I’m a YUGE fan of coffee. I don’t know that I’m fancy enough to be considered an official unofficial “coffee connoisseur,” but I do love a good bean. I drink probably way entirely too much coffee – probably around 2-4 cups a day. But, hey – I’m a busy man. Gotta keep this hoss ass engine running. Anyway, my bad habits are not the point of this post. The point is that thanks to one company in Vietnam, we have an enticing new flavor to strive for!
During the raid, authorities discovered tons of finished coffee as well as raw materials used in production, including 35 kilograms of black powder taken from used D batteries and a bucket of blackish water weighing around ten kilograms.
According to Loan, her workshop bought rejected coffee beans from large facilities at a cheap price, ground and mixed them with other materials including dirt and rock dust, then used the black powder found inside D batteries to ‘dye’ the mixture to produce finished products.
Loan confessed to having run the facility for years and had sold over three tons of ‘coffee’ to the market since the beginning of 2018.
Daaaaaaaaamn – what an interesting take on craft coffee. Who would’ve thought to add some batteries, rejected coffee beans, mix it all up in some fucking dirt water, and serve it to the masses?! I mean, that’s the sort of creativity that just regular folks like me don’t think about.
That’s the sort of thing that has built empires like Starbuck’s, Peet’s, and Tim Horton’s. This is just the Vietnamese version of that.
I’d be willing to bet this dirty coffee has a tremendously Earthy texture though. Probably an incredibly rich brew. This may have to be a SoBros content trip. Get the gang together and go drink the battery coffee in Vietnam….sounds like an excellent thing to do with my life.
According to Assoc. Prof. Tran Hong Con, a chemistry expert from the Vietnam National University – Hanoi, the ‘black powder’ found inside D batteries is actually manganese dioxide that makes up the batteries’ core.
Manganese dioxide is a highly oxidant compound, and as little as 0.5 milligrams of it mixed in a liter of water is enough to cause manganese poisoning in humans, Con said.
Well, you know…absinthe made people go blind, and it didn’t stop people from drinking it! Gotta risk it to get the biscuit y’know?!? Look what absinthe did for Edgar Allan Poe! Maybe that’s my claim to fame – just drink some battery coffee and boom….I’m the Edgar Allan Poe of Nashville lifestyle/sports blogs.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD and #BeBetter. “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Alabama Crimson Tide football, the WWE, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
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