Monday, January 23, 2006

How about a very special cup of coffee?

After reading this you'll think twice if a friend asks you to taste his just bought gourmet coffee.

On the island of Sumatra, a small animal eats the coffee fruits and the seeds (beans) pass through its digestive system and are excreted. The beans are collected from the jungle and processed as normal coffee. The taste is supposedly much richer than typical coffee. You read correctly. This small creature, which has the scientific name of Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, loves coffee fruits, but its digestive system cannot handle them, so they are expelled together with the rests of his previous meals. While the coffee beans are rolling inside the Paradoxurus they go through a natural fermentation process that gives them an "earthy flavor with a musty tone that is heavy bodied".
Like the common house cat, the civet habitually tends to empty its bowels in the same spot every day. The island natives already knowing were to find the little creature's feces, run their fingers though them to find the little hidden treasures, which are then whashed (thank God!), shipped, packaged, sticked with a heavy price tag (in Milano they sell for €450/Kg), bought, ground, prepared, savoured, and expelled bak to nature.

The real thing is called 'Kopi Luwak'. Be attentive for knock offs, you may never know what creature's digestive system the coffee bean has gone through.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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