civet coffee

There’s two things that stand out for me about getting older:

1) I get heavier.

2) I fall asleep in front of the TV on weekend afternoons.

I haven’t got round to properly addressing the first issue, but the second is under control. As soon as I feel the eyelids begin to sag, it’s off to the the kitchen to brew up an instant extra-strength Douwe Egberts latte in the microwave. Ten minutes later, with caffeine coursing through my twitching veins, I’m alert and able to concentrate more fully on the television, deliriously wondering why Granada Men and Motors is only on late at night.

Today was slightly different. Instead of the usual freeze-dried sweepings, I opt for Civet Coffee, described on the pack as “the rarest coffee in existance”, of which “only 500KGS are found each year”, produced “after fermentation in the civet’s digestive tract”.

a nice picture of a civet

Yes, you heard me correctly, and the way it works is this: The Common Palm Civet Cat (actually part of the Mongoose family, and feared by many to be a possible source of the SARS virus) prowls the coffee plantations of Sumatra at night eating only the finest, ripest cherries. The stones – which eventually become coffee beans – are then collected by workers, who comb through the cat droppings to find them. In case this still isn’t clear, I’ve produced a flow chart to document the process.

civet poo flowchart

So what’s it like, this coffee? As you can see by the picture below, I first test its aroma. It’s possible that it has a slightly nutty tang, but I’m no expert, really. If I’m honest, it just smells like normal coffee.

waking up and smelling the coffee

It looks just like coffee too, all brown and powdery. I fire up the French Press and brew up a sample, and once in a mug, well, it tastes like coffee. Nice coffee, sure, but at the price this stuff sells for you’d want a least of hint of civet digestive tract to linger; a soupçon of gastric juice or a small trace of expelled mammal scuzz. But there’s none of that. Just coffee.

coffee mug by flying nun records of new zealand

After three mugs I’m feeling a little wired, but I’m no closer to understanding why this stuff is so expensive. Does scarcity automatically equate with price? If I ran some beans through a domestic cat, I’m pretty sure that (even at its most efficient) it wouldn’t produce anything like half a tonne of stock annually. Could I charge accordingly?

Civet Coffee is available from the Algerian Coffee Stores on Old Compton Street, in the heart of London’s popular homosexual district, or online from the manufacturer, who also produce a nice line in regurgitated weasel coffee as well as some tea that’s been hand-picked by specially trained monkeys. It costs £22.95 for 57 grams.

47 Comments so far
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Thanks Frase. That’s saved me a fortune. You little Nathan Barley you.

For a fraction of the price I will eat regular coffee beans, poo them into a small box and post them to you. How’s that?

Good job on the image – it makes things very clear

newman

Dear Fraser,

I am selling a new line in food products, cow cakes, 100% organic, pre-digested grass formed into handy ‘cakes’ by the cows digestive system, available fresh or dried (depending on the weather). How many would you like to order ?

P.S. Coming soon, sheep ‘raisins’ and rabbit ‘sultanas’.

Good god man, it’s your own fault for hanging around all those arty-farty food shops!

Get yourself down to Sainsbury’s straightaway, where you can find crap tasting coffee (pun intended) for a fraction of the price you are paying.

You can score similar stuff in Vietnam, although I believe a different member of the weasel family does the business end of things:

http://www.firebox.com/?dir=firebox&action=product&pid=616

It’s rough and strong.

I have insider information that at a formative age Fraser was experienced in the procuring and passing on of ‘Cow Cakes’. Rhubarb in New Zealand has never forgotten his input……

Just wondering about your first illustration: if it was a civet cast yesterday, what is it today?

Civit coffee indeed…

If I can find the right butcher, it’ll be dinner.

Osgrow Butchers help yourself to a juicy portion of Camel, Impala or Wildebeest.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. You like poo coffee.

That is poositively pooposterous. Got a double banger there with pooposterous! Seriously though, I would have to at least have the chance to win $50k on fear factor or something to drink Civet Dung, or, well, lemme think, ANY DUNG! Yeah I’ll go with that as a general statement.

Litter Box Coffee?

I’m totally releaved at Blogjam’s having saved me from ever having to try Civet Coffee in some moment of insatiable curiosity…

…The way it works is this: The Common Palm Civet Cat (actually part of the Mongoose family, and feared by many to …

Sir,

you big lucy!

putting your best indy mug out
to advertise coffee…

bailterspace are coming round to have a word…

Rev Dr

Your civet picture isn’t the civet that eats coffee. it eats chickens and mice. The civet that eats coffee is smaller and has a scent that made into perfume. And yes the beans that come out of its ass definitly smells better. I should know I collect them and sell them as “Coffee Alamid”. You can say the taste is definitely out-rageous.

o.k., i have to chime in. i work all over the world in coffee villages and have always felt that this cat shit thing was , well, bullshit (hmm, a new product? larger quantities would bring down the price so forget it).

i think that what is really going on is that child labor creeps have locked up children or other small mammals in back rooms of Nike contracted factories, feed them coffee beans and then make them search the resultant fecal matter for the predigested beans.

by the way, the level of digestion relates directly to the level of acidity in coffee, so keeping the kids up late at night watching benny hill reruns may cause higher acidity, making it taste more like bad kenyan or vietnamese robusta (read: maxwell house).

i actually own a coffee roasting company and we provide lots of coffee for enemas, our slogan? “Your Ends Justify Our Beans” hope the cat people don’t steal it from me, given the paucity of intellectual property right enforcement in the countries that claim to process the poo roast.

the coffee mugs depicting fear factor has not been shown yet to us very much.So please do inform us about the future prospects of knowig such products in detail

i was rtecently given some of this coffee and have been saving it for a ‘special occassion’
dunno if i’ll bother now…

maybe that was a fake coffe you just bought. Here in the Philippines there’s a similar kind, the “Alamid coffee”, same mongoose-like animal poops it out. I’ve tasted it, and it was really good. strong.

I have a brand-new product for sale. Chocolate covered civet coffee beans. For added flavour, I omitted the cleaning of the beans. Its so much cheaper to produce when I don’t have to pay those Indonesian kids the three pennies a day.
Oh don’t worry ’bout the price, I only charge $100 a pound. I’m not like those ‘other’ greedy palm civet sweatshops.
order online at http://www.poopcivet.com
Have a nice day!

You purchased the wrong style, the ground bean, never buy the ground bean. One must allways buy the whole bean. Grinding the beans releases the oils and aromatics that should be imparted to the water not left to stale. “…all brown and powdery” when fresh it is Black and never “powdery” allways keep it chunky. As to “a small trace of expelled mammal scuzz” the beans are cleaned thoroughly before packing. Not to be invasive but how did you brew the coffee, if a percolator was involved you runed the coffee, a french press is the beast wayto go.

And when first extracted aluminum was more valuable than gold. In fact, when the Washington Monument was finished, an aluminum pyramid about nine inches high was placed atop the monument using this most expensive precious metal to honor the father of the country. Now this metal is nada, zip, trivail in cost.
The point being that paucity dictates the price.

Hey guys I have 2 sacks of unprocessed alamid coffee. If you are willing to buy please give me a call 09207497251

Earl Brian Estreta,
Just a word of warning, the “Alamid Coffee” brand is a registered trademark. We are not happy when we see other persons post in the net selling “unprocessed alamid coffee”. For you information we have a seven(7) step protocol to guarantee authenticity of our product just to make sure the buyers get what they are paying for. Its not nice you peddling around something that you may not understand at all.

I would never drink cat poo

This old Texas Red Neck has had alligators and poisonus snakes for pets, jumped out of good airplanes, fought a kangaroo and lost, rode a goat, a pig and a bull but have never had cat poo coffee. but I grind and brew my coffee fresh every day so to all of you naa sayers who are afraid to try something new I say please send yours to me.
Thanks
Hondo

[...] I have found an excellent diagram created on Blogjam, which explains the process thoroughly. [...]

Monkeypicked tea doesn’t really mean it was picked by monkeys. It’s usually a mistranslation for monkey-fist tea, which has it’s hand-picked leaves folded into small shapes by expert tea pickers. Monkey-fist is the most common shape (others are small tea cups and even various origami shapes like swans). That mistranslation sounded so cool that the name stuck in many English speaking countries and a myth of specially trained monkey sprouted up around the name. Now even tea companies are buying into that myth with great commercial success.

Though I wouldn’t try civet coffee due to price, you can’t say it’s not anything special especially when you say you’re not a coffee ‘expert’ whatever that means. The same would go to someone who doesn’t really care for wine tasting and drinks down an expensive bottle saying it wasn’t that special.

baron’s errors:
1. the bean is not digested by the cat.only the cherry rind, which has disappeared upon expulsion of the beans.
2. the coffee bean aril still remains, preventing contamination of the beans by the cat poop (sic), but the cat’s stomach acids remove the bitter aftertaste from the bean you usually get from the more common coffee
3. it is correct the beans should only be cleaned, roasted and ground shortly before brewing. else the peculiar chocolatey flavor is lost.
4. it has been used by our mountain people for a long time, eversince they planted coffee, and they always enjoyed it, and no adverse effects either

gud pm, i come from the southern part of the philippines, i just want to tell you that in our province we do have lots of civet coffee. but the people there dont mind it. if you are interested in buying this, in order to increase your volume , i am milling to asist you. thank you.

I am from a coatal town in the Philippines. People in my town consider the civet cats as pest and they have an appetite for it. Well it taste good. Our town too produced coffee in large volume. I could as well assist you if you are interested in the coffee from the droppings of animal.

how about setting up a civet farm and harvesting those beans from their arses?

Hi,

Interested kami sa civet coffee. Can you please email us at chrizialyn_02@yahoo.com with your phone number so we can contact you.

Cheers.
Ann

can you give me more detail as to how you can assist me in finding civet coffee supply. Thank you.

[...] is an excellent diagram created on Blogjam, which explains the process [...]

So I’m wondering, should when should this little click of pooh drinkers give credit to the late film
“The Bucket List”, for actually making this stuff known?

Blow hards!

we available the natural sumatra civet cofee,good product,gooooood price
seen;coffeecivet@yahoo

I suppose after you freshly grind the Kopi Luwak beans, you could fire up your espresso machine and make a nice Cat-Poo-Chino. Nothing seems strange to me anymore. I sell Bull Penises for peoples pets to devour.

It’s a little known fact that civet, the animal, is actually named after the coffee. The coffee was named for the production method – start with crap, and sieve it.

Laugh all you want, it’s a very good cup of coffee. You don’t know jack.

Where can I buy some of this coffee? I’ve heard of monkey poo coffee also but can’t find anywhere to buy it.

btw, i tried the luwak coffee while in Indonesia. I was thinking of a much milder coffee since it has gone through the stomach….but i was wrong. In fact it is strong and creamy.

Gave me such a caffeine rush, that i got a headache.

I was drinking a robusta luwak beans. And the coffee house is called Warung Tinggi Coffee which is in a small lane. Someone drove me there, so i do not know much details.

If anyone is interested of our hardly gathered civet coffee droppings, anybody can have a feel and smeel of it by ordering a raw beans that still stuck as it a real feces of a civet cat, even for only just a little of it for free. Provided, you will shoulder its shipping expenses ’til it got to where you are.

+639089295868 .. ANYBODY CAN CONTACT ME AT THIS NUMBER FOR ORDERS . HOPING TO HAVE BUSINESS WITH YOU SOON . THANK YOU AND MORE POWER TO ALL

Hi, If you want to know all about Kopi Luwak or want to try it please visit http://www.realkopiluwak.com There you can find a description of the Luwak animal, the process to obtain the Kopi Luwak, How to make a perfect cup of coffe, warnings about buying kopi luwak, description of this rare coffee, pics and video. You can also buy kopi luwak online. Thanks

Hey i was able to get civet dropping in an farm in India and I had to brew the powder at my place. The coffee was different and was very smooth.. My experience has been posted in my blog

http://chandanv.blogspot.com/2009/06/civet-coffee-aka-kopi-luwak.html

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