Researchers Discover Way To Spot Crappy Coffee 184
sciencehabit writes "People who enjoy the most expensive coffee in the world can soon sip without worry: Researchers have come up with a way to tell if their cuppa joe is real or faux. The luxury drink in question—Kopi Luwak—is produced from coffee beans pooped out by the palm civet, a time-consuming process that helps contribute to the beverage's price tag of between $330 to $500 per kilogram. In a new study, researchers chemically analyzed four different blends of coffee—authentic Kopi Luwak, regular coffee, a 50/50 mix of the two, and a brew of coffee beans that producers had chemically treated in an attempt to simulate mammalian digestion. Of the hundreds of organic substances naturally present in coffee, a handful enabled the team to distinguish Kopi Luwak from the other brews. The technique may even be sensitive enough to distinguish pure Kopi Luwak from versions adulterated with varying percentages of other coffees—which offers some degree of reassurance when your morning mud costs about $15 a cup."
Even the real stuff is fake. (Score:5, Informative)
I was in Indonesia not too long ago and got to try some of this kopi luwak. From what I learned even the "real" stuff isn't really authentic. Most of what is sold is from civets that are raised on farms and force fed coffee beans. Part of the reason this coffee is supposed to be so good is in the wild the civets will only choose to eat the best coffee beans it can find. Force feeding them kind of defeats this and is cruel.
Re:Grande with a shot of poop (Score:5, Informative)
"Delicacy" is better thought of as a code word for "look at the crazy shit we just fed to that tourist."
Re:Nasty (Score:5, Informative)
The real story seems to be rather interesting. From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak [wikipedia.org] :
During the era of Cultuurstelsel (1830—1870), the Dutch prohibited the native farmers and plantation workers from picking coffee fruits for their own use. Still, the native farmers wanted to have a taste of the famed coffee beverage. Soon, the natives learned that certain species of musang or luwak (Asian Palm Civet) consumed the coffee fruits, yet they left the coffee seeds undigested in their droppings. The natives collected these luwaks' coffee seed droppings, then cleaned, roasted and ground them to make their own coffee beverage.[9] The fame of aromatic civet coffee spread from locals to Dutch plantation owners and soon became their favorite, yet because of its rarity and unusual process, the civet coffee was expensive even in colonial times.
Re:Grocery Store Secrets (Score:2, Informative)
If it's already ground, it's stale before it went into the tin.
If it's beans, and it's within 12 months of the expiry date, it's also probably quite stale.
Expiry dates on coffee are a joke.
Re:Nasty (Score:3, Informative)
tl;dr He tried it upon friends' suggestion, was bad, friends said "BRO IT WAS FAEK". This reminded him of when he also had a bad coffee someplace else.