And I thought MY coffee was interesting!

I bought some interesting coffee the other day, which turned out to be pretty good. It’s called “Cafe Rio,” and here’s the package:

While I had assumed it was Brazilian coffee because of the name, the words on the label are  French and Arabic only. No Spanish, no Portuguese, and of course no English. This left me to guess what the real story of the product might be.

The reverse side indicates it is made in Lebanon by the “SOCIETE DE TORREFACTION ET DU MOUTURE DU CAFE BRESILIEN POUR LE MOYEN-ORIENT”:

Which translates as “COMPANY ROASTING AND GRINDING OF BRAZILIAN COFFEE FOR THE MIDDLE EAST.”

So the coffee’s origin may be Brazilian after all. Or may not be. Just because the company is named for the processing of Brazilian coffee does not mean that this actual coffee is from Brazil. I have no idea how to translate Arabic, and I cannot copy and paste the text.

But curious me, I wondered whether the coffee is Halal. It does not say “Halal” anywhere, but then, for all I know, that word might only be applicable to food products which could go either way. Beef or lamb, for example, might be Halal, and it might not be, depending on how the animal was slaughtered. So I googled “Halal coffee,” and while I didn’t learn much, I stumbled onto a fascinating tidbit.

Most Islamic scholars seem to take it for granted that coffee is OK to drink unless it is prepared with alcohol.

But there is a certain coffee I’d never heard of before which is subject to debate, and it isn’t an idle intellectual debate, because it is very popular in Indonesia, which is a Muslim country.

Luwak Coffee:

 Is Luwak Coffee halal or haram ?.

There is exotic -and expensive- coffee named Luwak Coffee (Indonesia : Kopi Luwak). Actually,this is made from coffee beans that eaten by “luwak”, a kind of mongoose. Processed in Luwak stomach, then released through a ‘hole under the tail’.

I wonder, is Luwak Coffee halal or haram ?.

There are Ulama who say Luwak Coffee is haram because Luwak Coffee is considered as s**t of animals. And s**t is haram for eaten.

But there are Ulama who say Luwak Coffee is halal, because luwak/mongoose flesh is halal and this is means its s**t is also halal ( )

Huh? Halal or not (and the debate is an interesting one, with Indonesian religious authorities declaring it halal with others declaring it haram), I’m more intrigued by the fact that people are drinking juice from mongoose poop.

Well, not exactly mongoose poop, but poop from the Asian Palm civet. It has a Wiki entry:

Kopi luwak (Indonesian pronunciation: [?kopi ?lu.a?]), or civet coffee, refers to the beans of coffee berries once they have been eaten and excreted by the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus).^[1] The name is also used for marketing brewed coffee made from the beans.

Producers of the coffee beans argue that the process may improve coffee through two mechanisms, selection and digestion. Selection occurs if the civets choose to eat coffee berries containing better beans. Digestive mechanisms may improve the flavor profile of the coffee beans that have been eaten. The civet eats the berries for the beans’ fleshy pulp, then in the digestive tract, fermentation occurs. The civet’s proteolytic enzymes seep into the beans, making shorter peptides and more free amino acids.^[2] Passing through a civet’s intestines the beans are then defecated with other fecal matter and collected.

Hey wait a second right there! Fermentation? That means yeast is converting sugars into alcohol. Doesn’t sound very halal to me, and even if the scholars are willing to overlook the passage of the beans through the animal’s gastrointestinal tract, I don’t see how they can ignore the fermentation issue.  Do they even know?

The stuff is enormously expensive compared to regular coffee:

Although kopi luwak is a form of processing rather than a variety of coffee, it has been called the most expensive coffee in the world with retail prices reaching €550 / US$700 per kilogramme.^[8] The price paid to collectors in the Philippines is closer to US$20 per kilogramme.^[1] The price of farmed (considered low-grade by connoisseurs) kopi luwak in large Indonesian supermarkets is from US$100 per kilogramme (five times the price of a high quality local arabica coffee). Genuine kopi luwak from wild civets is difficult to purchase in Indonesia and proving it is not fake is very difficult – there is little enforcement regarding use of the name “kopi luwak”, and there’s even a local cheap coffee brand named “Luwak”, which costs under US$3 per kilogramme but is occasionally sold online under the guise of real kopi luwak.

I don’t know why I had never heard about this stuff, but I only read about it yesterday morning after Googling.

But then, in an amazing coincidence* which made me feel obliged to write this blog post, in today’s WSJ I found an article about this very substance:

…civets know how to pick the best coffee beans and that their digestive systems ferment the beans, reducing their acidity and providing a much better coffee. (I have no idea how this works, but the story piqued my curiosity, too.)

So why are people willing to pay so much for civet coffee? It is probably for the novelty and the story—and because the amount (and type) of labor involved is clearly so much higher than for your average cup of Java. People are generally willing to pay more for something that requires more effort to produce even if the product itself isn’t better—and civet coffee sounds like a prime example of this effort-based-pricing principle.

Finally, I wonder how much people would be willing to pay had the beans passed through an American human rather than an exotic Indonesian animal.

Not to sound judgmental, but I think that latter example might be carrying the effort-based-pricing principle a bit too far.

Sheesh. The stuff I feel obligated to write about just to keep abreast of the latest poop!

* Unless, of course, the WSJ is data-mining my Google/Wiki search results.