The World of Coffee

[noetsi]

I never enjoyed coffee. I love the Starbuck hot chocolate however.

[Top Cat]

Originally Posted by bedir than average

I think your choices are inexpensive, or double boiler.

I am of the mind that someone, somewhere will fix that....A guy can dream...

[bedir than average]

DVICE: Coffee time is business time with the brass knuckle cup


For when you need a few shots of espresso and the guy that cut in front needs to get hit

[noetsi]

lol bedir

[nanwynnfan]

Bedir, what are your thoughts on Michael Gates Gill, former powerhouse adman-turned Starbuck's barista? I saw him interviewed on Charles Osgood's Sunday AM tv program ... interesting story.

First a book on how Starbuck's saved his life after his firing from J. Walter Thompson, now film right bought up by Tom Hanks, who wants to play Gill.

[Zen653]

Has anyone tried these high-end coffees? Is the taste that much more magnificent to make them worth $50+ per pound?

We have searched the specialty coffee market for the priciest coffee in the world--not the most expensive cups of coffee, which can vary by a matter of cents--but the priciest specialty beans.

They include such products as Hacienda la Esmeralda Geisha from Panama, which made news at the end of May when it set an auction record of $50.25 per pound. Praised for its fruit and floral flavors, it retails for more than $100 per pound. There are also novelty coffees, whose prices are influenced not just by quality, but by the romance or uniqueness of their origins.

St. Helena coffee, for instance, is a high-quality coffee grown on the remote South Atlantic island to which Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled in 1815. Then there's the Indonesian Kopi Luwak, a coffee that is only roasted after it's been eaten and excreted by a palm civet.

Most Expensive Coffee - Forbes.com

[nanwynnfan]

Thank you, Zen 653. This particulary caught my eye and could make an interesting thread of its own:

"St. Helena coffee, for instance, is a high-quality coffee grown on the remote South Atlantic island to which Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled in 1815. Then there's the Indonesian Kopi Luwak, a coffee that is only roasted after it's been eaten and excreted by a palm civet."

How in the name of all that's good and holy does one discover that a particualr coffee bean is enhanced for flavor by being passed through the digestive tract of a palm civet and excreted?

-The civet is either no lover of fine coffee, or is a barista extraordinaire;

-Has the civet extracted the maximum goodness from the coffee bean for himself and then left us the discard in its droppings? How good or expensive would the unsullied bean be in that event? Or, is the pure bean merely a treat for the civet, one that would have no appeal for human tastes, in which event the poor beast has no idea what it's missing? Would that be like an animal opening an oyster and gnawing the pearl, leaving the fleshy part for whatever scavenger might want it?

-Who first discovered this bean-civet-devour-excrete-aha sequence; and what was he doing playing with civet excrement in search of delicacies? Was he/she heralded? Was a coffee named after him? Or a civet? Or, ... never mind.

It's beginning to hurt my head, so I'll put up some Publix coffee and enjoy the rest of Christmas Eve trying to avoid fixation of civets, their droppings and $50 cups of coffee.

Merry Christmas to all.

[Zen653]

How in the name of all that's good and holy does one discover that a particular coffee bean is enhanced for flavor by being passed through the digestive tract of a palm civet and excreted?

It does sound like a rather odd discovery, doesn't it? Here's more information:

It sounds like an urban myth of some sort. You can’t keep yourself from laughing the first time you hear of it. As strange as it may be, Kopi Luwak is not an urban myth but in fact one of the rarest and most costly coffees in the world.

Kopi Luwak gains it’s legendary status from the way it is “processed”, as opposed to its origin. There is a small cat-like animal called the Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) found in Indonesia that reside in the coffee trees. Civets were considered pests because they constantly ate the ripe red coffee cherries of the trees. Just like the rest of us, what Civets eat, Civets digest and excrete. One fine day some rather bored locals gathered the expelled beans to find them still intact and wrapped in their thin layers of cherry mucilage. We’re not too sure how the story goes from this point but they decided to roast these beans.

They found that the Civet’s stomach enzymes added uniqueness to the flavor of the coffee. This process of natural fermentation using stomach acids and enzymes has a different effect than the typical fermentation with water. We personally have yet to try it, but those that have, described it as having a heavy caramel taste, gamy flavor and a musty and jungle-like aroma.

Because of this “process” it obviously takes a long time to collect enough beans to roast. It can be found priced upwards $300 a pound and seems to have become more of a novelty coffee.

Coffee, Kopi Luwak and Coffee Beans

To add further to the exotic history of this coffee, the World Health Organization believes that civets first infected humans with the SARS virus:

Civets, other wildlife off the Chinese menu - Bird Flu - MSNBC.com



If you'd like to pay $160/pound for coffee beans extracted from the feces of potentially SARS-carrying wild kitties, you can purchase Kopi Luwak here:

Kopi Luwak Online Shop - The World's Rarest Gourmet Coffee from Indonesia

[bedir than average]

I have head the La Esmeralda Estate from Panama. I found it good, but not great, with bright acid, a medium body and moderate florals. It is a notably great Panamanian coffee that does not have the layers of complexity that are in African coffees. I think the auction happened to be a series of fortunate events for the Estate and that if they had the exact same crop next year they would not fetch the same price, just my beleif though.

and nan, I haven't read the book so I can't comment on it much. I know that I was a very different person prior to Starbucks, especially in how I relate to people, but again I haven't read the book.

[jtur88]

I found a "Mother Parker's" brand of coffee (called "Beech-Nut") at $1.50 per 10-oz can. Nice an cheap, and good enough.

[bedir than average]

There is a strong possibility that I will be on Nightline (ABC, Monday) demonstrating 'cupping'. They did film me, and they have said it was likely to be used. But I have no control whether it is or not.

I will link their stream of it tomorrow.

[bedir than average]

ABC News: Starbucks CEO: We'll Prove Them Wrong

Their preview of tonight. The Starbucks story is early

[SugarBaby]

Well, were you on? I couldn't stay up that late.

[dlb]

I think I saw you. Are you the 30-ish guy with longish salt & pepper hair?

[marshallz]

Starbucks is the most over-hyped, over-roasted, over-priced brew in North America. Proverbial flash-in-the-pan, which is why you're not going to see any movement in their stock (SBUX) until they've really become established in China. Here in the US, they've become oversaturated in a ton of metro areas.

But the coffee flavored Frappucino IS delightful