Pre-ingested Coffee
How do you like your coffee; black, sweet, contenantal-style or previously ingested?
The answer, it would seem, is obvious. And yet, I put it to you, that it may depend on who, or what, has done the ingesting and, not to put too fine a point on it, the associated egesting.
It came up over lunch the other day, that the lads (as the four post-doctoral researchers who occupy the downstairs office of inequity are commonly known) had bought some coffee. That they had paid eighty euro or so for it, and that they had bought it over the internet, were unusual factors which piqued our curiosity. Was it coffee which had previously belonged to that renowned jokester Saddam Heusein? Did it have flecks of gold running through it as part of some Eastern Luxury? Was 'internet coffee' actually code for the collectors edition of the Burning Crusade?
No. This coffee fetched this heady price, as the beans in question had already been eaten. By a civet.
Well, probably by several civets. 800g of coffee beans is a lot of work for a single civet.
Civet cats are small moongoose-esque mammals, that don't look entirely unlike cats (hence the name) and enjoy as part of their diets, amongst other things, the coffee 'berry'. The bean within sometimes survive being eaten, and it's trek through the civets digestive system, and arrives out of the civet arguably better for the experience. The various enzymes and acids that make up the digestion of the civet work their magic upon the bean, stripping away much of the bitter flavour associated with coffee. The beans can then be rounded up, cleaned off, and sold to post-doctoral researchers for a substantial price. These researchers will then brew it up once a day for a few weeks, referring to it as 'ass-coffee' and allowing any curious passers by to sample a small ammount, if they should wish.
From personal experience I can now report it makes a strong, smooth coffee, very pleasant to drink, and not at all bitter.
The answer, it would seem, is obvious. And yet, I put it to you, that it may depend on who, or what, has done the ingesting and, not to put too fine a point on it, the associated egesting.
It came up over lunch the other day, that the lads (as the four post-doctoral researchers who occupy the downstairs office of inequity are commonly known) had bought some coffee. That they had paid eighty euro or so for it, and that they had bought it over the internet, were unusual factors which piqued our curiosity. Was it coffee which had previously belonged to that renowned jokester Saddam Heusein? Did it have flecks of gold running through it as part of some Eastern Luxury? Was 'internet coffee' actually code for the collectors edition of the Burning Crusade?
No. This coffee fetched this heady price, as the beans in question had already been eaten. By a civet.
Well, probably by several civets. 800g of coffee beans is a lot of work for a single civet.
Civet cats are small moongoose-esque mammals, that don't look entirely unlike cats (hence the name) and enjoy as part of their diets, amongst other things, the coffee 'berry'. The bean within sometimes survive being eaten, and it's trek through the civets digestive system, and arrives out of the civet arguably better for the experience. The various enzymes and acids that make up the digestion of the civet work their magic upon the bean, stripping away much of the bitter flavour associated with coffee. The beans can then be rounded up, cleaned off, and sold to post-doctoral researchers for a substantial price. These researchers will then brew it up once a day for a few weeks, referring to it as 'ass-coffee' and allowing any curious passers by to sample a small ammount, if they should wish.
From personal experience I can now report it makes a strong, smooth coffee, very pleasant to drink, and not at all bitter.