I think i’d pass on this coffee

Aussies go crazy for cat poo coffee

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3:00PM
Thursday May 17, 2007

Kopi Luwak is made from coffee beans excreted by native civet cats. File photo / Reuters

CANBERRA – Cafe-crazy Australians in the last decade have embraced
coffee in all its forms, but they’ve saved the most expensive — and
excremental — for last.

Kopi Luwak, made in neighboring
Indonesia from coffee beans excreted by native civet cats, is reputedly
the world’s rarest and most expensive coffee, painstakingly extracted
by hand from the animals’ forest droppings.

When roasted, the
resulting beans sell for around US$1,000 a kilogram ($1365/kg) and brew
into a earthy, syrupy, coffee acknowledged by connoisseurs as one of
the world’s finest.

Despite the closeness of the coffee’s home on
the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi, Australia’s first civet cat
brew has only just gone on sale in Queensland state, selling for AUS$50
a cup at the Heritage Tea Rooms, west of Townsville.

“Everyone calls it cat poo coffee,” cafe owner Michelle Sharpe told the Australian Associated Press.

“People who willingly pay the US$50 are uplifted by the thrill of the experience,” her husband Allan Sharpe said.

Civet cats, considered a delicacy in China, are linked to the SARS
respiratory virus that emerged in the south of that country in 2002 and
spread globally.

Kopi Luwak joins a booming coffee scene in
Australia, which has seen consumption grow from 300 grams per person in
1939, to 2.4 kilograms a head, or 1.26 billion cups a year worth AUS$3
billion ($3.38 billion) in sales.

Around a dozen people a month try out the exotic brew, with reactions so far 99 per cent favourable.

“It’s
as good as my private life is bad. This is the kind of coffee you
renounce your religion and sell your child for,” one taster quoted by
AAP said.

– REUTERS