Trung Nguyên its "Weasel" sub-brand. Due to the complicated production process, only 40–50 kg of "Weasel" coffee are produced annually. It is much more expensive than any of the company's other products: a 1 kg bag of "Weasel" coffee costs $3,000, six times higher than Indonesian kopi luwak. Dang has claimed, however, that Trung Nguyên's Vietnamese version is of higher quality, since production depends on wild or free range civets who choose the best coffee beans themselves, instead of being caged and force-fed. Currently, Trung Nguyen owns the system of four factories: Along with producing and processing coffee beans, Trung Nguyên operates
Kopi Luwak "Washington Post" reviewed kopi luwak available to US consumers and concluded "It tasted just like...Folgers. Stale. Lifeless. Petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water. I couldn't finish it." Some critics claim more generally that kopi luwak is simply bad coffee, purchased for novelty rather than taste. Massimo Marcone, who performed extensive chemical tests on the beans, was unable to conclude if anything about their properties made them superior for purposes of making coffee. He employed several professional coffee tasters (called "cuppers") in a blind taste test. While the cuppers were able to distinguish the kopi luwak as distinct from the