 Mister Hung Pham Ngoc has been kind enough to forward Mikkel a detailed explanation of how the coffee used in the Beer Geek Brunch, is made.
We bring here his entire explanation, and links to images of the coffee production.
Enjoy
Just a few information about the Chon Coffee: 1) Etymology: In Vietnamese, Chon means Fox, but actually it refers to all local palm civet branches. Chon coffee, in full name, is "cà phê cứt chồn", or weasel's feces coffee. 2) History and Coffee characteristics: Coffee was brought into Vietnam in the end of 19th century by the French colonists. The fist plantation was set up in the highland of Vietnam in 1907. The Highland is a mountainous area, covered with red bazan soil from 600m-800m above the sea level. Due to a relatively low altitude, the Arabica specy here does not yeild high quality, its taste profile is usually overwhelmed with sourness. However, the soil here, together with a high number of sun hours per year, is perfect for the robusta. And it is the best robusta in the world. Robusta, as often perceived by most Arabica lovers, is of a high acidity content, and should be used as filler for esprosso mix. While in reality, Vietnam highland's robusta is completely different. It is of very low acidity, very high cafein content, and it's strong. Dependent upon different areas in the highland, its taste profile varies, from fruity in the Ban Me Thuot's bell to a little bit acrid in Duc Co. 3) The Chon legend:
In the first haft of 20 century, the coffee plantations in the highland were still surrounded by jungles, where the wild civets found a new delicious food: the ripe robusta's berries. Every year, in months when the robusta berries ripe, they oftens come out of jungles in night time for this sort of specialty. With plenty of berries available, they just go for the best ones, ripe, red, without any defect. When they eat the berries, they do not swallow them all. They spit out the thin skin right away, chewing the flesh of the berries and swallowing the hard shell with the beans inside and still with some flesh around. Within the night, they released the feces out with the beans intact in the pergarimo shell. In the morning, farmers went around collecting the feces, drying them in the sun. And from these feces, they made the Chon Cafe, the Legendary Coffee that anyone had ever tasted it would remember forever. 4) The Death of a Legend:
As the coffee cultivation boomed, more people came to this land. And as the more people came, the further jungles are pushed away from the coffee plantations, and the more civets are hunted down for food. Especially after the Reunion day (30/4/1975), the Government moved millions of people from North provinces to the Highland. And most of the enormous highland was year by year covered with coffee farms, while civets is put in the status of near extinction. The legend was brutally killed. 5) The Legend Revived:
In recent years, the idea of bringing wild civets in cages for the Caphe Chon legend to be revived is a hot topic for talk among Highland farmers. However, at last a few farmers did try to make it come true. One farmer, our supplier, is the first person who is successful in the idea. However, the most difficult part of the work is not about how to learn the civets' behaviors or bring them up in cages, but about how to make it legal. It took him 3 years with hundreds of papers and double that number of signatures and numerous flights to Hanoi and back to provincial authorities for a license. His farm is now the only legal one in the highland with 36 wild civets in the cages. All the civets are of small Asian Civet, weighing about 3 kgs. These small civets give the best feces, while there is another popular civet specy with white flecks on body, weighing about 5-8 kgs, giving lower quality feces for their big teeth often crack up the pergarimo shell. Each year, the civets are fed with coffee berries for 3 months. Contrary to the common belief that the civets have to be left hunger in this time of the year for them to eat the berry, in reality they has got to be fed with beef in the daytime so as they are in good health. Only when they are in good health, they are in need of complementary nutritions in the coffee berries. Another false belief is the domestic civets have no choice of coffee berries like the wilds do, they are quite prissy and hard to please. They only eat the freshly picked, red, riped berries, those without a bruise, yet in every batch of berries of the same look from the same coffee farm, they just consume about 10-15%. There are farms that the civets do not eat a berry at all. And among arabica and robusta, they always prefer robusta. It might be explained this way: the robusta is more fruitful than arabica, or the arabica's high flavors don't smell good to them. 6) The Legend in your Cup: The feces are ready, but from the feces to the coffee is another matter. In preparation for this specialty, I've experimented many way of roasting and making, with the purpose of maintaining the flavor profile and complementing the Chon's coffee characteristics. After some failed attempts, I at last decided to resort to the old traditional way of making it: roasting it plain, then mixing it with chicken fat after processing it with a specially brewed herb wine. The herb wine is hard to buy, the fat has got to take from a particular small chiken specy. But the Legend just deserves all that. And now, it comes into your cup.
Hope you will appreciate it. Cheers,
Hung Pham Ngoc Link to pics here
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