coffee!

[AdamH]

Blane - I understand. That Cafe Olimpico and it's damned delicious milky coffee drinks!

[Freak By Night]

I tried the Kopi Luwak this morning. It had a good roasted flavour and was strong. However I can't believe people would pay $120/lb. or more for this stuff. It wasn't that special.

Though to be fair, the sample I tried was instant - just add boiling water. I imagine a proper coffee shop would prepare it espresso style and it would have been better.

[Ms Zimmy]

Hmmm...why would they make instant cat crap coffee?

[phishtaper]

for odd folk in a rush?

more importantly however ... FBN, have you suddenly discovered cravings for balls of string or litter boxes?

[Freak By Night]

Ha! No one litter box in my house is enough.

My co-worker who gave me this coffee, didn't realize it was instant. He also has some beans (which he bought for $50 for 200g) and is going to give me some tomorrow, so I can have a "proper" cup of cat-shit coffee. I'll let you guys know how it goes!

[phorbesie]

how does that work exactly? do they feed beans to the cats and the resulting bean-shit gets ground?

[Ms Zimmy]

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 defecated by local weasels. In actuality the "weasel" is just the local version of the Asian Palm Civet.

A civet

From wiki

[phishtaper]

cool, thanks bradm

[bradm]

There's just one thing she omitted...

(Aside from that, I thought it was a great answer, really. :thumbup: )

Aloha,

Brad

Edited May 26, 2008 by Guest
Change "forgot" to "omitted"; I didn't mean she was copying my posting style.

[Ms.Huxtable]

Can anyone tell me what the perceived benefit is from the beans being passed through the digestive system of animals?

[ollie]

Can anyone tell me what the perceived benefit is from the beans being passed through the digestive system of animals?

Status!

[phishtaper]

Can anyone tell me what the perceived benefit is from the beans being passed through the digestive system of animals?

Status!

cant believe you even had to ask, Huxiebabe!

[Ms Zimmy]

A hypothesis to justify this coffee's reputation proposes that the beans are of superior quality before they are even ingested. At any given point during a harvest, some coffee berries are not quite- or over-ripe, while others are just right. The palm civet evolved as an omnivore that naturally eats fruit and passes undigested material as a natural link to disperse seeds in a forest ecosystem. Where coffee plants have been introduced into their habitat, civets only forage on the most ripe berries, digest the fleshy outer layer, and later excrete the seeds eventually used for human consumption. Thus, when the fruit is at its peak, the seeds (or beans) within are equally so, with the expectation that this will come through in the taste of a freshly-brewed cup. As this may be true for the beans derived from wild-collected civet feces, farm raised civets are likely fed beans of varying quality and ripeness, so one would expect the taste of farm-raised beans to be less.

I'm going to start a civet farm, those little dudes are cute and I will make millions.

Anyone know how to grown coffee berries?

Anyone want a job sifting through civet $shit?

[phishtaper]

And so begins the epic journey of 110,000

Phishheads for that perfect cup of organic,

fair trade, free range, catsh!t coffee.