November 21, 2001
12:58 PM   Subscribe

Unable to believe this story on the Drudge Report, I did some searching and discovered that Kopi Luwak is not only the rarest and most expensive coffee in the world, but also possesses the greatest potential for comical logos.
posted by mr_crash_davis (24 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Knowing how often Drudge changes his front page, I've mirrored the original link here.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:04 PM on November 21, 2001


Yeah, yeah, I know, the beans are pooped out by a small animai — I still really want to try this coffee. Think about it, this little marsupial only eats the best, ripest coffee berries, this is natural selection at its best.

Anybody who's squeemish about drinking something that came out the butt of a Paradoxurus should consider that coffee is roasted at temperatures exceeding 400°F, which should kill off any funkyness left over after the beans are washed and processed.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the holy grail of coffee — I can get past the whole number 2 thing.
posted by bicyclingfool at 1:20 PM on November 21, 2001


reminds me of a book I saw in Barnes & Noble the other day: Java POOP.
posted by gazingus at 1:21 PM on November 21, 2001


$43/quarter pound at the coffee critic.
posted by jpoulos at 1:27 PM on November 21, 2001


Mmmmmm ... poop coffee.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:27 PM on November 21, 2001


Almost seems like something out of "the Magic Christian": How far will trendy yuppies go to get with the New Thing? Will they drink coffee that was shat out of a marsupial? You bet they will, if it costs enough!
posted by Ty Webb at 1:28 PM on November 21, 2001


I say eliminate the middleman and just eat pure marsupial poo.
posted by Kafkaesque at 1:32 PM on November 21, 2001


I'm gonna feed my dog some coffee beans...
posted by Ty Webb at 1:44 PM on November 21, 2001


According to the The Straight Dope, this adorable little creature's anal glands are in high demand, and not just by coffee afficionados.

I also found this email on a discussion list, containing the opinion of someone brave enough to try this shit... I mean stuff.

I paid $37.50 for two ounces of beans. I was expecting the beans to look exotic, considering where they'd been, but they looked like regular coffee beans.
In fact, for a moment I was afraid that they were just regular beans, and that I was being ripped off. Then I thought: What kind of world is this when you worry that people might be ripping you off by selling you coffee that was NOT pooped out by a weasel. So anyway, I ground the beans up and brewed the coffee and drank some.

You know how sometimes, when you're really skeptical about something, but then you finally try it, you discover that it's really good, way better than you would have thought possible? This is not the case with Luwak coffee.

Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like somebody washed a dead cat in it.


'Nuff said.
posted by dlewis at 1:52 PM on November 21, 2001


The enzymes in the animals' stomachs, though, appear to add something unique to the coffee's flavor through fermentation.

In Bolivia, one of the most popular, traditional drinks is chicha. It's made by chewing ground flour until it's a paste, then spitting the resulting goo into a big urn. This corn/saliva mixture then ferments into a truly horrific alcoholic concoction.

Sometimes I'd visit families in the extremely rural area where I worked, and find them making Chicha. This usually consisted of a 6-12 member family -- kids, grandparents, aunts, what have you -- standing around in the courtyard and masticating methodically.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 1:55 PM on November 21, 2001


Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like somebody washed a dead cat in it.

What a shame. They totally missed the obvious simile.
posted by shauna at 1:56 PM on November 21, 2001


Here, we can complete the thought:

Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like it was shat out of a marsupial.
posted by Ty Webb at 2:02 PM on November 21, 2001


"Labrador? You mean we're smoking dog shit?"
-Cheech and Chong's Up IN Smoke
posted by MaddCutty at 2:06 PM on November 21, 2001


The next time I get coffee in my office's Break Room, I'm going to take one sip of it, spit it out, and loudly exclaim "Jesus Christ! This tastes like a tree-dwelling marsupial ate the ripest and reddest coffee cherries, and then somebody made coffee out of the beans, which were excreted fairly intact and still wrapped in layers of the cherries' mucilage!"
posted by Shadowkeeper at 2:14 PM on November 21, 2001


Apparently it was Dave Barry who chose a dead cat over marsupial poop.
posted by sudama at 2:18 PM on November 21, 2001


If you don't want to drink it, you could just wear the t-shirt. (Scroll down)
posted by Carol Anne at 2:24 PM on November 21, 2001


That's too expensive. I can get coffee that tastes like shit here at work.
posted by hellinskira at 4:15 PM on November 21, 2001


I could have sworn I saw some show about this coffee. Maybe old skool Daily Show. They said it tasted like shit.
posted by MarkO at 4:47 PM on November 21, 2001


For me this is definitely one of those 'rather not know' things, but I always wonder how someone got the idea to try making this in the first place.
posted by holycola at 6:40 PM on November 21, 2001


You should have seen what they tried BEFORE this.

"Hey Ted, let's try hamsters next!"

"OK, but you get to try it this time. The Water Buffalo damn near killed me.""
posted by Kafkaesque at 7:06 PM on November 21, 2001


kopi luwak is a clean, well-balanced coffee.

but it still doesn't hold a candle to the kona bean, imo.

i'd take a kona or a peaberry over it anyday. too expensive too boot.
posted by basmati at 9:30 AM on November 22, 2001


Hmph. Tarrazu from Costa Rica for me.
posted by Vidiot at 1:09 PM on November 24, 2001


$5/cup == "the most expensive coffee in the world"?

Obviously, they've never been to $tarbucks.
posted by Witold at 5:00 PM on November 25, 2001


Actually I was always partial to a dark roasted Guatemala Antigua or Mexico Pluma Altura.
posted by Kafkaesque at 10:50 AM on November 26, 2001


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