Poop-coffee war pits purists vs. producers Producers breed civets to harvest beans from their dung; Experts cry foul

Poop-coffee war pits purists vs. producers

Producers breed civets to harvest beans from their dung; Experts cry foul

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38865765/ns/business-going_green/ 

Lovers of the world's most expensive coffee, found half-digested in the dung of the wild civet, fear that its unique taste may be spoiled by planned farming of the animals.

Collectors hunt for the coffee cherries in the droppings of civets in Indonesian plantations to make a brew enriched by the bushy-tailed, cat-like animal's stomach that sells for as much as $770 a kg in London.

But as demand rises, producers have spotted an opportunity to increase supply by breeding the civets in cages and feeding them the coffee cherries. Production has started on a small scale.

Experts say the flavor relies on the civet's finicky feeding habits and varied diet to create the enzymes that enrich fermentation of the beans, so caged animals would produce a different coffee.

"I think wild civets offer more variants to the taste," said specialty coffee expert Edi Sumadi. "Inside the cage, the civets' diet is regulated, they're not free to pick following their instincts, so the enzyme inside their digestive system is monotonous."

Perkebunan Nusantara XII sells the civet coffee for $130 a kg from factories or $250 a kg in cafes on Indonesia's main island of Java, though the price multiplies as exports reach countries such as Korea, Japan, Italy and the United States.

"It's far tastier than any other coffee," said the firm's Danu Rianto. "To maintain high standards we have a standard operating procedure."

The coffee does not appeal to everyone. Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono took some as a gift on a visit to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, only to find local media dubb it "crappucino".

But now that Indonesia's highest Islamic authority has certified the brew as no longer "haram", or banned for Muslims, in the world's most populous Muslim nation — so long as the beans are well washed — producers, including Perkebunan Nusantara XII, are eyeing a bigger market.

In Jakarta's cafes, a cup of civet coffee, known as "kopi luwak", sells for around $9 to $11, and is attracting more interest.

"The taste is very smooth, the smell nice, and hey, it's not entirely haram after you wash it," said Andrea Guna, a first-time taster.

"The price is double that of Starbucks, but the taste is way more than double."

Ometepe Island paradise

Ometepe Island - Overview

Ometepe Island is generally included within the archaeological area of “Greater Nicoya,” which also encompasses the Rivas area on the lake shore and descends into Costa Rican Nicoya Peninsula. Due to the deposits of volcanic ash over the millennia, the soil is very fertile, allowing constant planting without fallowing. This rich environment has allowed the island to be continuously inhabited since the Dinarte phase (ca. 2000 – 500 B.C.). There is a classified “Ometepe period” (A.D. 1350–1550)

Most Expensive Coffee !

The most expensive cup of joe, in the minds of many coffee drinkers, is a $4 coffee at Starbucks. Perhaps a half-caf soy almond latte prepared by a favorite barista.


But for serious coffee connoisseurs, people who are looking for a world-class drink rather than a "gourmet" cup, the top fare is made from the highest-quality beans in the world. The beans come from very specific regions and are prized for their unique characteristics. Cultivated on small farms, they are coddled by farmers who care more about quality than quantity.


You wouldn't dare add milk or sugar to coffee of this caliber--it would compete with the beans' natural sweetness, and distinct flavors and aromas.


Taste ten of the most expensive coffees in the world.


Such top-quality coffees are rare--and prices for them are accordingly high. Superior beans command retail prices of over $100 per pound in what the Specialty Coffee Association of America, a Long Beach, Calif.-based trade association, describes as a $11 billion-plus specialty coffee market.


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.


The U.S. coffee market looks very different today than it did a half-century ago. From the 1950s to the 1990s, a few small roasters managed to obtain high-quality beans for select markets like New York's Little Italy or Berkeley, Calif. But most coffee was sold in cans, and consumers were more concerned with price and consistency than taste.


In 1962, the U.S. reached a peak in per capita coffee consumption: The average person was drinking more than three cups of murky brown swill per day. Despite the proliferation of Starbucks , which was founded in 1971, today the average American drinks less than two cups of coffee per day. That coffee is significantly tastier, however.


Coffee evangelists have long sought to elevate coffee above commodity status. For years, great coffees were blended away, used to make fairly uniform-tasting brews. Little recognition was given to the individual farmer, and the unique flavor profiles of different varieties of coffees, or coffees from different micro-climates, were ignored.


With the specialty coffee boom of the '90s, great beans are now making a more direct journey from crop to cup. Specialty roasters and retailers buy beans directly from the farmers, paying premiums that encourage them to improve growing methods and produce superior beans. The beans are transported and carefully roasted before being sold to consumers. "While you cannot make a mediocre coffee good during the roasting process, you can ruin a great coffee during roasting," said Mike Ferguson of SCAA.


George Howell, founder of the George Howell Coffee Company and its Terroir Coffee brand based in Acton, Mass., emphasizes that coffee is a "noble beverage," worthy of the same respect as fine wine. A 30-year veteran of the coffee industry, he has pushed to decommoditize coffee.


After creating models of economic sustainability for coffee farmers for both the United Nations and the International Coffee Organization, Howell co-founded the Cup Of Excellence program, among the most esteemed award programs for coffees. The strict competition selects the best coffee produced in a country for a particular year. The winners are auctioned off online.


Many of the most expensive coffees in the world are Cup of Excellence winners. In compiling our rankings, we examined auction prices for green (unroasted) beans and spoke to roasters and trade organizations around the country. Only single origin coffees were considered, which means that the beans come from one place. Blends were not considered, because they can contain inferior beans from unidentified sources.


In general, we ranked the coffees by retail price. One exception is El Injerto from the Huehuetenango region of Guatemala, which is not yet available but is expected to retail at more than $50 per pound. The second is Fazenda Santa Ines from Brazil, which has already been bought up and is only available by the cup; we ranked it by its auction price of nearly $50 per pound. We rounded all figures to the nearest dollar.


As expensive as these coffees are, when compared with wine, the best coffee beans are a relative bargain.


"If you pay $10 per pound for the coffee you brew at home, a cup of coffee costs less than a Coke from a 12-pack," Howell points out. Even if you pay twice as much for a pound of beans, an entire pot of coffee will still cost less than a glass of wine from a $10 bottle.


So even at these prices, feel free to drink up.


Taste ten of the most expensive coffees in the world.

Did You Know??? fun facts about coffee

The word "coffee" was at one time a term for wine, but was later used to describe a black drink made from berries of the coffee tree. This black drink replaced wine in many religious ceremonies because it kept the Mohammedans awake and alert during their nightly prayers, so they honored it with the name they had originally given to wine.

Fun Facts about Coffee

The Coffee Plant

Finca de Concepcion does its part to combat Global Warming....One Sip at a Time

Each hectare of coffee produces 86 lbs of oxygen per day, which is about half the production of the same area in a rain forest (source: Anacafe).

http://www.coffeeresearch.org/agriculture/coffeeplant.htm 

Nicaragua Coffee Crop Seen 63% Bigger After Rain Lifted Yields, Group Says

http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/august/10/centralamerica10081001.htm
MANAGUA (Bloomberg) - Nicaraguan coffee output will likely rise 63 percent in the crop year ending next month, more than previously expected, after rains in the flowering period boosted yields, a growers group said.

Production in the current crop year will probably jump to 2.28 million 46-kilogram (101-pound) bags, said Luis Osorio, technical secretary of Conacafe, the nation’s biggest coffee- growers group. Conacafe last year forecast output of 1.8 million bags for the current crop, up from 1.4 million bags in the previous season, Osorio said.

The Central American country is the world’s 12th largest coffee producer, according to the International Coffee Organization.
 

Mark Twain visits Nicaragua in 1866 - What?... Lives to regret not stopping on the island of Ometepe

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080602860.html

By Julian Smith

Special to The Washington Post
Friday, August 6, 2010; 10:48 AM 

Coffee....From Nicaragua or otherwise...The Morning Brew!

Tell me more about Coffee...Read on....

Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. They are seeds of coffee cherries that grow on trees in over 70 countries. Green unroasted coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world.^[1] Due to its caffeine content, coffee can have a stimulating effect in humans. Today, coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide.^[2]

Learn about Nicaragua on Wikipedia

Nicaragua at Wikipedia