Farewell to Kopi Luwak

Schuil has undoubtedly seen significant change in the past few years, from our packaging and design, to our cafe and headquarters. We’ve also put significant effort into improving the very core of our business, the coffee that we source to roast and sell. While Schuil has always started with an exceptional product, touched by countless hands along the way, our green coffee buying team is diligent in our mission to persistently optimize our purchasing network. Areas of especial importance in our process are cup quality and score, value we’re able to pass on to our customers, environmental stewardship in its growing process, and ensuring growers receive fair pay. With these pillars in mind, we say farewell to a Schuil holiday classic, Kopi Luwak.

For those of you unfamiliar with Kopi Luwak, it will surely seem a bizarre concept. Most simply, it’s coffee cherry that’s been eaten, digested, and excreted from the rear of a civet, and then roasted. That’s a lot to take in, so I’ll give you a moment to...digest all of that.

If its notion couldn’t seem any stranger, Kopi is regarded as a delicacy, and sold at astronomical prices, as high as $600 per pound. While it does produce surprisingly pleasant and unique cup flavors, it essentially mimics a naturally processed coffee, in that the cherry is fermented with its fruit pulp still on the seed while inside the civet. Luckily, you can purchase stellar naturally processed coffees for much more reasonable prices, in line with the rest of our coffees. One last consideration is that unfortunately much commercial Kopi coffee is produced by force feeding civets in captivity to mimic a once natural process, similar to other culinary bygones such as foie gras or veal.

Now that we’ve omitted Kopi Luwak from our holiday offerings, we couldn’t just leave you hanging without an exciting alternative that better fits our values and breaks less bank. Without further ado, we’re happy to introduce, drumroll please, Galapagos La Tortuga! That’s right, those Galapagos Islands, where Darwin developed his theory of evolution, and home of the famous 100 pound tortoises, who also serve as the namesake of this coffee. La Tortuga is produced by a cooperative of over 80 growers, conscious of the animals and plants inhabiting the islands, and focused on conserving their natural environment. In the cup, it's rich and creamy, with deep sweetness and flavors of jasmine flower, black tea, and mandarin orange. Yum!

We’ll soon have Galapagos La Tortuga available exclusively in holiday gift sets, alongside Genuine Kona and Genuine Jamaican Blue, giving you time to sample it yourself before gifting it to family and friends. Look for updates on gift set availability in our upcoming newsletters. Lastly, we would be remiss if we didn’t include a link to watch rap star 2 Chainz provide his own review of Kopi Luwak, in case you needed further convincing.