Civet coffee: why it's time to cut the crap

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/sep/13/civet-coffee-cut-the-crap

by ValentineC • 13 years ago

575 194 13 years ago

theguardian.com

Nate75Sanders• 13 years ago

First I ever heard of this stuff was from Olin Shivers' page:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/martinez.html

his general page:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/

I don't think it's changed much in about 15 years

codeulike• 13 years ago

They need a free-range or wild standard I guess

nonchalance• 13 years ago

"free-range coffee"

stephengillie2• 13 years ago

The chemical and mechanical processes of the luwak digestive system could be duplicated. I don't know (and don't want to know) the effect of gut flora on the beans.

audreyt• 13 years ago

A viable alternative may be in-vitro fermentation: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/20...

There was a marketing campaign earlier this year in Taiwan around the animal-cruelty-free process.

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

I can't help but think you'll see the same thing as with diamonds. Inventing a lab process will just make the original cat-process even more prized, because suddenly it's not just "rare" but it is also "authentic".

Basically, it doesn't seem like this is a technical challenge. It's a social challenge.

shaneofalltrad• 13 years ago

I don't know, you could recreate a process that falls under a model, similar to micro-brews. Then you attach clean and good for the environment. This would be the next big hobby, and better for you than that cool cigar humidor, or making of beer.

troels• 13 years ago

Maybe so. I wonder though, if it's cheaper to produce it synthetically and impossible to tell the difference in the final product, wouldn't those people who produce it now (out of greed) be very tempted to use the synthetic process, but still claim that they use the "authentic" one?

throwaway98484• 13 years ago

No need. People need to just stop drinking this mediocre and overpriced product and learn how to make perfectly serviceable high grade arabicas taste good. I doubt most people that purchase the coffee even know what Gold Cup standards are.

http://www.scae.com/scae-gold-cup-programme/how-the-gold-cup...

Kopi Luwak is - outside of novelty purposes - a ridiculous status symbol for rich idiots, like using ground-up, ineffective rhino horn to treat erectile disfunction.

TheAceOfHearts• 13 years ago

This seems very similar to wines. I like coffee and I like wine, but my only metric for whether one is good or bad is simply if I like the taste.

rjett2• 13 years ago

Amen! Kopi Luwak has the inherent marketing advantage of describing the production process in a one sentence, narrative hook that everyone understands. Even non coffee drinkers know about "that coffee where the weasel poops it out."

That aside, modern experimental coffee processing techniques, varietal classifications, and terroir's effect on taste and quality is far more interesting and productive with regards to pushing the envelope for specialty coffee.

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

Got any good sources for learning the craft? I have assembled the basics over the past couple years, and have probably reached the point where my devices are no longer the limiting factor.

Create• 13 years ago

Coffee fermentation is already a very well understood operation: this is partially why high quality beans are a commodity item (ie. selection of microbe strains). It is also a food safety issue, so you have lots of attention from authorities too (including the UN).

The rest is just a branding a pricing exercise (along with roasting, which is also a well understood process). The whole trading process is not unlike trading Brent barrels and selling them through different oil companies and stations. Ask Nestlé.

mathattack• 13 years ago

I would think that there has to be a synthetic was to get the same effect.

benatkin2• 13 years ago

In the short term I think this article is going to have the opposite effect of what's intended. It seems inevitable that everyone must know about Civet Coffee before resources can be gathered to protect the animals regardless of the demand. Better sooner rather than later.

stephengillie2• 13 years ago

I don't know that the article will increase demand. I know my personal demand for this coffee has gone from middling (I hadn't heard about it before the article) to zero on hearing that it's made from the poop of an animal that can't digest coffee beans.

I don't know which I find more disgustingly appalling -- that people are choosing to, paying very much to drink "pooped-bean coffee" -- or that the animals which play a crucial part of this process are so cruelly treated. But at least the latter can be compartmentalized with the inhumane conditions of our other food animals.

benatkin2• 13 years ago

A lot of people want to try exotic food just for the sake of it, and civet coffee is appealing because it sounds gross at first glance but not so gross after looking into it. Not all poop is the same, these cats aren't carrying around diseases and they don't eat a whole lot of different things. So people imagine that it will impress their friends, while at the same time consuming it isn't a painful experience.

Dylan16807• 13 years ago

Ever had cheese or alcohol? Now that is poop. The part you should be emphasizing is "can't digest". These beans aren't poop as in digested material, they're taking a ride in poop. It's not really worse than the standard method of mixing poop into the dirt where plants are grown.

ianstallings• 13 years ago

What on earth..

pault4• 13 years ago

It's actually quite good. Imagine coffee without the bitterness or acidity. The taste is somewhere between coffee and unsweetened cocoa.

lucisferre2• 13 years ago

A solidly brewed quality coffee can produce the same effects and should have minimal bitterness or acidity. The technique and beans are what matter. I'm pretty skeptical about the pooping.

taway2012• 13 years ago

You should compared it to cold-brewed coffee and report back. :)

thomasmeeks2• 13 years ago

How to get coffee without bitterness or acidity on the cheap!

"Drip" coffee:

Buy good coffee (stumptown, PT's, tonx, among others) whole bean. Try to finish the beans within ~3-4 weeks of the roast date.

Grind it with a cheap $12-$15 whirly grinder from target. Make sure to use the ground coffee within ~15 minutes.

Put it in an aeropress or a french press, follow brewing directions. Usually 2-4 minutes for a french press, less for an aeropress.

If using an aeropress, add hot water to your coffee.

Huzzah! You are on your way to delicious coffee.

Adjust amount of coffee, brew time, and water temperature until you get it just right. Each bean & roast is different, and they will often adjust slightly seasonally. If the coffee is sour or weak, grind finer, use more coffee, or a longer brew time. If it is bitter or acidic, grind courser, use less coffee, or a shorter brew time.

Espresso:

Same as above, but use an aeropress & don't add water. It can be a challenge to get an amazing shot out of an aeropress, I will admit.

When you are hooked:

Spend money on a good espresso machine & grinder, go nuts.

I have not prepared Civet coffee, it may very well be /easier/ to attain that slightly sweet brew with Civet coffee. But given the downsides it is certainly not worth doing so. Buy two bags of coffee, plan on practicing on the first bag, you'll have a system down pat in no time.

0xbadcafebee• 13 years ago

This is one of those moments where I learn something I had no idea about, and am very glad someone wrote the Guardian story, and that someone posted it here.

I bought the civet coffee off ThinkGeek for a coffee snob friend of mine years ago. She said it tasted watery and bland, but thanked me for the thoughtful novelty anyway. Now I realize I not only gave her crappy coffee, it was crappy coffee created through abusing animals for a stupid gimmick. I feel like an asshole.

javajosh• 13 years ago

Don't beat yourself up too badly. How were you supposed to know? It's hard for an individual consumer to understand the full impact of his purchase decision in the aggregate and over long periods of time. As a rule, consume what you want more of in the world. (The exception are naturally rate-limited goods, like fish or wild animal droppings, or absolutely limited goods, like fossil fuels.)

Consider this: if civet coffee had not ever become popular, then your purchase would have been fine - if anything, you could feel good about yourself since you just injected a tiny bit of cash into a poor area of the world.

nawitus4• 13 years ago

How were you supposed to know?

It's safe to assume all animal products are unethical.

abalone8• 13 years ago

How were you supposed to know?

Not to get all philosophical over a story on poo coffee, but this is one of the downsides to free markets. They hide information on the conditions of production unless compelled to by regulation or consumer demand, neither of which typically happen without an awareness campaign (such as this exposé). All you see is marketing and a price.

smoyer2• 13 years ago

Don't beat yourself up, but also try to be aware. There are places where people are abused to produce coffee too ... you wouldn't buy blood diamonds, so try to buy fair-trade coffees.

jerryr• 13 years ago

I tried it directly from Edible[1] (which, I think, was the ThinkGeek supplier for Civet Coffee and Monkey-picked tea--though ThinkGeek seems to no longer carry either). I thought it tasted only slightly better than Folgers. Several of my coworkers also independently arrived at the Folgers conclusion. Except for the novelty, there doesn't seem to be any reason to buy this stuff. Even more so given the animal cruelty angle.

I suppose if you must try it, Animal Coffee[2] claims that they do not farm civets. They also offer a stick of the "raw" coffee encased in Lucite[3], which I find a better novelty than mediocre coffee.

[1] http://www.edible-shop.com [2] http://animalcoffee.com [3] http://animalcoffee.com/proddetail.php?prod=Souvpw

alexqgb2• 13 years ago

Before the whole civet-poo coffee thing blew up, a friend got me a pound of the stuff. It was beyond amazing. It had a really creamy quality, without the bitter or acidic qualities. And while it was clearly coffee, it didn't taste like any coffee I'd had before. Like coffee from a not-quite parallel universe, perhaps.

I truly loved the stuff, but I can't imagine getting it again. Due to the insane prices, it's likely to be heavily cut with regular beans. Worse, the limited number of beans that are real are likely to come from abused animals, which, no way. Locking them in cages and force feeding them beans not of their own choosing has clearly ruined both the creatures and the product.

Fucking humans.

dsr_• 13 years ago

Have you tried cold-brewing coffee? It extracts flavors without much acid and no bitterness. Good beans become excellent; mediocre beans become nice.

GigabyteCoin• 13 years ago

Why would you feel like an asshole for giving your friend a thoughtful gift? You didn't know any better, you were only trying to bring joy to someone's life.

Don't be so hard on yourself.

pdenya• 13 years ago

At least you learned about the treatment and now won't buy any more. Seems like better conditions than animals get in most US factory farms and there's plenty of awareness campaigns but they're still in business.

sigil• 13 years ago

I tried Luwak coffee last summer in Munduk, a mountain village in north Bali. Honestly: it's nothing special. My girlfriend (a former barista) vetoed it after she saw a caged Luwak, and the huge piles of drying coffee-bean-laden turds that were clearly not the result of gathering. And, obviously, pretty gross.

http://m.imgur.com/VNiVTo6

http://m.imgur.com/EIMZbW6

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

Honestly: it's nothing special.

Like many other food-as-status-symbols. It's not about how good it is, but how rare and difficult to procure.

einhverfr• 13 years ago

Indeed, status symbols generally depend on one criteria, namely the ratio of marketing to availability. Lots of marketing and little availability makes it a status symbol. Less availability and little marketing makes it a novelty.

See for example red spinels vs rubies. These aren't food but they show the same dynamic at work. The most famous "rubies" in the world are actually red spinels, but because they aren't marketed heavily they are seen as second class gems.

manarth• 13 years ago

One hypothesis: what if (genuine) civet coffee is so good, because the civets' nose smells out the very best coffee cherries, and only eats the best? Therefore, if it's crapped out the arse of a civet, it was a very good bean.

Given that many animals have a superior sense of smell to humans, this hypothesis seems reasonable - civets could smell out the best coffee, and given the choice, who wouldn't want to eat the best?

If this is the case, then the whole mass-production/feeding-civits-in-cages is absolutely pointless, because it does away with the civets' selection process. Which might explain why some people describe their purchase as watery and bland.

_delirium• 13 years ago

That's definitely one of the arguments used in the marketing material. If the coffee being sold is not in fact from wild civets that can choose the berries, that sounds like it should be considered false advertising.

stevewillows• 13 years ago

As with truffles, could we not just train a dog to find these choice cherries and place them in a bin?

agilord• 13 years ago

"Which might explain why some people describe their purchase as watery and bland."

This is true.

The other part of the explanation is that many people just don't appreciate the coffee that is anything different than what they are used too. Just watch someone from the US in Europe drinking an espresso, or the other way around. People have different opinions based on their personal habits, and saying it is "watered down" should mean nothing without context and references.

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

Hah, that makes sense. Of course it tastes bland, when you normally drink coffee with six cubes of sugar.

crdoconnor• 13 years ago

I don't think that's it. I drank a cup of civet coffee in bali which was watery and bland. I also bought beans from a producer in medan who went on a lot about the scam that is most wild civet coffee. That one was rich and chocolatey.

wtvanhest• 13 years ago

I know this is the wrong reaction, but now I want to try it.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

Talk is cheap. I kept expecting to read how he was donating some % of his consulting fees/shared profit from the promotion of this luxury into alleviating the problem, but apparently that's not on the cards.

chengiz• 13 years ago

He's "raising awareness", of course.

mrleinad• 13 years ago

Aren't we ingenious little fuckers? Always finding new ways to give the finger to other species..

rotskoff• 13 years ago

This probably isn't any different from consuming anything that contains animal products from a country with flexible regulation on farming conditions. The description doesn't strike me as being any different from the conditions described for chickens in the U.S.

Markets that suddenly emerge often have strange consequences. The demand for quinoa and acai berries, for example, have had serious economic and environment effects in South America.

There's not too much that's unique about this case, other than product. Poor conditions for animals and exploitation appear to be the norm.

3minus1• 13 years ago

The fact that this is being done to wild animals seems especially cruel.

gfodor2• 13 years ago

I just got back from Bali and tried this stuff. The place I went to of course said little about the surely terrible environment the animals are in -- they had a few at the place but they were probably just there for the tourists to see.

Anyway, the coffee isn't anything great. Yet invariably many of the tourists around me were raving about it, I'm sure not in small part due to the focus on it and the high price it demands. It reminds me a lot of the phenomenon of shark fin soup in Asia -- the soup is mediocre at best, but because of its high price people (in my view) pretend to think it tastes incredible.

jonny_eh• 13 years ago

They're not pretending, that's power of suggestion. They believe it.

gfodor2• 13 years ago

Good point!

rsl7• 13 years ago

I also had it in Bali, a few years ago, and had a similar reaction both there and with the small quantity I brought back.

peachananr• 13 years ago

It costed me US$5 for a small cup in Bali and a bunch of other complimentary coffees and teas for free. Did you had the same experience?

nicholassmith• 13 years ago

I had civet coffee many, many years ago (nearing a decade) and it was a lovely cup of coffee, but not enough to justify the ridiculous price. Now that's become industrialised it's even more awful to consider having a cup, I do hope this helps remove it from the market.

guiomie• 13 years ago

We humans are really twisted.

larsbot• 13 years ago

Instead of buying civet coffee, roast your own beans. I have never tasted coffee as good as the stuff I have roasted myself. All you need is an old popcorn maker. Buy green beans from Sweet Maria's or somewhere else online. It's cheap, easy to do, and the results are amazing.

talles• 13 years ago

"cut the crap" :)

rdl• 13 years ago

It is interesting how luxury goods are very amenable to this kind of campaign -- the "conflict diamond" thing from a few years ago seemed a lot more effective than any number of regular anti animal cruelty or sweatshop labor campaigns. Anti-fur and anti foie gras has also been much more effective than anti-meat.

malkia2• 13 years ago

Kopi 2014

siliconc0w• 13 years ago

Someone should start a consumer protection type business which offers certification with varying degrees of statistical significance to slap on your products to prove it isn't bullshit. Then we legally mandate you either get the seal or have to put "THIS PRODUCT MAY BE LYING ABOUT ITS CLAIMS" on the packaging. Then it'll be interesting to see how long until the process is corrupted and the certification becomes meaningless.

jrockway2• 13 years ago

Then it'll be interesting to see how long until the process is corrupted and the certification becomes meaningless.

"Certified Organic"

aaron695• 13 years ago

Reminds me of the South Park 'Whale Whores' episode.

A lot of people who probably are happily eating chicken getting incensed by another culture doing something the same to a slightly different creature.

nilved• 13 years ago

What if you don't eat chicken either?

frogpelt2• 13 years ago

It's time for free-range, coffee-eating kopi luwak farms!

raintrees• 13 years ago

This is a bit thematic, but maybe we could get Jellyfish to eat the coffee bean cherries? Two problems, one answer?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6347557

gcb0• 13 years ago

I sense someone just got a deal with a farm that can actually ship a ton per year of the real stuff and is now working his way into a certification program.

Certified civete coffee anyone?

ghshephard• 13 years ago

If it makes any of you feel better (from an ethical perspective), I've heard that a large portion of the "Civet" coffee that is marketed has never seen the digestive tract of that nocturnal animal, and is simply regional coffee beans branded at a much higher price.

It's the coffee equivalent of Kobe Beef (which, if you've purchased in the United States, probably wasn't actually from the Tajima breed of Hyogo wagyu cattle in the Hyogo Prefecture)

JacobAldridge• 13 years ago

"Wild Crap Coffee" - as a descriptor of the Civet industry's marketing, the broader fecal caffeine industry instigated by the author (Tony Wild), and the brand name for his suggested loop-closing product in the final sentence - has a ring to it.

njharman• 13 years ago

Viva la free market!

mfieldhouse• 13 years ago

Disgusting how there's scumbags out there who jump at the chance to make some quick money, even if it means destroying the lives of others.

fatjokes• 13 years ago

Copy and pasted from the article:

" I was the one who started it all ... I first read a description of kopi luwak buried in a short paragraph in a 1981 copy of National Geographic Magazine."

So... he didn't exactly start it. He just popularized it to the affluent western audience.

gcb1• 13 years ago

your point?

ballard• 13 years ago

A proper luxury product should debase the consumer, ie,

"LoJack for luxury handbags" that would adapt radio tags for monitoring wild animals to the task. (Sans Civets.)

cfontes• 13 years ago

I've been to one of those farms when I was in Indonesia. They only showed me a single one of those animals in a big cage, but I can be sure there were more from the amount of coffee avaliable to sell in their "Rural store"

I've bought one cup of it for U$5,00 and it's stupid. The coffee tastes wierd and seeing that animal in that cage was enought to make me leave the place with a felling that I was doing something really wrong paying for that coffee.

I try hard to never buy this or any other kind of super cool variants of cheap things. Especially if they are from a 3rd world country because ( I am from one ) I know that there is nothing in those countries with power enought to stop any wrong doing. In those places governement and agencies just don't care about animal safety, public health and so on.

wanderr• 13 years ago

There's a local startup here that produces coffee supposedly with the same enzymes produced by the cats. I think this might be them: http://coffeeprimero.com/ I've tried it before and I have to say, it's not bad...but not really for coffee lovers either. At least if the bitterness is at all part of what you enjoy about coffee, this stuff is pretty bland and boring. The fact that they only sell it ground is another hint that it's not really meant for coffee lovers.

jsilence• 13 years ago

The leading vietnamese coffee company Trung Nguyen analysed the natural process and was able to reproduce it without animals. I tasted both and was not able to tell the difference. Great coffee, lower cost, no animals harmed. http://www.trung-nguyen-online.com/about-legendee-coffee.php

Civet coffee: why it's time to cut the crap

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