Luwak Booty Juice and Karen Wars

Jl. Nyalindung No.9, Cikole, Kec. Lembang, Kabupaten Bandung Barat, Jawa Barat 40391, Indonesia

I was in Southeast Asia, Indonesia to be exact, in the Lembang / Cikole region of West Java. To get to this region, you’d have to go about 3 hours southeast of Jakarta—and 2 hours of that is just trying to get the out of Jakarta itself with the terrible traffic there— to the popular area that is known for its huge active volcano the ‘Tangkuban Perahu,’ tea products and their huge tea fields and a special kind of coffee called ‘Kopi Luwak.’ I had a very hectic week from work and other busy nonsense conversations with meaningless people back home. To make matters worse, I was not adjusting well from flying all the way from New York City to Jakarta, which has no direct flights, therefore I had to fly to Japan first, wait 3 hours, then fly another flight into Jakarta, then get through 1 hour and a half of heavy Jakarta traffic to get to my hotel in South Jakarta. In total, it took me 28+ hours and man I was not ready for that—but flying first class and not having to pay for it, that helped put me at ease. I arrive, and I don’t want to go to sleep yet, because it was not even nighttime, but since it was +11 hours from NY time, it was like I was wide awake in the early AM, but I was completely tired too— and then I remembered, ‘oh that’s how jetlag works.’ I normally don’t have heavy jetlag unless it’s when I’m flying to places where time is +7 ahead but +11, that’s too much. Like when I went to the Philippines—no, not doing what your dirty mind is thinking– but I had a much better time adjusting there than this time. This was 28 hours of travel, and I was a deadman walking. So, to try to stay awake, I booked a tour to go around central Jakarta to see the sites and force myself to stay awake. I meet up with the tour guide and he basically tells me I look like shlt and to get some coffee (kopi) to help keep me up until time to sleep, and then I’ll have a great 8 hours+ sleep that night. Years ago, I heard that some of the best coffee in the world could be found in Asia, and I had never seen or tasted any of it so it never resonated with me– there is another reason it never resonated with me, but we’ll get into that later. The guide doubled down on my through that Indonesia had some of the best coffee in existence but said I better get as much of it as possible before I go back home because it is either not available where I am or I’d have to be rich to drink it. I paid this no mind, at the time, it didn’t register in my head, but by the end of the trip, I did see what he meant. I’m not the master coffee guy but I really love flavored coffee if I have not had good sleep, such as when I’m working late or I’m jetlagged and need to prolong the day to normal bedtime hours, in hopes of passing out for 8 hours and starting the circadian rhythm up like I normally do, back home (this is my hack to that). The guide told me he knew just the right coffee to do the job for me and took me to a place called ‘Kopi Luwak,’ which was like Starbucks or something because I saw it everything, and I even saw Starbucks everywhere too, which makes no sense since Indonesia doesn’t need those disgusting Starbucks beans. There were many shops with ‘Kopi Luwak’ in the names and I didn’t know wtf that meant I was too tired, but it had to be good because I saw MANY people at the many places, we passed with Kopi Luwak in the name. I’m not really a coffee person but I was that night and every place I checked, they had ridiculously high ratings near that Grand Indonesia mall. I pop into one that looked like a Starbucks competitor because I wasn’t ready to take chances on some of those other shops that didn’t look all that sanitary (I wasn’t warmed up to the environment yet). I ended up getting myself a cup of Kopi Luwak and as soon as I drank it, I realized that I had never tasted anything like this damn coffee. I had to look at the drink with a side eye, and I was questioning what the hell is wrong with me sense of taste. I was wondering if I was coming down with C0vid or something because it wasn’t tasting like coffee at all. You normally have that sour or bitter taste when you have a coffee, and they serve it black so I was expecting the typical sour taste that gives your tongue texture after you drink it, but instead, it was like a… cacao coffee shake, if I had to describe it—no better yet, like carob coffee I went crazy for when in Portugal, it had a nice chocolate taste to it and it was smooth although there was no milk added to it! I thought I was bugging out or something, it wasn’t computing to my sleepy brain, but this Kopi Luwak stuff was hitting the spot. I couldn’t believe it would even have caffeine in it because I knew carob coffee has zero caffeine, but this was apparently nothing like the carob coffee, as I would later learn.

The caffeine levels are just shy of normal coffee so when you drink Kopi Luwak, it is smooth like you’re having coffee infused with like MCT oil to make it smooth but it has nothing like that added to it. The Kopi Luwak comes like that as it is, and while I was curious to look it up then, I was NOT in the mental state to do anything but let the caffeine from the Kopi Luwak work on me. It was so good that I had a second cup, polished that off faster than a kid would a hot chocolate, and got on with my way. I was energized, as the night went on, I ended up having 2 more in other locations as I did my tour, to stay awake, and the Kopi Luwak just started getting better and better the more I drank it. It didn’t go down like coffee at all, it was like you’re drinking hot cocoa, a smooth hot cocoa in a coffee form. I started to get addicted to it, over time, and had withdrawals. 🤣 I was in South Jakarta and there weren’t any stores over there selling Kopi Luwak, that’s something more in the center of Jakarta apparently, and if I used ‘Grab’ to order it, it would take forever to get the coffee by delivery. I was tempted to brave it a few lunches to go to a shop during the crazy rush-hour traffic to get one, that’s how much I wanted this Kopi Luwak. It’s so good you don’t even need to put any sugar in it so it’s all very good for you to just drink as much as your body could stand, or at least that is what my brain was telling me. I thought to make plans to go back to central Jakarta on the weekend, but when I was looking for something to do in the mornings, I found some touring options to go to West Java and on the itinerary said that we’d be going to a Kopi Luwak maker’s facilities to try their Kopi Luwak. I thought I had descended into madness or something, I wanted Kopi Luwak so much that I was now READING it in my text out of nowhere? I was jetlagged badly, still. I double checked that and sure enough, they said we’d go to see how the Kopi Luwak is produced, and of course that meant I was going to get some fresh Kopi Luwak from their farm. I booked immediately! On the tour, we stopped along some places and got some strong tea right across from a large tea field and learned how tea was made, and after a nice lunch at a restaurant, we went to go get Kopi Luwak from that Kopi Luwak farm. As we approached the place, I noticed that I kept seeing cartoons or logos all over the place, even in central Jakarta, of what I thought was a monkey. I know there is a lot of jungle, and monkeys in Indonesia, so I figured it was a monkey with a curved tail. I saw this graphic of this creature at many of the Kopi Luwak places I saw or visited in Jakarta, and I didn’t make the connection between them, until while we’re doing the tour, this owner of the Kopi Luwak farm reaches into a cage and pulls out this … thing… that looked like a combination of a what a cat impregnated by a mongoose would look like. It had some cartoonishly bulbous, innocent eyes and it was looking at me, as if looking into my soul and reading me. It the keeper of the animal picked it up and cuddled it, and it suddenly appeared to be bigger than his whole torso—he was like 4’11” or something though and really skinny but still. He asked me if I wanted to hold that animal and when I saw it do a yawn and the damn jaws opened up wider than I ever saw even a snake do! The teeth were like the fangs of a snake too! I told him to get away from me with that thing. Last thing I needed was to get bitten by that thing. It was scary! I looked around and I saw there were more of these animals in cages, and then I saw the tails and realizes that I wasn’t previously looking at cartoons of monkeys with long curled tails in central Jakarta coffee spots with Kopi Luwak in the title, I was looking at a depiction of this funny looking animal. It was cuddling with the handler like a cat, so I figured it was a cat because it had some really long whiskers, but it was not a cat, clearly, and it was more like some kind of nighttime hunter with eyes that big, but at the same time looked like a mongoose, it had a mongoose face to it.

I still didn’t make any connection to this animal being everywhere Kopi Luwak was found so I figured it was a brand, and the name of this farm had ‘Kopi Luwak’ in it too, it was called Kopi Luwak Cikole. Then as the handler of the animal started talking and showing use info graphics, he is showing and talking about this animal taking a long shlt that looks like corn on the cobb coming out of its butthole and he is not laughing about it like I was, he was very serious about it, talking about it with a passion. I didn’t see anyone else in the group laughing about this either, so I kept it down, but he was talking about the Kopi Luwak creation with such passion that I figured he just was so wrapped up in talking about Kopi Luwak that he made an English translation error or something, since English wasn’t his native language. I was wrong, he really was talking about the butthole of that animal with such a passion and with conviction, that I broke out in laughter, so I had to hide my face. Turned out, the joke was on ME! This man was a master craftsman of the animals’ droppings, that’s why he was so passionate, with graphics and details, about how these cat animals take a dump and how he goes rummaging through their stool with a passion too. I wasn’t really paying attention too well, because I was still tired, and I was inspecting the facility trying to figure out when I was going to get a free cup of Kopi Luwak. When he started talking about the butthole of this animal, things started to come together for me, and I felt sick. During the description of how they harvest the seeds that make the coffee, I saw the picture what looked like long acorns in the woods or something, like peanut butter brittle that what it looked like, in long rows, and I was wondering how if the luwak created it with their mouths or by crafting them with their hands. This owner guy starts talking about the luwak produces these oblong structures in their stool, and what I was really seeing was Kopi Luwak seeds that were stuck to these animals’ stool. Then this guy said the farmers go around collecting the stool and go rifling through piles of luwak dung, breaking up the poop sticks with the seeds in it. 🤮 My brain quickly flashed back, and i just kept thinking of how they may not be washing those seeds properly, especially since they are not using anythign with chemicals to get all the poop off… and like that I felt suddenly sick. I fell back to the back of the group, out of view.. uhhh My mouth started that unnatural watering you get where you can’t stop the saliva from pouring out the inner sides of your mouth and your mouth is overrun with saliva because you body is preparing you to VOMIT… I tasted a little gastric juice coming up too… I had flashbacks of all that luwak booty juice I was drinking back-to-back all when when I kept ordering Kopi Luwak everywhere I saw it. I was technically eating that animal from the BYKE….😳 Uhhhhhhhh ☠️ It suddenly wasn’t so funny anymore and when he asked (earlier) if anyone had this Kopi Luwak before, I said ‘YES’ so now everyone knew I ate that animal from the BYKE 🤣🤮 I quizzed the owner to make sure I heard him right though, and he confirmed that they produce Kopi Luwak by letting the animal walk about and eat the Kopi Luwak beans from the trees and then they sit by waiting for the animal to take a dump, and they swoop in the collect the Kopi Luwak beans. 👀 Like.. who thought to do that originally??? Really? Uhh I felt sick to my stomach the more he told the story. Eating this luwak from the BYKE is hilarious, I just laughed at myself. I was looking around left and right for the bathroom because I was close to throwing up, just thinking of drinking nothing but poop for the past week… uhhh I drank 2 bottles of water to help break the nausea I felt coming on. I was not ready to hear this news. Then I was like ‘why is this the hottest coffee around if everyone knows it comes from this luwak butthole? Do other people not know either?’ I started asking other people and they said they didn’t know and then I asked people at home and of course they’re not into butt stuff. Ah hell, who am I kidding, when you have a few cups of this stuff, and see how smooth and tasty that drink it, you just have to learn to live with the fact that you now have a new beastiality fetish or something. You start looking at things differently now, like just how many fingers are you stuffing into the coffee/tea cup handle? 2 fingers, 3? What’s too much… uhh You freak! Ask anyone who’s had Luwak Booty Juice and is addicted to it and you’ll find that 95% of them have pets that they kiss in the mouth- 100% of European descendant women who are single. 🤦🏾🤣

Ok so first of all, that animal, I learned was called the Luwak, and it’s not a cat nor anything like the cat family line, it’s an Asian Palm Civet which is a nocturnal relative to the mongoose, similar to a weasel in a way, but is its own species that is native to Southeast Asia from the family of Viverridae. People think it’s from the Feline family because it moves like a cat and has that typical grey fur. Nowhere near a cat and nowhere near other similar animals either. This thing is like SKUNK too. If it is threatened, it will produce a disgusting skunk smell and spray you! The Luwak is infamous for pissing and taking a dump everywhere, it goes to the bathroom on everything, and it’s highly popular to doing all this when finding a mate. It’s just famous for defecating in public. It also famous for its ability to pick the highest quality Kopi Luwak beans, and not the bad ones. These Kopi Luwak beans, tend to naturally fall off the Coffea trees that contain them when mature, thus they’re called Coffee Cherries, and these have the beans the Kopi Luwak are made of. The farmers can just take these and make coffee with them beans by extracting them, but that is not how Kopi Luwak is made though. In order for it to be Kopi Luwak, the Luwak must eat the Coffee Cherries itself and then poop it out. This sounds like a sick obsession with the crap of the Luwak until you realize that the enzymes of the Luwak are required to extract the red cherry coating from the Kopi Luwak beans in a way that dissolves the outside without harming the bean in any way. If trying to extract the Kopi Luwak without this method, this can lead to less quality beans if processed like humans normally do coffee, making Kopi Luwak a very unique process to get high quality Kopi Luwak. These farmers just collect the fallen Coffee Cherries from trees and stuff them in bowls for the luwaks to eat and poop out, then they come and pluck out the beans after 24 hours of being in the stomach of the luwak. This process adds to the chemical makeup of the beans, and they’re looking like corn on the cob when you see them on the floors. Actually, they are not really ‘beans’ we just call them beans when really, they’re just seeds from inside that Coffee Cherry. What makes the luwak the animal for this job is caffeine is a DEFENSE against animals to make them not eat this plant’s seeds, so other animals don’t want this. The luwak is not affected by caffeine at all, thus this animal grew to neutralize it. So, while it’s in the stomach for that 24-hour window, it’s fermenting, and this is that unique taste you get in the end. You can’t produce this Kopi Luwak without this disgusting process. Farmers then have a series of washing techniques to get the poop and germs off the Kopi Luwak beans and then it’s ready to be put in your mouth, after packaging, of course, as ‘green coffee.’ There is a high standard for these so they will not put out just any old Kopi Luwak, and only the best will pass inspection. Since it’s coming from the luwak being very picky about eating the Kopi Luwak beans, the highest quality beans only are selected, so it’s the best method for getting the best Kopi Luwak beans. They’ll ultimately know if the product is good if you get an oil with scent when roasting called caffeol. If this is created, it’s high quality, if not, it’s a terrible product and you’ve wasted your time because you’ve over roasted and dried the Kopi Luwak. This is a very detailed, lengthy and gross process, and nobody wants to go around digging through the dung of luwak as a job, and you won’t find luwak’s in the West anyway. If you did run across a place that serves Kopi Luwak, I can PROMISE you it’s going to be almost $100 a cup of Kopi Luwak in the west! No kidding, people pay a heavy price for this Kopi Luwak in the West! If you check with Harrods in UK, go buy a 250g bag and it will run you $665 pounds sterling, which is $847 USD!!! I shlt you not! 😳 Except here, this company claims they don’t source from any farm, they claim their send people into the wild to go foraging for the seeds themselves, in the jungles, looking for wild luwak droppings that are left behind. As you can imagine, that would be too time consuming and would cost a lot, so they claim the price is for YOU, since you want wild luwak made coffee and not captive luwak coffee, thus YOU need to absorb the steep price.

This is where the shady part comes in. I knew that Indonesians struck gold with coffee production, which is not NEW info, I knew this because I knew that the Portuguese conquered part of Asia, including Indonesia, and where the first Europeans to invade and then colonize them. You can see the braggart messaging by the Portuguese government here in this piece I wrote. Under the guise of Catholic exploration, to get people into the religion, they slaughtered and colonized under the faith, using first missionaries to pretend to be nice, then the military would come and attack and pillage if you don’t convert—rinse repeat like they did all of Africa and Latin America. The other lie they tell is “oh we were just searching for SPICES to trade with…” They landed in modern day Malay Peninsula, in 1512, and continued occupation for about 130 years in the region from its base, Malacca, despite religious conflict of Catholicism vs Islam. Portugal just played all the Asians against each other to maintain their dominance in the area, running operations from their heavily fortified base and collecting slaves to build their establishment in Southeast Asia. This was such a money-making scheme that the Dutch came steal it, failed a bunch of times at first, but then in typical European colonizer fashion, knowing how to play ignorant indigenous people who were non-European, got local Asians to team up with them to fight Portugal, and ultimately succeeded but only because ASIANS ASSISTED THE DUTCH to usher the Dutch rule in! (1641). 🤡 So then the Dutch became the most powerful Europeans in the region, for a long period before others came to close in, and did the same thing the Portuguese did, but better and WORSE, since they were let right in the front door and then betrayed all those in Indonesia as they oppressed them all the way to their Dutch-created city, Batavia, in Jakarta, Indonesia. Part of the tour I did the week before took me into Batavia, and I got a quick history lesson on the time the Dutch took over. My guide gave the real deal story, but that’s because he saw I was not a European descendant and wouldn’t be offended. He was dishing the tea, I made note of all he said, and I looked all of it up, some of that I’ve shared here. The point about the Indonesians helped the Dutch who turned around and then colonized them was very similar to the stories heard of Mexico with the Spaniards or even indigenous Americans when the Europeans came over. They just let these Europeans in, thinking because of their skin color they were pure and nice, and then got betrayed and oppressed to produce products by exploiting the oppressed people. The guide was very proud when he mentioned how they got rid of the Dutch, but the Dutch remained in power so long, it was only possible with the subservient nations of Indonesians, despite the torment by the Dutch. The Dutch were thoroughly documented for being highly tyrannical, barbaric, (g)rapists, cruel, disgusting and used the Indonesians to fight each other to keep busy, really driving home control when they taxed Indonesians for the farmland and crops they produced on their own homeland, in a land-rent system similar to what other Europeans were doing, when they colonized Africa and Latin America. I was told about the Dutch committing gang (g)rape in a well remembered massacre in the early 1900s, as a weapon of war and apparently, the Dutch refused to acknowledge it so the Indonesians had to force a lawsuit against the Netherlands to gain national attention to get more heat towards it, but got like $17000 for their pain, a slap in the face. After all that pretending Dutch were going to help Indonesia get from under Portugal’s rule, and Dutch were astronomically worse than Portugal. It’s like inviting the vampire into your house then being made that it imprisoned and turned on you. Hell, Indonesia was named the Dutch East Indies for a long time, and the name Indonesia didn’t officially launch until well after extinguishing the land of the Dutch. The Dutch exploited all the natural resources of Indonesia, to make huge gains economically back in Netherlands. They put a devastatingly exploitative system in Indonesia, related to agriculture of key crops such as this coffee! They called it the ‘Culture System’ and it was highly profitable and the whole coffee industry today exists because of this! 😳

The Dutch played all those Asians like fools, and only after the slavery type systems were “banned” by Europeans did this culture system go away, by 1870s but the damage was already done, and the profits were already skyrocketing for a century. Why is this important? Because this Culture System produced immense wealth for the Dutch, as they officially were all over Indonesia. Anyone local Indonesian’s land had to set aside space for Dutch crops to be cultivated and as agriculture was/is highly profitable in this area, that would be the payment to the Dutch government for the native land tenant to remain in that location, which forced people to labor for the Dutch or risk eviction or death if not! If you know you know, but Sugar, Tea and COFFEE were main motivators for enslavement of Indigenous of the Americas, and Africans, back east, but in Indonesia, the crops were limitless! This led to the Dutch creating plantations similar to what was done in the transatlantic slaver trade to harvest the natural resources of Indonesia, which were also creations of other Europeans. Because European colonizers’ societies demanded these items, Indonesians were forced to produce these crops at harsh rates, and to make it worse, Chinese immigrants came to Indonesia to extort locals too, and also there to impose rule of the local Indonesians in this systems, and operated just like the Europeans, charging Indonesians for taxes, did mafia style money lending and collections—this is where the original anti-Chinese sentiments later came, according to many. During this Dutch rule, they were the ones who brought the coffee to Indonesia, where they had it in Batavia (Jakarta) and then spread to places like Bogor and West Java. The Dutch have historically been linked to coffee because of their (g)raping and pillaging of colonized nations. In the case of coffee, Yemen tried to maintain the crop locally but in 1616, The Dutch were stealing the crops and smuggling it out (this heralded pirate did it) , to plant somewhere else, and they had already taken over a part of India, so the ‘Dutch’ coffee was born officially in Malaba, India. This began the Dutch control of the coffee that ultimately led resulting in great success with its pursuits in Indonesia.  After securing the lands in Indonesia, just before 1700, the Dutch brought that same coffee to Batavia, current day Jakarta. So, it’s a lie when you see coffee makers claim that the Dutch just imported coffee from Yemen. Noooo, they stole the beans after it was banned from being taken out of Yemen, and they important from INDIA, not Yemen, from their illegal stashes in their colony. The Dutch are known for coffee yet didn’t have any of that ability to grow it in their native country, it was all stolen. So, Indonesians today are very thankful for that exchange with the Dutch as this crop has allowed many to get ultra-rich in today’s time and people look at the Dutch occupation as a net-positive, overall—ask a local, they’ll tell you this. 🤫  Point being, when you see people tell the history of coffee in Indonesia, please note how they conveniently leave out the information I gave you, here, today. It was not a GIFT to Indonesia, it was brought as part of the onslaught and oppression by the Dutch of Indonesia, to exploit its lands to profit—and not the fluffy coffee house stories you’ll read online about the origins. The Dutch got the Kopi Luwak beans, specifically, from Yemen, Africa. You’ll hear how the Dutch improved the lands for the Indonesia people, which is horseshlt, they improved roads and created railroads to get crops out of these plantations and land-rent areas to go back to European trade. The main thing in these plantations was this coffee, and it was such a precious commodity that when the Japanese came, in World War 2, they took over a log of the coffee plantations too! That coffee has been GOLD since the Dutch colonized Indonesia! So, when I got to ‘Batavia,’ as part of the tour, I went to this historic 1905 building the Dutch built for its high commanders and is this coffee house/restaurant, Café Batavia, a current day tourist location. Piecing together what the tour guide was saying, I later researched this area and got the history of the colonizing Dutch, to learn the real context, and they were the worst colonizers ever of Indonesia who gave Indonesia its current day version of oil or gold. 🤷🏽 I’m sure, somewhere in Netherlands, some government agency is openly bragging about their conquest of the coffee industry’s early history, completely skipping over what they did to get that coffee ‘fame’ they brag so much about. Kopi Luwak has been huge in the West ever since, so I don’t think any controversy is going to be powerful enough to stop the sales, not even in the least; in fact, this what is specifically driving up the cost. Don’t listen to morons who tell you the price is high because it’s hard to make ONLY. That’s not true, and while the process is interesting and the cost is high, people doing this work are workers in Indonesia, so it’s not Westerners getting paid $100k USD a year to stir through poop. It’s true that that manual labor is a cost, but there is ANOTHER side to that cost and the manual labor, and the sky-high price is because of a wild animal of the West, the KAREN.

Think about that comment I made earlier about the price of Kopi Luwak by Harrods and why they have to put out such a defensive sounding add just to sell Kopi Luwak. Ask yourself, ‘Now, why would a company like Harrods have to do go on about how they only have ‘wild civets,’ specifically, and their farmers go around in the jumbles chasing wild luwak droppings instead of just using seeds from some farm with caged luwaks?’ It’s not like wild Alaskan caught Salmon, which is not farmed, because you’re eating a fresh fish as opposed to a farmed-in-China suped-up on steroids chemical salmon painted pink and stuffed packets— you’re not EATING the luwak so why do you care it’s ‘WILD!?’ The answer, 1 word, KARENs! Yes, the Karen has put the Kopi Luwak world in jeopardy, and Kopi Luwak sellers, which Harrods sells along with other hot drinks, open themselves to attack by animal rights groups and other organizations filled with wild Karens. These are animals—the luwak not the Karen this time— and where there is capitalism there is going to be a line crossed between humanity and profit, with profit winning out every single time. These companies have to walk a very fine line with selling Kopi Luwak because the Karen in on that arse, boy, and they will sink your profits if they find you handle Kopi Luwak and make them with luwaks in cages. You never know who is going to be Karen and get your Kopi Luwak related dealings canceled either. I posted photos of the luwak I saw for the first time on social media and three lady friends immediately complained to me, and maybe even complained to IG. One immediately went on about the goddamn cages that the luwak in the photograph was in, which was in the background and all I could hear/read in her tone was the song “in the arms of an angel” playing to her complaining about the animal like those dog commercials. One such Karen wanted me to post other photos of any luwak in any cage at the farm I went to, because she wanted to ‘inspect’ how they were being ‘held in captivity.’ 😳 I clearly let her know that you can’t just have the luwak run around freely, that of course it would be in cages but that they were well taken care of. It was the fact that the appear cat-like that was getting to this lady and she was overcome with sadness for the luwak, she later told me she cried seeing the photo above. Even on the tour, a lady who was holding the luwak I took the picture of, she made the complains that the luwak in the cage looked very anxious, going in circles and running around the cage. I said it was no different than in the zoo how you see animals in cages, but because there is a heavy benefit to taming and containing the luwak, having the luwak farms can be an Indonesian’s ticket out of poverty! Locally, in Indonesia, the Karen has zero effect on their local business selling Kopi Luwak but just to think that she could sink your western business for dealing in this kind of coffee is NUTS! So, the companies all scrambled to tell you that they go the long way to collect the Kopi Luwak seeds, and because of fear of protests by the Karens, you can’t just pay $50USD for a bag of Kopi Luwak in the West, you now have to pay $900USD because of how companies have to farm it in a way that Karens won’t complain about, searching through the huge jungles for luwak droppings and not in a controlled environment where the luwak is in the cage– although Karens are not the ones buying this coffee and therefore aren’t threatening with their dollars, they’re just being mouthy with fake morals. 😔 If they have hire trackers to find the poop stacks, all over the jungle, collect them in the wild, that opens them collections to other diseases and things that can affect the quality, but the companies all claim they do that instead of sourcing from a Kopi Luwak farm. 🧐 So don’t be fooled, the companies transfer the cost of farming in this ‘sustainable’ way, and even the true cost is bloated more due to capitalism taking advantage of crazed idiots– which includes YOU if you’re paying $900USD for a tiny bag of Kopi Luwak. So, if anyone knows anything about coffee, I can bet you they’re down in Indonesia hoarding the coffee to take back West, or binging locally like I did, for under $5 a cup.

Something of note, if you come up to any of the farms, is that you’ll see signs up claiming that the Kopi Luwak farms, with luwaks there are all animal rights. So, not only does Harrods have to do it back in UK, but the local Indonesian Kopi Luwak farms must put up statements for animal rights. 😔 I snapped the pic above just for proof. I had no reason to be there other than to handle the aggression of the wild Karens. I had another buddy down here, before I arrived, and he went to a different Kopi Luwak location and he said the same thing, that he noticed signs letting people know how well they care for the luwak population. The pressure for Indonesians to have to do this is crazy, but because there are too many Karens in the world who will try to get them shut down by protesting for animal rights, Karen law is Karen law. I know a tour guide in Indonesia who told me he got one of his tours removed from TripAdvisor, by TripAdvisor, because someone who took his tour complained about the luwak abuse from a stop on the tour to a Kopi Luwak farm, and it was no different from the tour I took. Also, he said another tour was removed from TripAdvisor because his people went to a Chinese wet market to the west, and someone complained about dead chickens and meat for sale there. Go figure. So, Western Karens are on the hunt to not care about the local economy and whose business they ruin with their complaints they feel they must complain to TripAdvisor to try to end the Indonesian tour company’s listing. 🥶 When I went to the Kopi Luwak farm, I saw my first luwak there and it was in the cage, and I knew someone was going to say something, on my tour, about this. Every luwak I saw, yes it was held in a cage and not allowed to freely roam around the facility, but I didn’t immediately go karen on the people who owned the establishments, but the anti luwak captivity campaign is real. I’ve read page after page after page of complaints about animal rights violations in Indonesia, so I could imagine a Karen going to Indonesia and just complaining all day, although seeing them was on the itinerary. The owner of the Kopi Luwak farm was the host for the day and quickly acted when he heard the lady whispering to me about the luwak in the cage, which wasn’t a full-on complaint but she got louder each time she said it so he acted. He took the luwak out of the cage, and it came to him in his arms, and it was not scared, it was not shivering in fear, it was cuddly like a cat and balled up. If the luwak was scared, as pointed out, then it would have hissed and sprayed everyone with its skunk-list defensive mechanism! So, clearly, the luwak is not feeling threatened or abused. If you go to a bad luwak holding farm, you will notice the luwak is covered in feces, and the whole place stinks but you won’t find that in the major towns in the mountains so something like that must be off the beaten trail and some bootleg Kopi Luwak operation. There have been reports on exactly that, and in this case, the luwak is fighting back and the conditions are poor there. Many stories have exposed such places, and those kinds of places are monitored for and shut down when found. One cannot have a wild animal unless there is a license for it, it’s the Indonesian law. That kind of place for sure should shut down. Not this place I went, everything was cleanly, the luwak we had petting it smelled great, and not stinky at all, which was very surprising. One guy on the tour suggested the ones in the other cages likely don’t play well with other luwak, and this is technically true, as the luwak is a highly solitary animal in its natural habitat. Also, every luwak I was pretty damn big and not skinny, which means there is no way it is only fed the coffee cherries because you can’t get that big. I put the pics in this blog so you can see the sizes of them, these are pretty big against the heavy-set lady there, so just imagine.

One could claim they’re fat from not having movement due to being locked in cages, but these were not FAT, they were big in size and long luwak bodies. I was only wondering if its eyes were hurting or anything. When you’re petting the luwak in the day light, technically the vision of the luwak is impaired and it’s blind because it’s used to night. So, when you’re calmly petting it, it can’t see that well anyway, and I knew that about many of these nocturnal animals, so I was NOT going to be petting that and have it attack me because it was scared. Clearly, the luwak was not scared. I saw a luwak or two pacing crazily in cages in circles, they were anxious, so I wasn’t touching them, but they were not offered up for petting anyway. I told you about those teeth too, they rival fangs of a huge snack, and the jaws go way back like a snake too. If the luwak is scared, it’s not coming out the cage. So, I can see a Karen writing a letter to the state department or something complaining about animal rights in Indonesia, a place she doesn’t live. In New York, you have that rainforest organization Sustainable Agriculture Network that sets standards and brands your product with their logo if acceptable to the West and Karens, and they are coming hard for Indonesia because in their standards, and competing karen organization UTZ (not the chips), it specifically calls out luwak caging practices and one violates their standards if you cage any luwak, see page 14 of this:

“Luwaks: There are various types of Luwaks known to Indonesia. While Paradoxus hermaphrodites is of least concern (IUCN red list) and the most common type of Luwak kept in captivity, there are also other Luwak species like Pardofelis marmorato considered vulnerable (IUCN red list). In any case, it is a non-compliance with critical criterion 3.3 to capture any luwak species from the wild or to acquire from another person any luwak species originated from the wild, as from the date of application for certification onwards. Therefore, farmers must not keep luwaks in captivity. If the farmer is able to document that the luwak is in captivity from its 3 rd generation onwards, it is not a non-compliance with 3.3 any longer but potentially with criterion 3.4; esp. if it is a threatened luwak species.”

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2784133/SAN-Local-Indicators-Cocoa-Coffee-Indonesia.pdf

Still, you have to put this one on your bucket list to go drink some of this Kopi Luwak booty juice and tune out your inner Karen. The deeper chocolate version was sold out on its own Kopi Luwak farm, and in neighboring stores, and in the city where I was! Trust me, I was everywhere, and I checked, but it was like $50USD down there in Indonesia, so I was going to try to stockpile it but the only one available was the original, which I didn’t want. I’m sure other Westerners were down there buying up all the Kopi Luwak they could afford, to go back and sell it on amazon or something for 10 times the cost, hell I would—no I wouldn’t, I’d drink it all myself. I went for the experience of drinking poop coffee, and I loved it. The game is to be told… not sold! IYKUK.

As always, the finished products can be found on the main site of www.drunkphotography.com.