Posts from — October 2007

A wonderful article in Mental Floss describes the role coffee played in the Civil War, from the ways soldiers prepared their beans to the outrageous price Southerners paid for coffee ($60 per lb.!). One thing I couldn’t help but find charming–if anything in war can truly be called charming–was how the frontline Northern and Southern troops would occasionally call brief cease-fires in order to exchange Northern coffee for Southern tobacco.

Coffee also provided one of the only true, reliable food staples on the road, as the Civil War was rife with corrupted supply chains selling rotten meat and spoiled milk on both sides of the Mason-Dixon. The following isn’t from the Mental Floss article, but for an idea of how bad it could get, here is an excerpt from a letter written by soldier John D. Billings in 1861:

When the bread was moldy or moist, it was thrown away and made good at the next drawing, so that the men were not the losers; but in the case of its being infested with the weevils, they had to stand it as a rule ; but hardtack was not so bad an article of food, even when traversed by insects, as may be supposed. Eaten in the dark, no one could tell the difference between it and hardtack that was untenanted. It was no uncommon occurrence for a man to find the surface of his pot of coffee swimming with weevils, after breaking up hardtack in it, which had come out of the fragments only to drown; but they were easily skimmed off, and left no distinctive flavor behind.

(Read the whole letter, which is both interesting and cringe-inducing, here.)

The Union soldiers had vastly more coffee at their disposal than the Confederates, and despite the corrupted food providers whole bean coffee is hard to fake, so the Yankees always made sure to have plenty on hand when they could. Soldiers would even eat the beans while marching to keep their energy up. So it’s hard not to wonder if the extra pep from coffee gave an edge to the North. Of course I don’t really think it decided the war, but the role of coffee in it is pretty interesting to both historians and coffee lovers.

(Thanks to Mark for sending me the Mental Floss article.)

Hacienda La Esmerelda is making waves this year as the “most expensive coffee“; after years of leading the Best of Panama auctions, the most recent crop commanded an astonishing 160% of last year’s price and tops out at retail around $130/lb.

But it’s not the world’s most expensive coffee.

That honor belongs to Kopi Luwak, an Indonesian coffee so named for the most instrumental aspect of its creation: the luwak, or Asian palm civet, a small mammal of the Vivveridae family. How does something resembling a weasel play a role in making coffee that can command up to $600/lb. at retail? Simple–the luwak eats coffee cherries right off the tree, which ferment as they pass through the luwak’s digestive tract. The partially digested coffee seeds are then removed from the luwak’s droppings, cleaned, and processed. You read that right. This coffee is made from animal poop.

The theory is that the digestive enzymes of the luwak naturally ferment the cherries on their way through, lending the coffee a smooth, winy flavor that can’t be replicated by different growing or roasting methods. Not everyone agrees that this actually works the way luwak farmers says it does, some arguing instead that the coffee is superior because luwaks only eat the ripest coffee cherries, acting as a natural selector of a coffee orchard’s best beans.

What everyone agrees on, however, is that Kopi Luwak is a superior coffee. Only about a thousand pounds of true Kopi Luwak are produced each year and it flies off the shelves almost regardless of price.

About six years ago the coffee shop I roasted for held a tasting event for Kopi Luwak. Tickets for the private tasting went for $60 each and we sold out the tickets the same day they went on sale. At the time I was only just beginning to learn the craft, so my mentor roasted the beans and hosted the event. I am a little ashamed to say that I didn’t actually try the coffee; I was no Anthony Bourdain and the prospect of drinking “poop coffee” struck me as profoundly unappealing. I told myself that if I wanted coffee that tasted like crap I could always go down the street to the Starbucks…

Now of course I wish I had tried it, especially since Kopi Luwak may not hold its prominent place much longer. In light of its commanding such a high price, other countries such as Vietnam are experimenting with ways to replicate it, feeding coffee cherries of substandard quality to caged local versions of the Indonesian civet. Vietnam’s “weasel coffee” doesn’t carry the taste reputation of Kopi Luwak but flooding the market with it may well depress prices on the Indonesian archipelago.

Two weeks ago a coffee roaster from Norway had an idea. Tim Wendleboe was excited about the newest crops which had just come in, and really wanted to get his customers to try them in their “native” state–no cream, no sugar, just the characteristics of the coffees themselves. But how to get the casual coffee drinker, set in his ways with lattes and cappuccinos, to give them a chance? Simple: “Black Week”, a week where Wendleboe’s shop sold only various forms of black coffee. French presses, straight espresso, or drip coffee pulled from the shop’s brand-new (and quite expensive) Clover machine.

The idea was both great and terrifying, from a retail perspective. On one hand it was a chance to turn customers on to new and different products, on the other milk-based drinks comprise the majority of a small shop’s business and Tim risked losing out on a week’s worth of needed revenue. Would customers turn around and walk out upon learning that lattes were off the menu for a while?

Well, according to Tim’s blog it turned out to be a success–including having the shop’s biggest-ever Monday in terms of traffic and sales. I’m glad to hear it; I’m a dedicated black coffee drinker and love that a shop took a chance on turning customers who don’t normally drink coffee straight on to the pleasures of single-origin varietals. Getting the year’s new coffee crops in is always an exciting time for a roaster, but I know that when I received them it was sometimes hard to translate that enthusiasm to the bulk of my regular customers, who take their coffee with steamed milk and flavoring syrups that prevent them from telling the subtle differences. I wouldn’t blame any customer for being frustrated at walking into a shop and not being able to get what they want, but “Black Week” had far more positive feedback then negative and I’d love to see other shops try it out–maybe even just for a day–when bringing in a new varietal or crop shipment.

(Image by Chris Kolbu via Tim Wendelboe’s blog)

PS. Don’t be put off by the non-English on Tim’s blog–simply scroll down for each post’s English translation.