Speaking of coffee, this morning I had my first cup of Kopi Luwak, which is, apparently, the most expensive coffee in the world. Around 500 kilos are produced each year and a standard 250g bag retails at around £20. Some enthusiasts have been known to fork out $50 for a single cup. What makes the coffee unusual, and ridiculously expensive, is its partial fermentation in the gut of the wild Indonesian civet cat or Luwak, which looks not unlike a raccoon.

In its post-cat, pre-retail phase, Kopi Luwak looks like this:

It isn’t entirely clear whether the coffee is indeed superior or just a masterful marketing gimmick, but Massimo Marcone, author of Composition and Properties of Indonesian Palm Civet Coffee and Ethiopian Civet Coffee, offers the following explanation:  

During the night, the civet uses its eyesight and smell to seek out and eat only the ripest coffee cherries. The coffee cherry fruit is completely digested by the Luwak, but the beans are excreted in their faeces. The changes in the beans show that during transit through the civet’s gastro-intestinal track, various digestive biochemicals are actually penetrating the outer coffee cherry and reaching the actual bean surface, where a chemical colour change takes place… The civet beans are lower in total protein, indicating that during digestion, proteins are being broken down and are also leached out of the bean. Since proteins are what make coffee bitter during the roasting process, the lower levels of proteins decrease the bitterness of Kopi Luwak coffee. When coffee cherries are processed through the digestive track, they actually undergo a type of wet processing due to acidification in the stomach and fermentation due to the natural intestinal microflora. Lactic acid bacteria are preferred in wet processing systems. Lactic acid bacteria happen to be major colonizing bacteria in the civet’s digestive track.

So how does it taste? Well, it’s rich and smooth and it does have a distinct hint of caramel. Quite pleasant, in fact, and thankfully without even a whiff of feline anus. Though once this bag has been consumed, I think I’ll revert to the sharper caffeine kick of Taylor’s Hot Lava Java. 

Absinthe lollipops. (h/t, Coudal) // Soap and coffee, together at last. // Nifty cup stacking. // Exercise wheel for dogs. // Behold the Emperor workstation. Because your buttocks deserve no less. // Car of tomorrow not quite what it seems. // Joe Shuster’s filthy secret. // A pencil that squeals. // All together now: “Death to, er…” // Bird sounds. // International pronunciation guide. // Visual dyslexia. (h/t, Things) // Assorted flash preloaders. // Rain-powered umbrella. // Docks de Paris. // Nosferatu. (1922) // The National Museum of Funeral History. // A whole heap of tilt-shift. // World’s largest piñata. // And, via The Thin Man, Valaida Snow gets primitive.

A beverage warning from the BBC: 

People who drink too much coffee could start seeing ghosts or hearing strange voices, UK research has suggested. People who drank more than seven cups of instant coffee a day were three times more likely to hallucinate than those who took just one, a study found. A Durham University team questioned 200 students about their caffeine intake, the journal Personality and Individual Differences reported. However, academics say the findings do not prove a “causal link”.

Some reassurance, then, for patrons of Starbucks.

     

“No, I said decaf… Aaiiieee!”

More intriguing is this:

They also stress that experiencing hallucinations is not a definite sign of mental illness and that about 3% of people regularly hear voices.

(h/t, Dr Westerhaus) 

This is pleasing, in a low-key kind of way.

Filmed in Tokyo in 1998 by Dennis Wheatley and Stefan McClean.

(h/t, Coudal) 

In case of emergency, chocolate pills. // Not-so-angelic sea angel. // Origami kraken. // Onion goggles. // “It’s full of stars.” // The cover art of Scientific American. (h/t, Things) // More art of the title sequence. (h/t, Matthew) // Endings of note. // A compendium of less-than-special effects. // An animated history of the internet. // Auditorium, a game. // Armchair from hell. // Stylish travel bag/doghouse. // Vintage upscale compass. // Triple-axis spirit level. // Impressive tool chest. // Scientist action figures. // London without people. // Vincent Price is The Last Man on Earth. (1964) // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Pal Joey.