There’s a shitty way to start your morning.
Business idea: lab grow the gut microbes of these monkeys and create more efficient pipeline for fermenting these coffee beans. But provide the “natural” offering too for people who have eating ass food fetish.
…it’s already a thing and readily available in southeast asia…
The problem is that it doesn’t actually taste good. It’s the labor-intensive and “exotic” manufacturing process that makes the coffee so expensive, not its quality.
This person says it does taste good though https://kitchensurfers.com/is-civet-coffee-good/
I’ve seen many more coffee folks who have opinions ranging from “it doesn’ttaste different than the local coffee” to “it tastes downright bad”. James Hoffmann has a good video on it: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pkbuFwHnJQY
That’s fair, people have different perceptions of food stuffs. Like some people hate coriander because to them it tastes like soap
Cilantro and coriander come from the same plant, coriandrum sativum. In North America, cilantro refers to the leaves and stalks, while coriander refers to the dried seeds. Cilantro has a citrusy flavor, while coriander seeds have an earthy taste with floral notes.
TIL. This explains why my sibling hates anything seasoned with coriander, as well as any inclusion of cilantro.
If you’re thrifty like myself you can eat the beans yourself for a homemade version
Ya. I’m good on poop coffee.
truly a shitpost
And because it’s expensive people have abused these poor animals just so they can sell the coffee.
From the wikipedia page:
Within the coffee industry, kopi luwak is widely regarded as a gimmick or novelty item. The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) states that there is a “general consensus within the industry…it just tastes bad”. A coffee professional compared the same beans with and without the kopi luwak process using a rigorous coffee cupping evaluation. He concluded: "it was apparent that luwak coffee sold for the story, not superior quality…Using the SCAA cupping scale, the luwak scored two points below the lowest of the other three coffees. It would appear that the luwak processing diminishes good acidity and flavor and adds smoothness to the body, which is what many people seem to note as a positive to the coffee.” Professional coffee tasters were able to distinguish kopi luwak from other coffee samples, but remarked that it tasted “thin”. Some critics claim more generally that kopi luwak is simply bad coffee, purchased for novelty rather than taste. A food writer reviewed kopi luwak available to American consumers and concluded "It tasted just like…Folgers. Stale. Lifeless.
I read that what happened is that the workers on the coffee farms weren’t allowed to get coffee for themselves, so they started using these coffee cherries, but then, of course, someone had to take that away from them too so it could be monetized.
…and then, in the natural course of things, snobby douchebags convince themselves that the crappy product they’ve taken from the plebs is better than the original. Poopbean coffee is just the lobster of the 21st century.
I’ve had it a number of times both in the states and in SE Asia. It’s different but it is really good. Like yeah it is a different coffee and if you judge it to the same criteria as a coffee style that it isn’t, of course it will fail. If a “good coffee” needs to be aggressively acidic with strong notes of papaya, pineapple, Maracuja…this is not that. It is very smooth and subtle and that is what makes it nice and different.
I think modern coffee is judged by how much the tastes reflect its distinct characteristics, which includes physical characteristic of the farm (altitude etc), fermentation process, and roasting process.
It takes a lot of work to produce good coffee, and the end result should let these efforts shine. Acidity, fragrance, and funk are great ways to communicate the life of the coffee to the taster. That is why they are typically the standard to determine good coffee, instead of generic and monotone"smoothness" that is shared across kirkland signature, peets, starbucks, and gas station coffees.
Don’t forget blueberry. You have to be able to taste a hint of blueberry. Did you taste blueberry? Because if not, your extraction process has gone horribly wrong, you’ve bought the wrong beans, you’re using the wrong water,and you probably bloomed for 32 seconds instead of 29.6.
Lul fuggin spot on.
Another part of the equation is that civets were very particular about the cherry beans they ate, so only the best beans at just the right time were eaten and shit out.
Well after it started becoming known as good tasting, people started capturing and feeding the civets crappy cherry beans that weren’t at the proper ripeness instead of gathering the shit from out in the wild where the civets got to be particular.
So now, if you buy it, it’s “shit tier” civet shit beans.
Indeed, if acidic etc. is what they like they can fuck right off. Of course it is better without!
The last sentence would literally describe Palo Alto coffee that isn’t shat out of an animal.
What comes out of that animal on the photo doesn’t look to different from what went in. So my guess is, you’ll just get ordinary beans mixed with some civet intestine lining and stomach acid and whatever else they ate during that time.
You don’t need to do a scientific evaluation to determine it is worse. It’s literally shit water. You are drinking shit.
Sometimes bizarre methods like that do come out tasting great. So good idea to test
Taste doesn’t matter. You are consuming shit.
Good tasting shit though.
He’s going to feel so relieved
Literally a shitpost.
who was the first person who ever said “hey, that cat shit out coffee beans–i think i’ll roast’em up and make coffee with it”
I bet it was more like, “Here’s coffee you can only give from shit. I bet a stupid rich person would pay a fortune for it.”
I’ve been to one of the places and drank it. The coffee was nice but I’ve never chosen to have it again. The animals seemed happy enough, certainly nothing alarming happening. I’m sure they might prefer to roam free but you could say that about pet cats too.
Unless brewing them in a special way is required to bring out the flavour, it tastes just like regular coffee to me when I had it
I drank some while in Bali 😋
Did you know about it before or after drinking it?
Before I knew about it I only drank a cup. After I was informed I drank a liter.
Animal abuse tastes that good, huh?
I’ve been testing the taste from human too. So far the best tastes are from Bruma or Winterfell. Each has its own unique taste. I suspect this is caused by the local climate the people lived in.
I’ve had it farm fresh in Bali and at a swanky cafe in Penang. The shared characteristic was how smooth it is. Tastes different, not necessarily better or worse. Depends on what you’re after in your beverage.
In Penang, we had it with a normal espresso to compare. After drinking the Luwak coffee, the espresso lost all it’s flavour… It did something to our sense of taste!
Going through a factory you can tell there’s no chance the poop makes it to the final product. In fact, none of the cherry meat is used, only the bean, so I question what effect the digestive process has. Maybe the preparation method is different? I haven’t been to a normal coffee factory to compare.
The conditions the Luwak are kept in vary wildly, apparently the worst practices are in Vietnam. The Luwak are super cute , amazing fur, ones kept as pets were fun to interact with. The size of two house cats. Nocturnal, so I’ve only seen them active once.
I liked the coffee but not so much that I want to support demand for it. The Luwak is a totally unnecessary step in making what is already a great beverage regardless.
