costs about 200 yuan. What are the reasons for the high price of civet coffee? FrontStreet Coffee has summarized the following points:

1. Expensive Price Due to High Quality and Scarcity

Once upon a time, civet coffee was exceptionally delicious, but at that time, the palm civets were wild. They would select the most mature, sweet, plump, and juicy coffee fruits from the coffee trees as food. The coffee beans they excreted were collected and cleaned by farm workers. The quality of coffee beans produced under these natural conditions was certainly excellent. But now? It has become very difficult to find truly original, wild civet coffee.

2. Today's Civet Coffee Quality Is Not Necessarily High

Most of the civet coffee available today is not truly original and wild, but rather produced by captive palm civets. These captive palm civets are easily prone to other health problems due to being force-fed a single diet of coffee fruits. At the same time, being crowded together in cages with companions subjects them to immense stress, even fighting with each other, resulting in bloody feces and very easy death. Under such circumstances, how high can the quality of their produced civet coffee be?

3. Civet Coffee Production Is Not Scarce Today

The reason civet coffee is expensive is due to its scarcity during that period. However, nowadays, driven by the pursuit of financial gain, the production of civet coffee will certainly not decrease. Therefore, using scarcity as a gimmick to justify the expensive price of civet coffee is unreasonable.

Knowledge Expansion: Civet coffee is produced from the fecal coffee beans of Indonesian palm civets (a type of civet cat), which are extremely rare in quantity and therefore very expensive in price.

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