$99 cuppa coffee

baby bird fallen from its nest – foto by Smith

While reading a time-killer semi-literate thriller, I came across a coffee mention so absurd I immediately thought it must be true – coffee selling for $600 a pound, the beans harvested from the shit of tree weasels. So I Googled it and found this on Wikipedia:

“Kopi Luwak 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) and other related civet populations. 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 and in East Timor. Local lore in Vietnam has given the name “weasel coffee” to civet coffee, in what is considered the closest recognizable translation to English.

“Civets consume the red coffee cherries, when available, containing the fruit and seed, and they tend to pick the ripest and sweetest fruit. Thus there is a natural selection for the ripest coffee beans. The inner bean of the berry is not digested, but a unique combination of 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. Light roasting is considered particularly desirable in coffees that do not exhibit bitterness, and the most pronounced characteristic of Kopi Luwak is a marked reduction in bitterness.

“Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $100 and $600 USD per pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and the United States by weight, and served in coffeehouses in Southeast Asia by the cup. Supplies are limited; only 1,000 pounds (450 kg) at most make it into the world market each year.

“One small cafe, the Heritage Tea Rooms, in the hills outside Townsville in Queensland, Australia, has Kopi Luwak coffee on the menu at A$50.00 (=US$33.00) per cup, selling approximately four cups a week. In April 2008, the brasserie of Peter Jones department store in London’s Sloane Square started selling a blend of Kopi Luwak peanut and Blue Mountain called Caffe Raro for £50 (=US$99.00) a cup.”

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

baby bird fallen from its nest – foto by Smith