I read once that a major reason the coffee is supposed to be good, is that the animals (in the wild) tend to seek out the ripest, healthiest coffee beans to eat. They're abundant (prior to human intervention), so why settle for less?
But then we cage them and force-feed them whatever, so they're just medium (or low) quality beans to start with. So even if you look past the cruelty, it's not even the quality of coffee the reputation suggests.
Iirc correctly the monkey cats ( or however they are called ) actually just prefer a specific coffee plant that is more rarely used as the ones used for the vast amount of coffee in the world ( e.g. robusta or arabica). However, if the beans of this variation are used directly, it tastes exactly the same. There is a scientific paper about this. Long story short: people are drinking shat out coffee for no good reason. What is even worse, it is tried to hold these monkey cats in cages to produce more of this coffee. Again for no good reason. But people fall for the marketing pr gang that the coffee is handpicked by those animals, digested and shat out and they would not go for "yeah we need just to use another plant" because it wouldn't be so exklusive anymore...
Vast majority of it is just cheap coffee labeled to be this and marked up for tourists / gift market.
Have tried it, just tastes like cheap old coffee. It's not something genuinely sought after by coniseurs.
That makes this even dumber. If it actually had a good taste i could sort of understand it, in a honey sort of way. Sounds like it's just a silly novelty.
Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee, is a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The cherries are fermented as they pass through a civet's intestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected.
It’s no more than animal cruelty, then any type of livestock farming. What the fuck do you think you get your bacon from? You think the pigs are happy in overcrowded, dirty farms? Do you think the chickens that lay eggs are happy to be confined inside a tiny cage covered in their own shit? You think cows like to eat feed corn day in and day out shoved full of antibiotics? Do you think any of the animals that we use for any type of products are happy to be slaughtered after being fattened up?
If you’re gonna argue animal cruelty, you better stop eating all animal products, and become a vegan. Better yet why don’t you farm your own food and don’t buy anything that comes from modern agriculture because all that shit is covered in pesticides, GMO’s, and all kinds of other nasty shit.
Granted I don’t exactly run in the conspicuous consumption crowd, so maybe I’m out of the loop. Cope Luwak was a thing I heard about in the late 90s but have never seen in the world, ever.
I suppose this is one of those products that has a reputation for being expensive so rich people buy it to flex and that creates some demand. Like gold pizzas or whatever other dumb shit gaudy nouveau riche assholes are doing to get attention.
I’m sure there are places in the world where you can forage the shits and have something unique, but I highly doubt that what makes its way to fintech bros in manhattan has any real value at all. Just a cruel gimmick.
My guess is, since they eat coffee cherries, some farmer had his harvest ruined and washed the seeds out from the shit in desperation, just to get told it's the best coffee somebody has ever had.
You can squeeze the water out of elephant crap and drink it. Humans figured out fermentation a long time ago. This isn't too much of a stretch given humans also know that animal poop is usable in other ways agriculturally.
the story I heard (from an Indonesian dude) was the colonial plantations didn't allow locals to drink coffee. They noticed the civits only ate the ripest coffee berries... bla bla bla, shit coffee was the only choice and it was really good?
I don't know the history of the photo, but I know some Kopi Luwak 'producers' force feed the civets coffee cherries to maximise production. So I can't say this is a natural shit for a civet, because it could be human induced.
"Hipsters and coffee snobs" aren't the target audience and the vast majority have probably never tried it. It's a flex for rich people that have more money than sense.
Tried it in Bali and it wasn't that expensive at all for a cup. It tasted weird though, could tell it had the taste of something that had been digested. 4/10 if I'm being generous, the teas there were great though.