Sure, I’d read the Times story from 2010, which, between the Baby Ruthlike logs in the main photo and the dire warning of fake civet coffees on the market, was enough to make me pine for Maxwell House. Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to try my first cup of coffee prepared with beans fermented in a civet cat’s digestive tract — beans widely considered the most expensive in the world. Is this the coffee drinker’s equivalent of an anal fixation?
My wife, Carrie, paid dearly for this measly two-ounce packet of civet coffee, or kopi luwak, from Sumatra, which was then shipped to the United Kingdom for roasting. It was eventually sent to the United States in this vacuum-sealed package in which the beans were conveniently pre-ground because, you know, caffeine snobs really love coffee that has lost all of its essential oils.
Civet Coffee from ThinkGeek.com: pre-ground beans, ideal for the perfect cup of stale coffee. (Tim Carman/The Washington Post)
The results?
I was dumbfounded. I had not tasted something like this since college, back when each cup of coffee was still a thrill, not a tool to stimulate the senses in the morning.
It tasted just like...Folgers. Stale. Lifeless. Petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water. I couldn’t finish it.
A few days later, I upgraded my system to the Clever Coffee Dripper and prepared a cup, steeped precisely four minutes, from the ground civet beans. Same result: a cup of coffee as flavorless as wet cardboard.
These beans cannot be the stuff that civet coffee enthusiasts rave about. I will have to find another source for the beans and report back again. Any suggestions on trustworthy civet coffee sellers?
