Kopi Luwak profile. Vietnamese companies sell an imitation kopi luwak, made using an enzyme soak which they claim replicates the civet's digestive process. Imitation has several motivations. The high price of kopi luwak drives the search for a way to produce kopi luwak in large quantities. Kopi luwak production involves a great deal of labour, whether farmed or wild-gathered. The small production quantity and the labor involved in production contribute to the coffee's high cost. Imitation may be a response to the decrease in the civet population. Initially, civet coffee beans were picked from wild civet excrement found around coffee plantations. This
Kopi Luwak also widely gathered in the forest or produced in the farms in the islands of the Philippines (where the product is called "kape motit" in the Cordillera region, "kapé alamíd" in Tagalog areas, and "kapé melô" or "kapé musang" in Mindanao island), and in East Timor (where it is called "kafé-laku"). "Weasel coffee" is a loose English translation of its Vietnamese name "cà phê Chồn". The origin of kopi luwak is closely connected with the history of coffee production in Indonesia. In the early 18th century the Dutch established the cash-crop coffee plantations in their colony in the Dutch East