Coffee talk

[snotface]

I enjoy my afternoon coffee and am prepared to pay a reasonable amount for a decent cup. In Thailand the Coffee Club chain do a good cappuccino for 105 baht. On the BBC World channel this morning there was an item about a new brand of coffee in Singapore which sells for 60 dollars a cup - about 2000 baht by my reckoning. It's from a specially cultivated bean and, if I heard correctly, has 'subtle flavours of peach, lychee and jasmine'. Not the first things I look for in a good coffee, but each to his own. My first reaction was wild guffawing and eye rolling but maybe it will sell, who knows, dafter things have happened (Trump getting elected for instance). If you're wealthy you might well be looking for that exclusive taste which the plebs just can't appreciate and therefore consider this new brand just the thing.

I was on holiday in Indonesia earlier this year. In Jakarta I tried a cup of the famous kopi luwak, otherwise known as civet-shit coffee. The civet cat loves to eat the fruit pulp round the coffee bean and when the bean emerges at the other end it is infused with enzymes from the civet's digestive tract - something like that. After washing (natch), the beans are thought to produce excellent and unique coffee (well, it would be, wouldn't it?) and connoisseurs pay big money for it. Any Indonesian will tell you with a smile that, pound for pound, kopi luwak is more expensive than gold. The cup I had was strong and good but didn't send my taste buds into a paroxysm of ecstasy. It cost the equivalent of about 300 baht. Apparently most of the coffee-shop kopi luwak is not the top quality stuff.

Since returning to Thailand I've been pondering a business opportunity for some enterprising businessman. How about a distinctive, TOT-approved Thai version of kopi luwak? Anyone for elephant-shit coffee?

[cdnmatt]

I'm more of a 3-in-1 Nescafe guy. 20 baht for 5 of them.

[latintopxxx]

3 in one...as in sugar, coffee and whitener all in one sachet??

[cdnmatt]

Well, that proves it. You're not American, as that was actually the proper use of "eh".

[scottish-guy]

In Vietnam they have poop coffee too.

On my last visit to Dalat we visited the place where they make it. In this case it is weasels that partially digest the beans and shit them out. Maybe a weasel and a civet is the same thing - I dunno.

Obviously I had to try it. Can't say it was especially good or bad.

You can purchase packs of the stuff on-site so I bought a few for friends back home. I explained where it had come from after they had finished their coffee

[snotface]

On my last visit to Dalat we visited the place where they make it. In this case it is weasels that partially digest the beans and shit them out. Maybe a weasel and a civet is the same thing - I dunno.

I think almost certainly the same thing. When I got to Bali I went to a civet farm where the coffee is produced. The civets are cute looking creatures. The rows of small sharp teeth lining their jaws are no doubt not a welcome sight to many small animals but these were all very tame and cuddly around humans. They're kept in small cages which many think cruel (I'm sure it is). The true connoisseurs of the coffee consider the coffee produced by caged civets to be inferior because they have no choice about the coffee fruits they eat, whereas the wild ones can pick and choose only the best. I presume that means there are professional poop scoopers out scouring the jungle for civet shit. We all have to make a living somehow.

[FarangRuMak]

In Vietnam they have poop coffee too.

On my last visit to Dalat we visited the place where they make it. In this case it is weasels that partially digest the beans and shit them out. Maybe a weasel and a civet is the same thing - I dunno.

Obviously I had to try it. Can't say it was especially good or bad.

You can purchase packs of the stuff on-site so I bought a few for friends back home. I explained where it had come from after they had finished their coffee

Next time I go there I will get some of that and do the same to my Coffee Mates.
Nasty but nice.

[scottish-guy]

One thing that struck me was that I in no way saw sufficient weasels to conceivably poop the amount of coffee being sold either for drinking on site or taking away

So either there are hundreds of weasels hidden away in poor conditions or they're doing a "Berlin Wall" souvenir operation (whereby all the genuine Berlin Wall rubble must have been sold decades ago and they've been selling fake rubble ever since!)