Yuuuhhh!

The infamous Kopi Luwak coffee.

Thanks to Donny Van Zandt (any relation to Silvio Dante?) for the link.

So in a nutshell, Kopi Luwak is coffee ('rare' and expensive) that has passed through a civet, an feline animal indigenous to Indonesia, where this sh*t comes from. That's right, if you didn't know, 'Kopi Luwak' is recovered from the civet's poo.

"Normal" coffee does go through a fermentation process, which lasts a period of hours. What this civet's digestive tract adds is a unique sort of fermentation.

Now as strangely glamorous or intriguing as this all sounds, the fact is that without knowing how this all started, Kopi Luwak 'farms' have popped up in Indonesia, with caged animals (in horrible conditions) being force-fed coffee beans all day. Those opportunists are looking at feeding coffee cherries to other animals as well. Yuh.

So the moral of the story is, "Friends don't let friends drink poop."

*note: got an email from the animalcoffee.com folks, saying that they don't, nor would ever engage in animal 'farm' techniques. They get their luwak coffee the old fashioned way: they pick it up off the ground. Hoping for a sample to taste and report back with soon!