Bizarre Brews and Crazy Coffee!

July 18, 2018

As people have with beer, as people have with everything, they do with coffee. Exclusive, strange and just goddam weird is what we’ll call some of the coffee’s that we’ve found on the internet. They may not all be beans but they’re definitely all meant for drinking, and for the good humour so you can laugh and contort your face along with us we thought we’d share them with you. What do baristas think about in their downtime? We think some of these square pegs may fit into that round hole.

Not The World’s Most Expensive Coffee (but maybe the world most expensive poop)

We’d heard of this one but never actually known the truth and facts about it until we wrote this (it was actually a conversation about this coffee that inspired us to scour the internet to find everything you will read in the next 5 minutes).

It’s called Kopi Luwak and comes from Indonesia. What makes these beans so special is that they’ve taken a journey through the inside of the palm civet, or civet cat. The cat eats the beans and its stomach digests the coffee cherries and removes the pulp. At some point during this process some form of fermentation happens with the beans and this gives them their unique flavour (supposedly). The beans drop out of the rear end of the civet after about 24 hours and then are collected, washed (thank goodness), dried, pounded and roasted. After all this, you can buy 1lb for upward of AUD$400!

The worlds most expensive coffee seems to be an un-pooped bean from Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama.

Monsoon Beans

Back in the day, beans from the Malabar region of India were shipped by sailboat to the rest of the world. These unroasted beans were subject to a long and repetitive wetting and drying process over the course of the journey all the way to Europe, and it was found that this process gave these beans a spicy flavour; something that has garnered them world recognition. However once sail power was replaced by steam power this journey took less than half the time and this wetting and drying process stopped happening, killing off all the flavour added to the beans. Luckily some of the bean farmers worked out what was happening and they have now started leaving sacks of beans outside during the monsoon season in order to replicate this flavour.

Kaffeost - Coffee A La Fromage

This Swedish tradition involves dipping the cheese of cows, goats or reindeer (they’re not restrictive with your choices) into your coffee. Or, if you prefer, you can drink the coffee with the cheese resting in the bottom of it. We suggest black coffee for this one.

Weaselled Coffee

You may have guessed it, another coffee involving an animal means another ingested bean. The weasels only choose the sweetest and ripest beans, so it’s no surprise that the farmers use them as an indicator for when to begin picking the coffee. Interestingly enough they’re still very choosey even when the farmers have picked the beans for them.

Same as with the coffee from the civet cat, the beans pass through the digestive system of the animal where the fruit of the cherry is digested and the beans go through some unique fermentation process which enhances the quality of the coffee. The poop is (again) washed, dried and roasted before being ground into coffee.

Coffee with Sea Salt

We eat dark bitter chocolate infused with sea salt so why not put it in dark bitter coffees? This is exactly what one of the largest coffee chains in Taiwan began doing almost 10 years ago. Surprisingly it became a hit immediately! Salt serves the same purpose in coffee as it does in any other food or beverage: it enhances flavour and, in coffee, it helps to cover up weak or over-roasted coffee. Adding salt to coffee is not only done in Taiwan but is also common practice in Siberia, Turkey, Hungary and Scandinavian countries.

Egg Coffee

Another quite crazy coffee from Vietnam. Here you beat egg yolk with sugar and condensed milk until the mixture is thick and creamy. Place this is the glass and then pour your black coffee through it, allowing it to filter through and sink to the bottom. The result? A silky coffee flavoured custard. This, if any of them, is the one we would most like to try.