Can you guess who produces the best coffee in the world? If Brazil is your answer you are absolutely wrong. It comes from the CAT’s butt! (meow)! You got it right, Cats produce the best and the most expensive coffee in the world!
Kopi Luwak as the coffee is called, is hand extracted (yuck!) from a forest animal’s droppings. The Marsupial luwak, also called the Civet cats(they are actually not cats) are found on the Indonesian Islands and dwell on trees.
Probably, the only coffee loving animals, they hunt for the ripest and the reddest of coffee cherries among the coffee trees for their food. As they don’t remove the seeds before eating the cherries, its stomach acids and enzymes digest the beans’ cherry-like covering and ferment the beans themselves, before they’re excreted.
God knows, how someone even thought of extracting these seeds and roasting the beans to make it an exotic brew! Anyway, it’s believed that the fermentation process in the animal’s system could give Kopi Luwak coffee a unique, rich flavor with hints of caramel or chocolate.
All this is fine; but is it safe to consume this? Though I can’t ingest the thought of sipping such a coffee, Massimo Marcone, a food scientist from University of Guelph , after examining the chemical and physical properties of Kopi Luwak coffee, found it actually has lower bacterial counts than regular coffee! The acids and enzymes in the stomach of the Luwak kill many of the bacteria that otherwise thrive on the coffee beans.
This gourmet coffee beans sell for around $75 per quarter pound. Japanese (who else!) are the biggest consumers of the ‘Cat Poo Coffee’ followed by the Australians.
Are you game for a purr-fect cup of coffee? Not me!!!
