Wyrmwood's Cafe

Find Prior Posts In This Series Below Intro: I Promised Coffee Didn’t I?

Firstly, I need to give credit where credit is do. I will be using this Reddit post by u/chapsthedude where they listed all the coffee trivia facts from Persona 5. I will be exploring the coffee on this list and copy/pasting the trivia.

Now onto what I feel like is a... snobbish and (spoilers) unethical and disgusting coffee bean.

IN GAME DESCRIPTION

"This rare coffee is made by collecting coffee beans that have been through the digestive tract of the Asian palm civet. Although very expensive, Kopi Luwak is said to have a full aroma and rich flavor due to the civet’s digestive enzymes." - Sojiro Sakura.

Yes, that is correct this coffee bean comes from an animal's rear end making it one of the few non-vegan coffee beans out there.

REPORTED TASTING NOTES

Kayakopi.com reports that Kopi Luwak, "is noticeably not bitter and is intensely aromatic. It has a complex flavor profile that is smooth, earthy and sweet with a hint of chocolate." The universally agreed upon reason is that a healthy civet's digestive enzymes break down the proteins that cause bitterness after brewing.

There is science that supports this idea as James Hoffman discusses in his video Kopi Luwak/Civet Poop Coffee: Disgusting or Delightful? However, in the same video, he discusses his personal experience with the Kopi Luwak describing it as similar to lower-quality coffee to paraphrase. There are reasons for the lower grade taste such as the civet feeding on a poor quality coffee bean or... ...

CAN YOU BUY IT FROM AN ETHICAL SOURCE?

In short. Good luck. Kopi Luwak is plagued by snake-oil salesmen selling low-grade coffee beans disguised as Kopi Luwak. Worse still is the practice of animal cruelty in the industry. Large producers often participate in caging civets and force-feeding them a diet that is exclusively coffee cherries, "On top of being inhumane, this results in inferior coffee because the civet's digestive system is wrecked from an unbalanced diet. Part of the magic of Kopi Luwak comes from the healthy enzymes from the luwak. If the diet is deficient, this enzymatic process won't be efficient," as kayakopi.com reports.

You will also find unsafe imitators such as a man who attempted to sell coffee beans that went through his own digestion track. Yes, that actually happened.

Now kayakopi.com reports that their Kopi Luwak coffee comes from wild free-range civets and that they follow Fairtrade's International guidelines, but... I have found no third-party independent sources, articles, or reports that have confirmed or refuted this claim.

WHAT IS THE COST?

Small bags of only a few hundred grams could cost you anywhere in the ballpark of 30$ to 60$ USD. Larger bags at 1 kg can cost up to 650$ USD. Yes... that is right... Six. Hundred. Fifty. Dollars. USD for a kilogram.

DID I TRY IT?

No. Not only do I feel uncomfortable with the costs I feel uncomfortable with the industry itself. Also, whenever I think about this coffee my mind immediately goes to this quote from Monk Of Mocha by Dave Eggers, "Coffee from assholes, for assholes."

Sources:

Specialty coffee has to be one of my greatest comforts. Each morning I get to participate in a morning ritual, drink a delicious cup, and know that the money I used to pay for the bag of beans actually goes to the right people — the farmers.

However, this obsession (addiction) had a surprising starting point. My origins for specialty coffee beans came from a video game of all places. Persona 5 has this one great mechanic where the main character Ren can make pour-over coffee and then bring it into the field where they can use it to restore SP outside of combat. What makes this mechanic so memorable for me is that as you progress through the game Sojiro, the owner of Cafe Leblanc, will teach Ren about different specialty coffee beans.

The above characteristics of Persona 5 are what got me into specialty coffee. Before I was just an ignorant high schooler just throwing pre-ground Starbucks roasts into my parents' French Press (Plunger for you British and British colony citizens). I mean... a better start for most high schoolers, but still... I was ignorant. After this game, I continued to learn about varietals, blends, and heirlooms of beans, and oooh boy, did I get into it.

However, I am not here to thank Persona 5 for getting me into this admittedly, to be honest, addiction, but to pay homage to the game by going over every varietal in their own blog post. In each upcoming blog post, I'll go over 1.) The variety, region, and tasting notes 2.) Can you buy these from an ethical source 3.) The price range 4.) My own personal review of these varietals if I can buy them without going broke.

A few days ago, I went on a walk and came across this patch of mushrooms on either side of the trail acting as a border.

Immediately, my brain started a world-building brainstorm on why fairies would border a commonly used walking path, and the only reasonable answer was that we are the biggest jerks.

Man... this is new. No one told me that Tumblr was a social media platform that role-plays as WordPress at a LARP, so seeing all these customization functions -as limited as they may be- has been a joy.

Anyway, I am not completely sure what the format of my blog shall be, but rest assured it will contain the following topics: Coffee, books (mainly fiction), tabletop roleplaying, coffee, whimsically dark and macabre misfits, who will be served coffee, and anything that might feed the soul... like Irish Coffee.