I got a tour of the place where they proudly show these cats in the most horrible conditions. Also, it doesn’t even taste good.
You tried it!?
My boss bought some a few years back. I tried it, honestly a not a bad cup of coffee if you ask me. But I would never pay for it myself.
Similar situation, tasted it, it was pretty good.
I would if given the chance. Just not gonna pay extra for it.
Who on earth discovered this and why?
So Kopi Luwak comes from Indonesia. At that time, Indonesia was under the dutch. At that time there was a famine caused by the dutch cause they were doing some unpaid labor and all the crops that they force the locals to plant is cash crops, so not edible. That caused a massive famine, so of course some starving guy decided why not try eating the poop of the animal.
Someone with the worst caffeine headache ever, desperate for something to make it go away.
“Fine! I’ll drink the raccoon shit coffee!”
And because it’s expensive people have abused these poor animals just so they can sell the coffee.
“This coffee tastes like shit!”
“It is shit, Austin.”
“Oh good, then it’s not just me.”
lol, wanted to make sure this was here.
Thanks.
So I have a story related to this. I teach English in Korea. One time, two 11-year-old students chose kopi luwak as a topic for their in-class (no research) project. I asked what that is, as I had never heard of it. They explained in pre-intermediate English that there is a cat that poops coffee beans. I didn’t believe them at first, because it sounded so silly. But they urged me to look it up. At first, I got confused between ‘kopi’ and ‘coffee’, because Korean has no ‘f’ sound and substitutes a ‘p’ sound. But when I finally found the Wiki page, I was blown away. The fact that this is real would be so funny if it weren’t for all the abuse another user pointed out.
He’s going to feel so relieved
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.
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.
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.
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.
The last sentence would literally describe Palo Alto coffee that isn’t shat out of an animal.
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.
Indeed, if acidic etc. is what they like they can fuck right off. Of course it is better without!
Literally a shitpost.
This sounds like the way COVID got started.
Got sharted*
I wonder how it must have been like to be the one who thought one day, “I’ll pick coffee beans out of monkey shit and drink that shit!”
That is a legendary grumper though.
I remember Starbucks carried it before. It was wildly expensive.
How do I block individual posts, because I’d like to stop seeing this one.
No shit coffee on your feed my friend? I’m sorry, but this is a DEMOCRACYYYYYYY!!!
If you’re thrifty like myself you can eat the beans yourself for a homemade version
If someone served me literal-shit coffee, I’d punch them in the mouth.
Fitting username
Did you enjoy a nice coprophilic coffee with your low hanging fruit?