Anyone tried these 2 coffees?

[Kiwi Coffee]

A couple of interesting articles in our local paper today about ‘strange and exotic’ coffees.

Monkey Coffee from Taiwan where the local monkeys eat the ripe berries and then spit out the seeds. These seeds are collected, roasted and brewed. Said to yield a sweet coffee with a vanilla-like scent. Cost of about $NZ70 for 450 grams.

Another one for the really adventurous is Civet coffee that sells for about $NZ1300 a kilo. The Indonesian Civet cat eats the berries and excretes the beans. These are painstakingly extracted by hand from the animal’s droppings. Reputedly the world’s rarest and most expensive coffee.

Alun, is this what you are doing in Indonesia?

 

[Alun_evans]

....I am drinking Kopi Luwak and breeding Palm Civets in order to corner the world market!

Seriously, it is indeed an Asian cultural quality that brings some of these weird and wonderful foods to the fore in media around the world. All types of snake, horse, pig and chicken bits (ears, snouts, feet) as well as penis's from a range of animals (known as "sate Torpedo") find their way onto the table here in different parts of Indonesia.

I have obviously tried Kopi Luwak- depending on the Luwaks diet and the origin/coffee species- the coffee ranges from interesting- to dull and fetid. The monkey coffee is also found here, in South/West sumatra. I have tried that and agree with the Taiwanese comments on cupping quality.

Perhaps my favourite though is Kopi Tai Nike, from the giant fruit bats of NTT, in East Indo. Very fruity and puzzlingly fragrant...no kidding!!