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World's most expensive coffee at £50 a cup comes to British stores...and it's made from cats' droppingsIt might not be to everyone's taste - and that's not just because at £50 a cup it's the most expensive coffee in the world. The secret behind the special blend about to go on sale at an upmarket department store is that it is made from cats' droppings. While such an ingredient might leave many spluttering into their cups, Peter Jones thinks it is on to a winner. For the rest of April, it is serving espressos, Americanos and lattes made from the droppings in its in-store coffee shop in Sloane Square, central London. And for those who want the ultimate talking point over the after-dinner mints, the coffee beans are also on sale at £50 for 100 grams. The store, part of the John Lewis partnership, has bought 60 packets of the exclusive blend of Jamaican Blue Mountain and the Kupi Luwak bean. The bean is rare, with less than 450lb harvested each year. The beans are extracted from the droppings of the palm civet, a cross between a cat and a monkey which lives in Indonesia. The civets eat the soft coffee cherries, digest the fruit pulp and excrete the beans on the forest floor, because they cannot digest the beans. Plantation workers then collect the beans, which are sold as Luwak coffee. The civets are said to pick the best and ripest coffee berries. It is also thought that their gastric juices may add to the flavour.
Java weasel makes fine poopacino By DAVE BARRY Published Sunday, March 27, 2005This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Nov. 9, 1997.I have exciting news for anybody who would like to pay a lot of money for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal’s digestive tract. And you just know there are plenty of people who would. Specialty coffees are very popular these days, attracting millions of consumers, every single one of whom is standing in line ahead of me whenever I go to the coffee place at the airport to grab a quick cup on my way to catch a plane.These consumers are always ordering mutant beverages with names like "mocha-almond-honey-vinaigrette lattespressacino," beverages that must be made one at a time via a lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean, three quarts of dairy products and what appears to be a small nuclear reactor.Meanwhile, back in the line, there is growing impatience among those of us who just want a plain old cup of coffee so that our brains will start working and we can remember what our full names are and why we are catching an airplane. We want to strike the lattespressacino people with our carry-on baggage and scream, "GET OUT OF OUR WAY, YOU TREND GEEKS, AND LET US HAVE OUR COFFEE!" But of course we couldn’t do anything that active until we’ve had our coffee.... The invitation says this coffee is named for the luwak, a "member of the weasel family" that lives on the island of Java and eats coffee berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a "natural fermentation" occurs and the berry seeds - the coffee beans - come out of the luwak intact. The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to coffee connoisseurs. The invitation states: "We wish to pass along this once in a lifetime opportunity to taste such a rarity."Or, as Bo Bishop put it: "They’re selling processed weasel doodoo for $300 a pound."...
