Rare Indonesian coffee bean picked from civet droppings
Posted by TheShot on 01 Jan 2006 | Tagged as: Beans
Once again, the news media has exhumed stories about the ridiculous and ridiculously expensive Kopi Luwak bean:
Chron.com | Rare Indonesian coffee bean picked from civet droppings. According to this latest article, we can apparently blame this foolishness on many of our money-to-burn California compatriots hard up for interesting Christmas gift ideas.
This freak show novelty appeals to the the nouveau riche stereotype — i.e., those who know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Mentioned on TV a couple of years ago (including CSI-Las Vegas and The Oprah Winfrey Show — too bad those shows don’t merge, eh?), it has faded from and re-entered the vernacular of gourmet and luxury good conversations every so often like a visiting comet.
The bottom line is this: they are essentially coffee beans that have been eaten and crapped out by feral Indonesian weasels. Call it a delicacy, because it comes with a $175 per pound price tag. If I could bag my bodily functions for that premium a price, you can bet that I’d cash in and spend it all on Malabar Gold beans.
We should all hope that these will be my last words on this tedious subject. But here’s the Wikipedia entry if you’d like to know more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak
UPDATE: April 3, 2007
If you thought that people drinking coffee crapped out by weasels was a problem, imagine being the Philippine government where you have to contend with locals eating all the weasels: AHN | Philippine Coffee Traders Call For The Preservation Of Civet Cats | April 3, 2007.
5 Comments »
on 18 Sep 2006 at 12:28 pm -05:00T 1.Coffee and Conservation said …
Kopi luwak
What is kopi luwak?In a recent post I mentioned kopi luwak, the coffee that is processed in the digestive tract of a civet cat (usually Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). These animals (found in southeast Asia and related to mongooses, although they look
on 27 Apr 2007 at 10:20 am -05:00T 2.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Towards a segmented quality coffee market said …
[...] The most embarrassing example of this is the ridiculous Kopi Luwak coffee, a favorite subject for producers of local TV news fluff pieces over the past few years. Roasted Kopi Luwak can fetch $100/lb not because of its quality, but rather because there aren’t a lot of Indonesian civets crapping out these novelties. As with many things in life, “expensive” does not always mean “better”. [...]
on 13 Jul 2007 at 4:47 pm -05:00T 3.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » When $600-a-pound Coffee Meets the Slow News Day said …
[...] was over a year and a half ago when we wrote here about how this was a tired, old, recycled story. For example, kopi luwak coffee was even mentioned on TV episodes of Oprah Winfrey and C.S.I. back [...]
on 26 Oct 2008 at 11:21 pm -05:00T 4.luwak cofffee said …
there are a lot fake luwak coffee now days..
so be carefull dont let yourself to be a victim.
we only sell the original, best and natural civet luwak coffee.
Our coffee come from natural civet not from pet civet in the cage.
[link removed]
on 28 Oct 2008 at 12:25 pm -05:00T 5.TheShot said …
Fake luwak coffee?
If we’re buying an inflatable sheep as a gag novelty gift, does it really matter whether the wool is real or synthetic?