Mon 11 Oct 2010
Beanz Meanz Heineyz
Posted by anaglyph under Food & Drink, Food Science, True Fiction
[20] Comments
Great Moments in Food Science #211
☆July 23, 2004: University of Guelph Food Scientist Massimo Marcone tests Kopi Luwak coffee beans to determine whether passing them through the gastrointestinal tract of the Asian Palm Civet (or ‘luwak’) really makes them taste better.
‘The coffee cherry fruit is completely digested by the luwak, but the beans are excreted in their feces,’ says Marcone. The internal fermentation by digestive enzymes adds a unique flavour to the beans, which he said has been described as ‘earthy, musty, syrupy, smooth and rich with jungle and chocolate undertones.’
I… er…
Oh, what a bracing hot cup o’ shit!
What a load of…
Glad I only drink tea.
The King
Starbucks® must use this because their coffee tastes like shit.
Well, did they?
I think you missed the point.
Imagine how much coffee Malach would drink if they trained elephants to shit out beans.
Austin Powers: GAH! This coffee tastes like shit!
His buddy: It is shit Austin!
Austin Powers: Good! Then it’s not just me!
One thing I can’t find anywhere in the US is good coffee. Every time I complain about it someone says ‘Hey, I’ll take you where there’s good coffee!’ And we go and the coffee is crap and I have to pretend it’s good.
I want to take all these people to Mario’s in Melbourne. That’s good coffee.
Like bird’s nest soup and casu marzu, Kopi Luwak is only unusual in that the icky bit is the main selling point.
For example, Mars Bars. I seem to remember that Helen Sharman (UK astronaut, also only person in history to trip and drop the Olympic flame) got fired from Mars when she mentioned the “vats of bile” that they use to predigest the stuff, to make the marsbar filling all creamy and edible.
Then there’s rennet, castoreum, gelatin, L-cysteine, shellac, carmine, mechanically separated meats… really, it’s best not to think about what goes into our food.
Or, like me, not to care.
I like how, in the article, it skirts around whether the coffee WAS found to taste better. Trained tasters couldn’t taste the difference, but machines sensed some chemical changes. To me, that says $50/cup is pure pretentiousness.
I know people who have paid that just to be seen paying it, though. I think having people literally drink expensive processed shit just to feel wealthy is hilarious. Personally, I prefer not to spend the money, and hence be genuinely wealthy.
Possibly the most amusing part is that you gotta think that the person who ‘discovered’ this idea was probably as poor as dirt and was trying to save money – ‘Crap! The civets have eaten all my coffee crop! How am I ever going survive this disaster! And they’ve shit the beans out all over the place, and I… wait a minute…’
Like wine tasting and high end audio, coffee tasting is a field of subjectivity with high financial motivation – ripe for woo!
hmmm, I can’t join in the general revelry. I have heard from reliable sources that it is exceptionally good coffee.
Nomex Blast Jacket on, ready and waiting…
No need for the blast jacket. Yet.
Science dictates that you reveal your ‘reliable sources’ and let us have at ’em.
Actually, a good friend of mine tried a cup of Kopi Luwak coffe when he took a trip to Japan recently. He spent $65 for one cup of coffee, but he said it was one the most unique and flavorful coffees he had ever tasted, and worth every penny.
People who seem to think that Kopi Luwak coffe is gross because it’s gone through the digestive track of an animal should also realize that honey is pollen that has been partially digested and regurgitated by bees. Yeah that’s right, HONEY IS BEE VOMIT!
A few other tidbits:
The casing of sausage is the intestinal tract of an animal. Guaranteed to have more intimate contact with feces than Kopi Luwak coffee.
Rennet, which is used in the making of nearly all cheeses, is extracted from the fourth stomach of young cows. By the time stuff gets to the fourth stomach it can already be called shit.
Many people think that termites are gross. People who have actually tried them will tell you that they have a pleasant nutty taste and texture.
Honestly Rev, I’m used to more intelligent stuff from your blog than: “Eww, look at what people eat over there. That’s gross”.
Aw, Doc, you disappoint me! I’m nowhere near that squeamish. You need read back on ‘Great Moments in Food Science’ a bit. It’s not the ‘Eww, that’s gross’ factor that amuses me here, but more the ‘Science is a pursuit of quite some entertainment’ factor.
I’m also quite tickled by the choice of language from the connoisseurs… C’mon – a little bit funny? No?
Yeah. I can definitely give you that one. Connoisseurs make some very odd word choices. I was once at a Scotch tasting where the tasting notes for the Lagavulin mentioned unused band-aids and iodine. I had to double-check to make sure I wasn’t reading notes from a first aid kit.
At least it was ‘unused’ band-aids.
I tried Kopi Lawak in Bali, where it sells for about five dollars a cup. It tasted like coffee. With hints of caramel smokiness. It made me wonder what the real thing would be like.
Kopi Lawak was originally scrounged from the dung of wild civets, which were believed to eat only the best cherries. Wild civets eat a lot of different stuff, so the yield was only a few coffee beans per scat. You can imagine the labour required to collect a kilo of beans like that. Hence the exorbitant but justifiable cost of the original product – especially since the beans recovered were ruputed to yield a unique and superior brew.
Rich folks paying exorbitant prices for anything are always fair game, so it was only natural that suppliers would seek to minimise costs and maximise profits.
The upshot is that there are now, all over SE Asia, hundreds of thousands of civets imprisoned in conditions akin to battery hen farms, being fed nothing but coffee cherries. The cheaper the cherry the better. So much for the civets being able to select nothing but the best.
I dunno about you, but if I paid $65 for cup of coffee I’d swear it was the best I’d ever had and worth every penny too!
Shame about the civets…
*ruputed*
The process of hand incising microgrooves on the exterior of each bean prior to the grind to further enhance the release of unique and subtle flavours.