YUNLIN, Taiwan (Reuters Life!) - Coffee connoisseurs are going ape for a rare brew that Taiwanese farmers are producing with the help of monkeys.
Formosan rock monkeys have long been a scourge to coffee farmers in Taiwan’s mountains because they eat the ripe berries and spit out the seeds.
But now, the farmers are collecting these half-chewed seeds and roasting them to produce a coffee that is being brewed all over the island.
“The monkeys pick the reddest fruits to eat, and spit out the seeds. They cannot swallow them because that may cause indigestion,” said Liao Ching-tung, a coffee farmer for 30 years who has recently taken up roasting the regurgitated seeds.
“For other crops it may cause serious loss, but if they eat coffee in this area, then it saves me the trouble of peeling the fruits,” he added.
Liao says the discarded seeds yield a sweeter coffee with a vanilla-like scent, which sells for about $56 a pound (450 grams).
For coffee lovers like Wang Chih-ming, price is no object.
“I like coffee it’s got a nice aftertaste, that’s really good,” said Wang.
Coffee beans excreted by native civet cats in Indonesia and painstakingly extracted by hand from the animals’ forest droppings reputedly produce the world’s rarest and most expensive coffee, which sells for around $1,000 a kg ($450 a pound)
(Reporting by Christine Lu; editing by Miral Fahmy and Doug Young)
Hardly surprising news from Caribou Coffee (which has seen its shares decline in value by over 60%). the CE, Michael Coles (60) will be leaving the company soon
The new CEO has not yet been announced, but the comapany has let it known that it will be concentrating more on franchises rather than owning its own coffee shops
SUFFIELD - You could say the Rev. David Reed-Brown has become religious about his coffee.
Every Wednesday at exactly 4 p.m., the pastor of the Second Baptist Church walks into his local Dunkin’ Donuts and orders a medium cup of French Vanilla, with milk. For the next hour, he is just another guy in a buttoned up shirt and slacks, lounging in a window seat. No Bible. No pulpit. Just coffee.
Kopi Luwak, made in Indonesia from coffee beans excreted by native civet cats, is allegedly the rarest and most priciest coffee in the world - largely because it’s carefully extracted (by hand!) from civet cat feces.
Roasted beans sell for USD $1,000 a kilogram and produce a drink described as “earthy and syrupy”.
To the Cure Service Group Inc, this seems proof of the saying that some people have more money that sense
The coffee ceremony is performed all over Ethiopia and is an essential and beautiful element of the culture. If invited into a home to take part, it is impolite to retire until one has consumed at least three cups of the sweetened concoction. Conducted by a young girl in traditional costume, the ceremonial apparatus is placed on a bed of long grass. The green beans are roasted over charcoal. The smell mixes with the incense that burns throughout the ordeal. The beans are then ground with a pestle and mortar, then brewed in a black pot with a narrow spout. The coffee is strained through a fine sieve several times.
The first brew from the grounds is drunk by the older members of the entourage, the second by the younger adults, and the third straining by the children. The sweet coffee is drunk from handle-less cups and accompanied by a traditional snack food, such as popcorn.