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."
Easy (Score:5, Funny)
Look for the Starbucks logo.
First-world problems (Score:5, Funny)
When first-world problems: "Waaaah my coffee wasn't shat out of something's asshole!!!"
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When first-world problems: "Waaaah my coffee wasn't shat out of something's asshole!!!"
No, it simply tastes like it as shat out of somethings arsehole. #FWP.
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The GP was implying that when he said "Look for the Starbucks logo!"
Re:First-world problems (Score:4, Funny)
It's only those faggots who order caramel Ralph Macchios and all those other diabetes-inducing drinks that give Starbucks drinkers a bad name. Yeah, I'm a consumer whore. Fuck you.
-- Ethanol-fueled
While I resolutely disagree, I must thank you sir Ethanol for without such flammable incite
I'm not sure I'd ever come face to face with a rare wild "No True Starbuccaneer" argument.
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I figured that guy (who I wish you all would stop quoting, those -1 moderations are there for a reason) was a Starbucks drinker. People who pay as much for a cup of coffee as I pay for a pound of grounds have too many dollars and not enough sense,
Loved your pun, BTW. "Incite" fits him so well. Still chuckling.
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Re:Easy - Wrong category mod. (Score:2)
This was modded funny, but it's only funny because it's Informative and true. Starbucks is awful unless it's mixed with other flavorings.
Re:Easy - Wrong category mod. (Score:4, Insightful)
To give you an idea of how bad it is- most people here seem to think that Dunken' Donuts has the best coffee.
God do I miss a perfectly pulled shot of espresso where the bitterness is only on the tip of your tongue and there is no salty aftertaste.
Re: Easy - Wrong category mod. (Score:2)
God do I miss a perfectly pulled shot of espresso where the bitterness is only on the tip of your tongue and there is no salty aftertaste.
I find that brewing extra bold dark roast K-cups on the smallest cup size in my Keurig is good enough. Mix with milk, or your favorite creamer, and it makes an decent latte for 50 cents a cup. Sumatran Reserve is my favorite simply because it's fair trade certified, however the Italiain and French roasts produce the most authentic espresso like results.
Re: Easy - Wrong category mod. (Score:2)
I don't mean to imply you can make actual espresso, what I meant is that for 50 cents a cup it's close enough that you'll be satisfied with the results. It's comparable to an Americano.
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"borrow"
Oh shit! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh shit!
Nasty (Score:3, Funny)
In this case, I'll prefer the fake.
The things that pass for delicacies.
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.
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Your post reminded me of the aroma! Yes - that's a whole other point. It does have a strong and very nice aroma. It smells like it is going to be some of the best damned coffee you're ever going to have in your life. Unfortunately I did not find the taste matching the aroma. But it does have that going for it, the aroma, and that's worthy of mentioning.
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Also interesting is the wide price range. I can get Kopi Luwak at a local shop at 200$ - retail. Should I go upstream and start a business?
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I'm not sure if anyone will find this beneficial but I shall try...
I was, of all places, in Hawaii when this was available for me to try. This was quite some time ago but it was still somewhere near $12 for a cup. I didn't care about the expense and simply wanted to try it because, well, it was available and I'd never tried it before and I'd been told it was both "very good" and "quite the experience."
The latter was certainly correct but I can't imagine thinking that the former is true under any circumstanc
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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.
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I should hire you as an editor.
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Heh - you answered as I would have. Thanks. You did too, read that is... I do wonder if all the coffee in Turkey was that way. I obviously didn't have the chance to try all of it. That isn't really the subject though and I could probably use a search engine and find out if I were that curious I suppose. I guess a more accurate statement is that I'm a bit curious if others here have traveled to Turkey and had similar experiences.
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So, is it that you don't eat burnt Turkey shit?
I'm a speed reader, btw.
cheers,
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Thank you. That was a very interesting review. I initially skipped it because it was too long, but the tl;dr summary ironically prompted me to read it.
Just one comment:
No, it didn't taste like fecal matter.
Uuuhhh... How do you know? Have you somehow acquired extensive experience in coprophagia?
I have never had Kopi Luwak, but I will certainly have a cup if offered (unless the price is just unreasonable). I do see two ways in which very good coffee can be ruined very easily: bad handling and bad roasting. In the case of Kopi Luwak I see how bad
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People don't generally taste feces, but they do know what it smells like, and a huge fraction of the sense of flavor is smell. So whenever I read something like that, I read it as "it doesn't taste like what I expect feces to taste like, given the stench".
The actual sense of taste plays a role, something you can't guess from the smell, but it's relatively coarse and imprecise. Coffee, in fact, tastes very different from the way one expects from the aroma alone, because the flavor is very bitter (due to vari
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Ah, you make several excellent points.
First and most importantly, regarding the issue of the smell vs. taste of feces: I basically agree with you, but do note that roasting of the coffee beans would almost certainly change drastically both the smell and the taste of any fecal matter residue in the coffee. So even though it does not evoke the smell of cat poop, the GP's experience may have been affected by poop (but only if the coffee was handled *very* poorly).
Second, regarding the smell and taste of coffee
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Grocery Store Secrets (Score:3, Interesting)
Always check the expiration date on your coffee. There's a good chance a fair bit of the product on the shelf hasn't been rotated and some of it is either close to expiring or already expired.
Source: I work night crew at a grocery store. I regularly check the coffee for expiration dates on the exceedingly rare chance I have extra time.
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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.
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Bingo.
And forget the kopi luwak stuff. You can have really fabulous coffee for much, much cheaper by buying quality green coffee beans and roasting and grinding them yourself.
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It takes about eight minutes to roast enough for a few strong cups of coffee using a hot air popcorn popper. Life is too short to drink swill.
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I do two week's worth at a time using a dog bowl and a hot-air gun. It's dead easy, takes minimal, off-the-shelf equipment and about a half hour of heating/stirring (I do a batch each of two varieties to blend).
I used to treat it like a hobby (specialized roaster, monitoring/graphing temps with a thermocouple, etc.) but that got old. I decided to simplify and now for me it's just another household task - that yields an excellent brew every morning...
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Fascinating. Does your dog like the leftover bits/essence of coffee that winds up in his bowl? Does it make him/her hyper? Do you like the dog food essence in your coffee? I wonder if I'm missing out on something here.
#:-)
No, its more like this [homeroaster.com].
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Re:Grocery Store Secrets (Score:5, Funny)
Pan??? I hold each bean individually, betwixt my fingers, whilst balancing a magnifying glass on my nose, directing the sunlight over each precious shit-nugget. I'll have my first cup in 2016. Can't wait.
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There's an EMACS command to do that.
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Tip for buying coffee at a grocery store: Always buy whatever everyone else is buying. If you show up at 7PM and the 8 O'Clock Bean is picked thin, you should be buying 8 O'Clock Bean just like everybody else, because it hasn't even had a chance to be rotated before it is sold: It is restocked at least daily.
Whatever the brand is, the one that moves fastest is likely to be the closest thing that you can get to fresh-roasted coffee at your grocery store.
(Forget the "gourmet" bulk stuff in the plastic bins
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Pah, expiration date. I check the roasting date of the beans I buy (got a grinder at home); usually the microroastery sells something they roasted in the last two weeks, and that's how it should be.
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No no no. The stuff sitting on a grocery shelf is automatically expired before it even gets to the store.
Coffee snobs will tell you the shelf life of coffee is about after two days but less than about eight days after it is roasted. Nothing in any normal grocery store can meet that. So whatever is on the shelf is already unacceptable.
You've got to get your coffee direct from a coffee roaster to hit the goal. Mail order works great for this if you buy from a roaster who ships immediately. By the time i
Not a problem ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Grande with a shot of poop (Score:1, Insightful)
"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."
Wait a minute...we wait for a random animal to eat and poop out the coffee beans, and charge MORE for this? What exactly is supposed to make this better than the fresh coffee bean?
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That the animal has eaten and pooped it out obviously.
I assume it changes the flavor, or just if flashy.
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That the animal has eaten and pooped it out obviously.
I assume it changes the flavor, or just if flashy.
That being shat out makes a change in flavor indicates the flavor imbued is that of the shitting process itself.
Ah, the taste of Shit. Humans are made of and do produce shit. We refine all things shit and burn shit in our cars.
Energy collapsed into matter and Stars digested this and shat out all the heavier elements that make up all the exquisite flavors of the world.
Nature's cruel joke is that the ultimate digestion the cosmos hordes for itself alone.
You will never know the true flavor of a black
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."
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"Delicacy" is better thought of as a code word for "look at the crazy shit we just fed to that tourist."
Delicacy tends more to be some horrible crap that poor people would eat to survive. For example haggis, the Scots delicacy is made from all the garbage left over after that you cant sell after you butcher a sheep. It's padded out with oats and has the bad taste of the offal covered up with spices. Seems this coffee started out in a similar way. Poor people not allowed the coffee beans found some they were allowed to use in cat shit. mmmm the taste of culture mixed with the chic of poverty. So now they
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The digestive tract is supposedly much better at extracting the bean from its husk than the usual cooking method and gives a purer flavour.
cf. Wikipedia
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You obviously haven't seen what the monkeys do in their spare time...
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I have a cheaper way (Score:5, Funny)
It goes something like this. I go to the store. I take samples of everything, then bring them home. When I wake up in the morning, I try one. One of four things will happen:
a) It does nothing. Bad coffee.
b) It gives me just enough juice to make it to the shower, where I fall asleep again. Bad coffee.
c) It gives me a big jolt, and I say 'fuck work' and submit a new linux kernel patch. Okay coffee.
d) ZOMFGThisIsThe GreatestCupOfCoffee InTheWorldCanIHave AnotherHolyShit EverythingIsSoClear IWantToDoAllTheThings RightNowHolyShit FuckOnAHeartAttack... Good coffee.
Curse you sir, (Score:2)
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are you always in the habit of referring to "girls" as "sir"?
Now now, be nice. He has to rationalize it somehow, otherwise... his male ego would be crushed by the thought that a guh... gu... a gurrrrrrl smacked him so hard on an internet forum his kids will be born dizzy. And so, to keep his idea of girls as subserviant little playthings for his penis... and him as the big and powerful penis owner... anyone who so completely and utterly destroys him as we have just done, simply can't be a..a... a girl.
In other news, my geek-fu is strong. Now, get lost, or (puts on a
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Really, none of what you said made any sense.
It actually does if you are learned in the language and shaming tactics of the cultural Marxist.
Re-read the post as coming from a Female Chauvinist, or Feminist if you dare. Note the attack of male nature and trumped up "male ego" for no reason. Note the hypocrisy in assuming that rsilvergun is male...
If the idealists can not be swayed by logic and rationality, I would at least hope they learn that displays like this are a disservice to the causes of women...
Re:Curse you sir, (Score:5, Funny)
I have you and your ilk to thank for the drek that is Starbucks. What made them big was their coffee is higher in caffeine than most.
Listen, you hipster wannabe geek... caffeine content is the only thing a true geek cares about. Geeks are devices for turning caffeine into code. Therefore, if you want lots of code, you need lots of caffeine. We don't care that it was made by the loving natives of... some country... brewed in a steamomaster 9000 with auto bean injectors, slow-roasted in an artistic clay pot. You care, because you're a wannabe. We only care about two things: That it's hot, and that it makes anyone who drinks it twitch like a politician being asked about his sexual misconduct.
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Starbucks uses a dark roast. The darker the roast, the more caffeine is burned out. The thing that makes it stronger is the espresso extraction method, not the coffee; the problem with that is, the dark roast removes a lot of the complexity and the amount needed per cup raises the price.
If you want to experience a real coffee rush that doesn't cost you a fortune, get a light roast and put it through a Mr. Coffee. Tastes better for a fraction of the price.
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Starbucks uses a dark roast.
Not always. Most Starbucks I've been to offer a choice of dark or medium roast. A couple even offered a light roast. They were all horrible but admittedly their dark roasts were the worse.
Unless you mean for espresso-based drinks. In that case yes, they use a dark roast. But it becomes almost drinkable when you add lots of milk to it. (A shot of pure espresso from Starbucks? Ewwwww... *shudders*)
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I make my coffee and do not keep it heated.
What I don't drink, I put into a Zynga bottle.
Then I have reheated coffee over the next several days. I tried it after seeing refrigerated coffees in the store.
Probably works better because I use cream and one packet of sweetener in my coffee.
Fresh-- I like the old denny's coffee the best.
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girlintraining, I have wanted to ask for years, please do no be offended but, are you a women in a man body? (please, just trying to make sense of your nick name)
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When I wake up in the morning, I try one.
[...]
c) It gives me a big jolt, and I say 'fuck work' and submit a new linux kernel patch. Okay coffee.
d) ZOMFGThisIsThe GreatestCupOfCoffee InTheWorldCanIHave AnotherHolyShit EverythingIsSoClear IWantToDoAllTheThings RightNowHolyShit FuckOnAHeartAttack... Good coffee.
I bearing word from Arrakis.
Our navigators have heard your minds' shouts weakly across expanse,
but sadly we can not reach you before your time has passed.
We believe your concept of "free software" binds you to us.
As your brother Fremen we wish to help you.
If it is as we suspect then also linked are the makers of spice on our world to the makers of coffee on your world.
Perhaps you have heard tell of the mind expanding properties of the Shai-Hulud's First Water?
When the maker is yet a small worm it i
I'm in the wrong line of work (Score:2)
I should be eating coffee beans, popping them out, and the looking for them in my shit. It's about as much fun as cleaning my cat's litterbox but far more profitable. There is a Starbucks nearby. Perhaps I could sell it to them. It's gotta be better than the swill they sell.
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I should be eating coffee beans, popping them out, and the looking for them in my shit. It's about as much fun as cleaning my cat's litterbox but far more profitable. There is a Starbucks nearby. Perhaps I could sell it to them. It's gotta be better than the swill they sell.
There in lies the problem.
They have standards to maintain for that swill. They cant sell anything better otherwise people will be expecting them to raise that standard.
I'm dissappointed (Score:5, Insightful)
Here I thought they were going to discern the quality of coffee, not whether it's been shat by a civet cat. I've no interest in tasting cat-shit coffee at any price.
Now if they'd have come up with a way to quantify the robustness, the body, the acidity, the richness, the roast, and so on for *sane* coffee, I'd have had to read the article. :P
How to spot *crappy* coffee (Score:2)
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Maybe not. [seattlepi.com]
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Return home and prepared to be perpetually disappointed.
I think you meant to say "be prepared to become a home roaster out of desperation".
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Really, shat out by a cat (because it can't be digested by them) isn't very high on the list of weird shit we eat. Rotten grain juice, bug vomit, rotten beans, rotten bean juice, rotten milk, (non-human) milk, stuff that grows on shit, rotten milk with maggots in it (yes, really!). (Note that I don't bother counting eating bugs and dogs as weird.) Couple this with the fact that there are some plants whose seeds won't germinate until they've been eaten by the right animal, which says something about the i
What kind of sick bastard (Score:5, Funny)
goes digging through an animal's shit, picking out the beans to brew coffee?
There was corn in my shit yesterday, did someone one to pick the kernels out to make popcorn?
Bear Grylls (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q97hBJ7alKI [youtube.com]
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I believe you but seems a little far-fetched. Not the part about picking stuff out of their shit and eating it but the part about a North Korean having had corn to start with is what I find skeptical. If you'd said they were picking grass, tree bark, or burnt rice out of the shit and eating it then I guess I'd be more inclined to believe it without a second thought. ;)
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See? I love this site. I really, sure I was joking but still, would not have expected that. Thanks - interesting article by the way. Much appreciated.
Don't need ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mystery (Score:2)
Someone was the first to try civet cat coffee. How did it occur to him?
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Someone was the first to try civet cat coffee. How did it occur to him?
Paradoxically, seems like at that time the price for normal coffee was too high.
O tempora o mores (but even at that time there was no need for fancy analyses).
easier answer (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't tell the difference from the taste, stop paying $300 per kilogram.
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.
Try the elephant-made coffee then (Score:2)
Money well spent on that research (Score:5, Interesting)
What a pointless bit of research. Have we now solved so many of the world's important problems that the top of the list is now "make sure hipsters are drinking genuine cat's bum coffee."
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So if Guy B buys 10kg sack of cat crap coffee beans from Guy A, then on sells that to Guy C, how does Guy B know Guy A isn't ripping him off, if he is just a distributor and doesn't care for coffee or the taste of cat crap coffee? He's not going to call on his expert coffee taster to inspect every bag.
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Unless Guy B negotiated lower prices in exchange for higher volume, and sold the product on for less than Guy' C - Z could have bought it for directly.
"Crappy" (Score:2)
produced from coffee beans pooped out by the palm civet
Huh, I didn't think the title meant literally crappy.
Oh thank goodness... (Score:3)
Finally, they have a chemical process to verify that the $500/kg coffee is, in fact, Kopi Luwak. Thank goodness! Gone are the days of me paying $500/kg for coffee and not being able to tell if it's Kopi Luwak or just Folger's. I'm a discerning customer with stringent tastes. I want to know if the $500/kg coffee I'm drinking is actually high-quality. I don't want any of that $5/kg shit being passed off as $500/kg coffee, and then I don't notice and get ripped off.
kopi luwak (Score:2)
In this case, crappy coffee IS the real thing.
I was able to test kopi luwak a long time ago. (Score:2)
All I did was recalibrate my bullshit detector.
Even better! (Score:2)
Imagine what it would taste like if it was poop out by Super Models!!!
If someone is willing to pay for coffee beans pooped out by a funny looking rat, then imagine what they would pay for something pooped out by a Super Model, or even a mediocre model. Heck, even a double bagger would be an improvement!
On second thought, let's go back to the Super Model.
The post title (Score:2)
I only just now got the pun. I feel dumb.
7.65 cents per bean. (Score:4, Interesting)
I counted 102 beans in my coffee scoop. I weighed a scoop at 15 grams which gives 30 scoops to a pound (454 g ). This means there are 3060 beans in a pound. At a price $400/pound civet coffee comes out to 7.65 cents per bean.
I measured Brazilian coffee, not civet. The real number may differ.
.
And here... (Score:2)
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Well, it's a bit nutty.
lol (Score:3)
I think people spending $500/kg for coffee deserve to be ripped off when actually buying an bag Nabob with some cat shit sprinkled in it for flavor.
Seriously, though, there is a problem with a culture of people willing to pay the high price for speciality coffee or wine, but then can't tell the difference from counterfeit. Its not a problem with the counterfeit being that good, its the problem with douchey hipsters thinking that their coffee is actually better because it costs more when they can't tell the freakin' difference from a much cheaper brand. I think if you can't tell you are drinking crap, you have a problem no device is going to solve.
All these kinds of coffee and wine detectors do is reinforce the douchey poser culture that wants to emerge from the 99% by pretending to act like they belong in the 1% drinking their $50 cup of disgusting coffee.
Signs that Rome II is falling (Score:2)
I have a word for this fetishistic novelty which is pursued for the sheer purpose of displaying wealth:
Decadence.
With it comes the downfall of empires. Don't adjust your set!
Can we fake it now? (Score:2)