I am a coffee lover. I start my morning with 2-3 cups of coffee, this is already a favorite tradition.
Sometimes this is instant coffee, most often, recently, this is coffee that we brew ourselves.
8 years ago in Vietnam I tried Vietnamese Robusta coffee.
For me it is strong, for my husband - just right.
I dilute it with water or milk, but he drinks it as it is in strength.
In our last visit to Vietnam, we knew absolutely nothing about the fact that Vietnam is famous for its coffee. We found this out during the study of Vietnam, and then read it on the Internet.
I was very surprised by the fact that Vietnam sells 80% of its coffee to world markets. That is, Vietnamese coffee is supplied to the whole world.
And on this visit, we immediately went to buy coffee for our morning coffee party.
The range, of course, is impressive.
8 years ago I did not know anything about Luwak coffee. I generally found out about him recently.
What is Luwak coffee, or what kind of Kopy Luwak coffee?
I tell you. I'll start from afar.
There is Malay palm civet (lat. Paradoxurus hermaphroditus), a species of mammals from the civet family that lives in South and Southeast Asia and is known for its role in the production of the Kopy-Luwak coffee. The thick, thick wool of the palm civet is dyed gray. On the back there are black stripes, on the shoulders and sides turning into separate spots.
The animal is somewhat similar to a ferret. But this is only at first glance.
Palm civet leads a nocturnal lifestyle, that is, he sleeps during the day, and is awake at night.
The palm civet diet consists of plant and animal food. They prey on small birds, mammals, insects and worms, and also love to feast on the fruits of plants.
Males and females have special odorous glands.
It is not known who the first thought came to begin to feed the animal coffee berries, which are processed by animals in a natural way, processed inside the body by enzymes, due to which they acquire a specific taste.
Yes, yes, now you understand everything correctly, the animal produces poop, and it is from them that the “Kopi Luwak” coffee is made, from palm civet's poop.
Farmers collect the waste products of these animals, dried, washed, dried again and only then fried.
The name of the coffee comes from this production: the Indonesians call palm civet - Luwak, and coffee - Kopi.
This coffee is considered the best in the world, and its price, for example in Europe, reaches $ 400 per 1 kg. Coffee connoisseurs all over the world recognize its taste and aroma as the most refined and excellent.
From 1 kg, which is consumed by palm civet, only 50 g of beans suitable for the production of coffee are obtained. It is not known who could have come up with the idea of eating such grains for food, but nevertheless, the fact remains.
Demand for this product served as the basis for the cultivation of palm civet in cages and feeding them with coffee berries. Thus, the production of "Kopi Luwak" put on stream.
I can’t help but show you how this coffee looks in its original, so to speak, natural version.
And after processing already like that.
And so.
After roasting and selling coffee, it looks pretty good.
In Vietnam, in ordinary supermarkets, of course, there is no expensive original Kopi Luwak.
99.9% of what is sold in stores in packages labeled Kopi Luwak is either a fake or a mixture.
By mixture we mean coffee, consisting of Luwak, Arabica, Robusta, and anything else. Moreover, the percentage of precious coffee in the best case is 30 out of 100. And that is not a fact.
You also need to understand that we are not talking about any selected most ripe grains of palm civet's coffee. Animals eat everything they give, all year round, which affects the quality of the final product.
Therefore, what we are drinking in Vietnam now is ordinary coffee with the smell of Luwak.
We have long been accustomed to chips with the smell of bacon or barbecue.
And then coffee with the smell of palm civet.
This is what the assortment of coffee looks like in the Vietnam ST-Market supermarket.
This is the first time I see, by the way, white coffee made from durian and coconut. I have not tried it yet, so I can’t say anything about him.
Robusta - with sourness. Someone likes, someone doesn't like.
Further just photos.
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