
Proof
That it is not just BMW who can pile it up then charge a huge price for it
London's Peter Jones department store is offering discerning customers the chance to stump £50 a pop to taste Caffé Raro - an exotic blend of Jamaican Blue Mountain and Kupi Luwak beans, the latter having passed through the digestive tract of jungle cats. According to the Telegraph, Kupi Luwak beans are eaten by Indonesian …
This stuff has been on sale for ages. You can get 57g (2oz) for 22.95 here:
http://www.firebox.com/product/1077
£50 per cup sounds a bit much though. I don't know how many cups you get from 2oz but I'd say it's probably more than half!
Incidentally, if that's too much for you you can have the slightly cheaper one here:
http://www.firebox.com/product/616
where your 2oz has been swallowed and then vomited by weasels, all for the bargain price of £15.95.
I think I'll stick to Kenco.
I'm sure that this coffee must be exceptionally stimulating:
Weary Punter: "Espresso please!"
Barrista Extraordinaire : "Certainly Sir"
Punter: "Thank you, that was reasonably good. How much was that?"
Barrista Extraordinaire : "Fifty pounds, sir"
Punter: <ZZZZZING!>
Punter: "Wow, THAT woke me up! Thank you very much!"
"The fact the coffee includes a bean ingested by Indonesian civet cats gives them an experience they couldn't get anywhere else in the world."
*A* bean? So the rest is just Blue Mountain (an overrated coffee these days) and they still want £50 a cup? If they can make it work, you have to admire the cheek. The question is, what's the next market opportunity?
- Foie Gras made from geese force-fed Luwak shit?
- Vodka distilled in zero-G on the ISS?
- Beer made from exotic cat piss? Oh, sorry, Budweiser are already doing that.
that coffee IS shit! Long live tea!
While we're at it, what cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-assed, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spineless, worm-headed sack of monkey shit thought it was a good idea to have coffee sweets?
On the vileness charts they're second only to dogmess.
<pedantry>
- they are civet-cats
- renowned for their musk-like (some say blood-like) smell
- which is produced by an anal gland
</pedantry>
Makes you feel much better doesn't it.
For me it doesn't matter, I think all coffee smells like something which is rotten and burnt.
Thank you, and the hat, please.
I've had the weasel coffee - over-priced and over-rated.
Interestingly I was on a coffee plantation in Kerala, India last year and they were thinking of going into this market as it's the only was they could make enough profit on the crop. A neighbouring plantation had already started up production using....domestic cats (hundreds of them).
Seems to me that the Cats Protection League is missing out on a killing here
@ AC
Since when has Budweiser been brewed with exotic cat piss? Alley cat piss maybe, but never exotic!
And while I love coffee, I'd really rather not have anything that's previosly been through the digestive tract of an animal, or anything/one else for that matter, especially not at £50 a go. Hell, I feel ripped off paying £2-£3 at Costa!
If I was the sort of person with £50 to burn I'd be inclined to give it a try. Cheaper than really expensive wine, after all. And if it turned out to be nothing to write home about you could at least theatrically spray it over the staff and declare "This coffee tastes like cat crap!"
That is, shortly before the manager came over, shook your hand and said "Congratulations sir, you are the 1,000th person to make that joke!" and gave you your complementary T-shirt.
As Sarah B points out, there are other disgusting culinary experiences... though it does strike me as the richer people get, the more out of their way they go to make something elaborately disgusting.
Cheap: "Let's cook and eat this meat"
Middle market: "Let's cook this meat with some obscure sauce and arrange it in an elaborate pattern to disguise the fact that you could swallow almost the entire portion whole"
Upper class: "Let's force-feed this goose over a lifetime of torture then eat it with some fish eggs that we only like because we nearly drove the fish extinct, washing it down with some not-a-cat diarrhoea"
It works with sex as well.
Cheap: "Let's have sex"
Middle market: "Let's put on some expensive underwear, then take it off and have sex"
Upper class: "Let's pay for five girls to dress up as Nazis and Jews and hit each other while shouting in a language the others can't understand"
You've been able to get bags of this stuff for about 25 quid from Selfridges for ages from the Edible Foods concession stand.
Bought some for a girl I'd just started dating, hoping I'd gauged her sense of humour/adventurousness right... luckily I had, and we're still together.
It's delicious - as another poster said, the nicest coffee I'd ever had, but in no way worth 100x the price of normal coffee.
"They will relish the chance to buy such a rare coffee. After all, only 200kg of Kupi Luwak coffee is produced each year."
"You can decide for yourselves just how unique the Caffé Raro experience is at the Peter Jones Espresso Bar, or buy a 100g pack of the blend for later consumption - also for £50."
So what are they gonna do after the first two customers? ;)
If you've seen any of Budweiser's commercials, you'd know how proud they are of the Pure Rocky Mountain water that they make their ahhh....faux-beer beverage.. from.
An interesting fact is that the source of that water is a small river named Clear Creek. The section of this river directly above where Budweiser takes in the water for their brewery is renowned amongst white-water rafters and is heavily floated during the season. The take-out is directly upriver from the Budweiser water intlet and I've been told by several professional river guides that it is traditional - to the point of being a ritual - for Everyone to take a piss in the river at the take-out. Sort of a salute to Budweiser. During the peak of the season, that could be many dozens of people a day. Everyone does it.
So yes, especially in the summer, Budweiser IS made from piss, but it's rafter-piss not cat. So ironically, Bud's made from *recycled* micro-brews and THC.
Enjoy!
Joe
Same way you get them to eat worming pills, I expect. Mix it up in its food. Swear when it refuses to eat its food and meows at you for an hour. Hold out. Jump for joy when it finally clears the bowl. Swear again when you see that they've managed to eat around the pill/beans. Grab it and attempt to force it down the little bastard's throat. Swear again. Apply salve to cuts. Put on heavy overcoat and gloves, grab it and finally succeed in getting the beans down. Shout "yeah, go on then" as the cat sprints out the door. Worry yourself sick when it doesn't come back in for over a day, imagining it starving under a hedge, possibly run over. A few days later, use the very best swearwords you've been saving up during the previous few steps as it saunters back in, fat as a pig having been fed by the neighbours. Rinse (the claw marks that still throb) and repeat.
PS Johnny FireBlade, you need a bit more math. You can get 2,000 100-*gram* packs out of a 200-*kilogram* batch.
The animal in question is a Palm Civet which is a Vivverid, not a true cat. Sometimes called a toddy cat because of its habit of getting drunk on fermented palm juice.
Secretions from the civets anal glands *are* used in perfumery. Even mentioned in Shakespeare's "as you like it" (Touchstone)
"civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat."
Seems Will didn't know it wasn't a real cat, either......
I'm not really sure what to make of it. Kupi Luwak sounds too much like 'Kopi Lawak', translating from Malay into "Joke Coffee". Given that the Malay language was derived from Indonesian (and even today is still a bit similar to each other that speakers of either language can still understand the other to a certain extent), I won't be surprised if this was a Indonesian AFD joke that made it over to Europe by means of slow boat.
To all the "Who'd pay £50...?" posters:
"The promotion runs until the end of the month, and >>>> all proceeds will be donated to Macmillan Cancer Support. <<<<."
It's a charity do. Read the frickin' article. It doesn';t NORMALLY cost that much.
@ Joseph Boren:
Are you sure you aren't thinking of Coors, rather than Budweiser? Not that Bud has anything to brag about, but Coors is the one that always used to brag about their Rocky Mountain water. (Pity they never added any beer-like components to the water... OTOH, it sounds like the rafters were at least adding the color for them!)
@ Sarah Bee:
I can take or leave caviar, but a nice bit of liver and onions, a kidney pie, or a nice tender beef-tongue sandwich (washed down with a Cel-Ray soda)... Yum! (Why, yes; my dietary habits *DO* make some people blanch...)
Never tried the cat-poo coffee, but I miss the "Monsooned Malabar" (Left out on the back porch to age during the monsoon months) that I used to be able to get here. Now THAT was a tasty coffee. Haven't seen it locally in several years...
@Kenny Swan and everyone else who disses this just because it's weird.
Yes, it's weird, but actual food scientists have studied these "slightly used" beans and found that the partial digestion they receive changes the chemical makeup resulting in an actual better cup of coffee. Also, there's something about them that renders them more sterile than normal coffee beans.
See: http://www.uoguelph.ca/news/archives/002065.html for an example. Yes, they guy drank it and appreciated it.
psh - who cares what it "is". Starfish are not actually fish (or stars for that matter), but that doesn't stop people calling them starfish. The real defining factors should be: a)will it eat your houseplants or b)leave small, dead rodents for you to find as a sign of "affection". The fact that these things go around eating someones coffee plants is a good sign that they are on their way to meeting qualification "a"
People train pigs to hunt truffles, train the cats to hunt the beens, avoiding the trip through the digestive tract.
Ahh, the image of cats on a leash make me think of a Hale and Pace sketch:
NSFW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAQGlxS6UBo it’s two minutes in.
Paris because she would be dumb enough to buy this crap.
While I was reading about this crap coffee, I remembered about equally nasty food. Thanks for reminding me about special dishes in Mexico:
- Bull's balls. I think they call them "criadillas" or something misleading over here. Always ask!
- Cow stomach. You'll find them as "pancita" (belly).
- Intestines, usually in taco form. You'll know that as "tripa".
- Grasshoppers (Chapulines). Served fried, like french fries. I do not like to eat insects.
But paying more to eat cat shit coffee seems even more revolting than any of the things I just mentioned. Then again, yoghurt is actually "bacteria shit", as well as all fermentation by-products!
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Yay!
1. Feed used coffee grounds to our two kitties, who produce a lot more than 200kg of shit in a given year.
2. Get the hell out for a few hours while they ricochet around, buzzed to the eyeballs on caffeine.
3. Harvest the results from the litter pan.
4. Grind the brown gold up into a coarse powder.
5. Find some credulous rich people.
6. ????
7. PROFIT!
Of course I first have to solve the problem of stopping our dog from eating the cat poo out of the litter pans.
@ Sarah Bee
Dare I ask how you would know they make hair treatments out of bull sperm?
(Don't lie you didnt find it on Wiki :) )
@ Spleen: Worth a try
ROFL That was an awesome analogy for this :) oddly it makes perfect sense too.
@ Spleen: Re: DeFex
Oh dear god I think I just pissed myself. I have a cat and you explain the little bastard perfectly. Though he doesnt need pills to do that he will just attack me for no reason. Damn cats are out to get me.
Speaking of by-products from waste, I have this great warm beer for sale now whos taking?
Also to whoever made the comment about Bud (too lazy to scroll back up looking for it through the tears) All I Have to say to that is well done my friend well done. Since I cant make it out there can I donate to the cause?
Betty's in Harrogate (http://www.bettysandtaylors.co.uk/) were selling this years ago (about a decade IIRC) - pretty much the same blend - for a tenner a cup.
Harrogate's north of Watford (for those who think £50 a throw is 'value'), but still full of itself at times, otherwise I'm sure they'd have charged more if they thought customers could stomach it - and afford the bill too...
Come on, grilled criadillas in a tortilla with a bit of olive oil and pepper are just great.
If you think "pancita" is disgusting, you should try "frito" (a soup made of pork ears, cheeks, tongue, kidneys, liver and just about anything people don't usually eat)
I don't give a cat's ass about where the food comes from as long as it tastes good.