The Most Expensive Coffee In The World Tastes Like Crap...

Well well well, little that I know that one of the most luxurious coffee that we fancy to drink every morning (at least for the rich and famous, not us middle and low-income mere mortals) came from what turned out to be from some animals...let's just say..droppings. I was watching this movie on HBO, 'The Bucket List' (starring star performers Jack Nicholson & Morgan Freeman), which by the way is a great great movie to watch. If you had the chance, turn in to HBO. In that movie, the character played by Nicholson is a rich ass business mogul who fancies, well a certain type of coffee; the type they called 'Kopi Luwak'. According to the movie, it's the most expensive coffee in the world, and in the end of the movie, he has been told of the origins of the coffee. Check out the movie quote, courtesy of IMDB:

[Carter hands Edward an article about Kopi Luwak, Edward's favorite coffee.]

Carter Chambers: Read it.

Edward Cole: [reading] Kopi Luwak is the world's most expensive coffee. Though for some, it falls under the category of "too good to be true." In the Sumatran village, where the beans are grown, lives a breed of wild tree cat. These cats eat the beans, digest them and then... defecate.
[pauses]

Edward Cole: The villagers then collect and process the stools. It is the combination of the beans and the gastric juices of the tree cat that give Kopi Luwak...
[Carter starts laughing]

Edward Cole: ... its unique flavor... and aroma. You're shitting me!

Carter Chambers: [laughing] Cats beat me to it!
[Carter and Edward both laugh hysterically.]


I was laughing my ass off, hearing that quote. And today, I started digging out 'Kopi Luwak' in Wikipedia. Check this out.

'Kopi Luwak (pronounced [ˈkopi ˈluwak]) or Civet coffee is coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The civets eat the berries, but the beans inside pass through their system undigested. This process takes place on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, in the Philippines (where the product is called Kape Alamid) and in East Timor (locally called kafé-laku). Vietnam has a similar type of coffee, called weasel coffee, which is made from coffee berries which have been regurgitated by local weasels. In actuality the "weasel" is just the local version of the Asian Palm Civet.

Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee, and luwak is a local name of the Asian Palm Civet. The raw, red coffee berries are part of its normal diet, along with insects, small mammals, small reptiles, eggs and nestlings of birds, and other fruit. The inner bean of the berry is not digested, but it has been proposed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee's flavor by breaking down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste. The beans are defecated, still covered in some inner layers of the berry. The beans are washed, and given only a light roast so as to not destroy the complex flavors that develop through the process. Some sources claim that the beans may be regurgitated instead of defecated.

In early days, the beans would be collected in the wild from a "latrine," or a specific place where the civet would defecate as a means to mark its territory, and these latrines would be a predictable place for local gatherers to find the beans. More commonly today, captured civets are fed raw berries, the feces produced are then processed and the coffee beans offered for sale.

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $120 and $600 per pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and the United States. It is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though supplies are limited; only 1,000 pounds (450 kg) at most make it into the world market each year...'

Hmm, never thought cat's shit taste so good and cost so much, hahahaha...Well, let's just leave the story there. I don't have the balls to try it, now that I know where it came from...Till the next post, happy sipping you favourite cup!