
The Disturbing Secret Behind the World’s Most Expensive Coffee (2016) - lelf
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160429-kopi-luwak-captive-civet-coffee-Indonesia/
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drngdds
People care more about this because the animals involved are cute and fluffy,
but this is pretty much just regular factory farming. (Which itself is a
hellish indictment of humanity, of course.)

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nkozyra
This is true and we've been trained to not think about our common, normalized
farming realities here. That applies not just to meat & dairy but to the mass
production & harvest of fruits and vegetables as well.

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JasonCEC
Just as a PSA - I develop food and beverage products (both premium and mass
market) with Analytical Flavor Systems (a predictive platform for flavor);

no one in the industry - not a single person who knows anything about coffee -
would recommend civet coffee. Its a marketing gimmick of the worst kind. Its
destructive, a-historical, and does not result in a better product.

Any random "3rd wave" coffee is better, and if you want a fruity-fermented
profile, just look for a "natural process" or "honey processed" coffee.

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hnews_account_1
Do you have suggestions for premium coffee brands for regular coffee drinkers
like myself? The most I've had is Starbucks and I find it pretty good, but I'm
not averse to kicking it up a notch.

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teilo
Oh, wow. There are _so_ many brands out there, from small boutique roasting
shops to medium-sized commercial roasters who produce vastly superior product
to Starbucks. Nearly any roaster who roasts to order will be better than
Starbucks.

I use a local one called Specialty Java because they're decent, less
expensive, and the shipping is a low courier fee, or even free for will-call.
I can recommend them if you are not used to the 3rd-wave ultra-light roasts.
Most of their stuff is medium roast, and nothing is burnt like the majority of
Starbucks beans.

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crankylinuxuser
I think the disturbing thing here is, being in Indiana, I can't do a damn
thing about it. I've never had the chance to buy it, would not have bought it
to begin with, and not even seen it on the market.

But this article makes me feel bad and emotionally drains me, and there's not
a damn thing I can do about it.

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pxue
i wish HN have more ways for me to tag and hide posts. i get the "intellectual
curiosity" part of off-topic posts but we got reddit for that.

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SuoDuanDao
any subreddits you'd recommend where intelligent conversation can be found?

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zentiggr
Any one that's new enough to have less than [insert critical mass number here,
varies by topic] comments.

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ainiriand
Wait until they discover how milk is made...

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winternett
From mother Almonds of course.

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moltar
I tried a cup in Bali, and couldn’t tell any difference. It’s just coffee. I
think it’s just a gimmick with a fake value add.

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elhudy
To be fair low-acidity coffee might not taste much different but it shouldn't
wreck your stomach like most coffee does.

With that being said I believe you can just grow low-acidity strains.

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1MachineElf
Compared to tap water, sea water is alkaline. Some folks prefer to add a pinch
of salt to their coffee. Choosing sea salt in this context results in less
acidic coffee.

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auiya
Adding salt to water does not result in any chemical reactions, so the salt
will not alter the pH level of water or the resulting coffee brew in any way.
Most people just add milk/cream to alter the pH to neutralize acidity, but if
you want to keep it black you need to use baking soda, not salt. Just a pinch,
you don't need much.

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1MachineElf
Perhaps you are thinking of "salt" as just NaCl. Sea Salt contains more
minerals than just that - Magnesium being a prominent one. Magnesium is
alkaline, and therefore, coffee with Sea Salt added is more alkaline than just
regular coffee.

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fideloper
Clickbait 2016 title, it's almost vintage. (This, of course, is/was not at all
a secret, even 4 years ago)

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VladimirIvanov
There's a paywall. Could only see the first sentence about Civet feces

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test1235
"[...] as civet coffee has gained popularity, and with Indonesia growing as a
tourist destination where visitors want to see and interact with wildlife,
more wild civets are being confined to cages on coffee plantations. In part,
this is for coffee production, but it’s also so money can be made from civet-
ogling tourists.

Civet dung, studded with partially digested coffee beans, used to be collected
from the wild. Increasingly, civets are instead kept in cramped, unsanitary
cages on coffee plantations."

That's the gist of it

