Weasel coffee: it’s a shit
Have you heard that weasel coffee is a shit? Well, it literally is.
In my mother tongue Vietnamese, it is Café Chồn or Café Cứt Chồn, which means weasel-dung coffee.
It has another name: civet coffee, and really is a drink specialty that will make consumer to remember forever.
High Prices
I have to say that the authentic Café Chồn is very expensive in comparison with normal types of coffee. I heard that a cup of this cost about 30 US dollars. Prices of the ground coffee range from several hundred up to 3,000 US dollars per kilogram. It’s quite a buck, isn't it?
Where to find?
Though with high price, it’s difficult for consumers to find this specialty. The reason is due to supply scarcity. Makers cannot produce the product in mass volume, as weasel individual number is getting less and less.
Now Trung Nguyen – the leading Vietnamese coffee maker produce a brand named Weasel, at a shocking price of about 3,000 US dollars per kilogram.
Not many Vietnamese coffee “fans”, even inhabitants of the coffee capital Buon Me Thuot (Dak Lak province), have chance to see in person, let alone taste this rare beverage.
Despite of ample money and willingness to buy, you’re hard to buy the Weasel Coffee. Trung Nguyen can only brew 50-60 kilograms a year. So, it is usually not for export, but for purchase orders from VIP customers only.
As what I read in an article on vnexpress.net, weasel coffee is a unique gift to other national heads when they visit Vietnam. For example, in 2010, US President Bill Clinton and later Foreign Minister Hilary Clinton also received this real Vietnamese gift.
Production process
Why do I say from beginning that this special type of coffee is a shit? Just read the way people make it, you’ll see the reason.
So, here’re the main steps:
- Feeding weasels with coffee bean. Naturally, the animal select and eat the best ripen and water-soaked beans.
- Collecting droppings of the civet cats
- Cleaning the dung to have refined beans
- Mix with flavors
- Brewing to make the most expensive coffee in the world.
History and legend
I collect below story from xuvn.com. It explains how weasel coffee was found out. Enjoy reading!
"At the time of the French colonies, the workers at the coffee plantations were severely punished for taking coffee, and anybody caught having coffee beans would be harshly dealt with, to the point where the workers did not dare possess or even drink any coffee.
However, as any coffee drinker knows, coffee is strongly habit forming, and once a coffee drinker, a person would have a hard time to go without.
So one day, the workers told their masters: "We work for you, harvesting all this coffee and we are not even allowed to drink any. A little coffee would make us wake up early and work better for you."
A French planter, thinking about it, saw some logic to their request. So he walked between rows and rows of coffee trees, and just could not decide which part of the coffee beans he would be willing to give to the workers.
The ones on top? No, because they are the first to ripen and would be the early sellers of the season. The ones at the bottom? No, because the shade ripe beans are the very best tasting.
Looking down on the ground, he saw tracks of fox excrements, and in the excrements, were un-digested coffee beans. He showed those to the workers, and told them: "I would not mind that you take these."
Well, if you are a real coffee drinker and are desperate for coffee…. Anyway, the workers picked up the un-digested coffee beans from the excrements of the foxes, washed them well and roasted them to a dark, crisp consistence. Those beans yielded a heavenly good coffee, with unusual aroma and body, with a "je ne sais quoi" (French for "I don't know what") which made it so good that people swear that you would get drunk on more than one cup.
How to buy?
You want to try this drink specialty? Well, try some online sources like firebox.com, weaselcoffees.com
You may also want to buy Trung Nguyen coffee products on Amazon.com.
Have you tasted weasel coffee before? If you have, how do you think? Is it so good? Share your experience and comments here with me and other visitors. We'd love to hear from you.
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