The best tasting coffee in the world actually comes from the poop of an animal called a weasel or civet. It is also one of the most expensive types of coffee.
They eat coffee berries for their fruit pulp. They defecate them in clumps, the coffee beans keeping their shape as the civets don't chew them.
These clumps of poop are then dried for three days in the sun and thoroughly cleaned before they are roasted.
Weasel coffee or Luwak coffee is made in parts of Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines but it was first discovered in Indonesia. Back in the 19th century the farmers weren't allowed to pick coffee beans but they still wanted to have some and when they saw that civets' poop has lots of coffee beans in them, they started using those. That's when they discovered it actually tastes much better than regular coffee. The secret of its taste is that during the digestion process in their stomach an enzyme breaks down the beans' proteins. As a result the coffee looses its bitterness and gets an altered flavour.
Coffee plantations:
A split coffee bean:
In the past they collected the poop of wild civets but now they have civet farms. We visited one of those on our travels through Vietnam.
We even had a cup of weasel coffee there, and it tasted amazing.
However 'regular' Vietnamese coffee tastes just as awesome, because it is roasted in butter oil, sometimes with added sugar. It has a caramel-ish taste to it and I just couldn't stop drinking it! They have a unique serving method for their coffee. A Phin filter is placed on top of the cup for the coffee to slowly drip through. They add sweet condensed milk to it or just drink it black, and you can choose to have it hot or iced.
A local café in Vietnam:
This is how we had ours:
Have you ever tried Luwak coffee or Vietnamese coffee? How did you like it?
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