A Taiwanese research team has found a way to mimic the flavor of civet coffee — a beverage traditionally produced from the beans of digested coffee cherries found in the scat of wild common palm civets in Indonesia.
The passage of the beans through the civets’ intestines is said to give the coffee a unique flavor which is highly prized by connoisseurs, and the resulting product sells for gourmet prices.
National Pingtung University of Technology and Science vice dean Hsieh Pao-chuan (謝寶全), who headed the team, said that due to the questionable authenticity of much of the civet coffee on the market, and the poor quality of beans produced by caged civets, beans that can be proven to have come from wild civets are the most highly prized.
On a field trip to Indonesia with a team of scientists from the university’s department of food science, Hsieh said he had managed to extract 136 strains of bacteria from the intestines of civets, and had isolated 16 which had particular effects on Mandheling coffee beans. The researchers monitored the changes with experiments using gas chromatography.
After seven years of experimentation, Hsieh and his team managed to perfect a process for treating beans that produced “civet coffee” from the laboratory.
According to Hsieh, the lab-produced civet coffee has a strong aroma of fruit and flowers, and tastes of caramel, cinnamon and chocolate, adding that the coffee had a fruit-like hint of acidity in its aftertaste.
Fermentation of the lab-produced civet coffee is entirely managed by the lab and takes between 16 and 24 hours, Hsieh said, adding that compared with the original, their product is more sanitary and has only half the caffeine content.
The laboratory is currently pricing its “civet coffee” at NT$4,000 per 0.45kg, Hsieh said, adding that if the lab found ways to mass-produce it the price would drop.
Coffee shop owners said that at the price the team is currently asking, each cup of coffee would cost about NT$100, making the beverage a luxury product.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS