Brewmaster

I'm a big fan of coffee. Really, who isn't? It seems like loving it is a prerequisite to adulthood. And yes, while tea will always hold a special place in my heart for its comforting steaminess and multitude of flavours, sometimes you just need a cuppa java to sock you in the gut and jolt your eyelids up. Dale Cooper knows what I'm talking about.

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This weekend, I tried something that I really couldn't think about as I sipped. It was totally delicious, but disturbing in premise. Yes, it was a steaming cup of black coffee, but it was a special cup, one that had travelled halfway across the world before ending up my parents' Bodum.

It was Vietnamese coffee, which, if you've never tried it, I can't recommend highly enough. Deep black and richly flavoured, this satisfying mug tastes like a meal. It's often served in Vietnamese restaurants with condensed milk, and is so utterly fantastic this way. But the coffee I tried was no mere Vietnamese coffee. My parents recently travelled to Vietnam and went on a mission to bring these special beans back home.

It was a little thing called weasel coffee (actually, kopi luwak, or civet coffee). WHICH IS COFFEE THAT HAS BEEN EATEN AND SHIT OUT BY A WEASEL. Normally, I'd try to be a bit more eloquent about such a thing, but holy shit. I drank something that was shit out by a weasel. I'm still getting over it.

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They eat the beans and because their bodies can't entirely digest them, they poop them out whole. And then farmers collect them, dry them, roast them, and we brew them. Apparently the weasels' stomach enzymes break down the proteins in the beans, giving them less of a bitter taste than regular coffee has. These are the most expensive coffee beans in the world, priced between $100 and $600 USD per pound. Seriously.

It tasted pretty good, although I think I'll probably stick to my regular Balzac's lattes on a daily basis. I don't know if  could handle drinking weaselly coffee regularly. I think David Lynch would be proud of me though.

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