Lightly roasted crap at $50 a cup… sounds like heaven eh??
On some Indonesian Islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi lives a cat like creature called the luwak. Apparantly this is some sort of civet that loves the taste of the ripest juciest fruit of the coffee plant.
Sadly for the cat… maybe… it can’t digest the actual bean… so it passes through and out.
Somehow… somewhere… sometime… someone decided it would be fun to extract the beans from some of this crap, wash and roast them… and use them to make coffee… hmmm… it seems the luwak’s digestive processes break down proteins in the bean which would otherwise cause bitterness leaving a smooth taste reminiscent of chocolate.
And can you imagine the curious customer anxious to get value for money… “I say barista… are you sure this coffee is *pure* shite??” Brings a whole new dimension to the phrase “Wake up to the smell of coffee”!
Anyway, the result is Luwak Coffe and it sells here for $1250 per kilo… personally I’m not sure I’d be willing to pay $50 a cup for something that dropped out of an animals bum..
… eating eggs is as close I want to get thanks. 😀
The Eclectic Interweb 