Coffee, tea or ... poop?

I work in the coffee and tea business. And in the course of my stay at the wonderful company I work for, I have learned more than I ever thought there was to know about coffee and tea.

For example.

Have any of you heard of Kopi Luwak? It’s pretty much regular coffee, but its infamy lies in how the beans are processed. In a nutshell, there’s this animal (the luwak) in Sumatra that likes to eat very ripe coffee berries. Seeds and all. (It’s the seeds of the coffee berry that we call the “bean.”) The seeds pass through the luwak’s digestive tract and are excreted out. Ever-resourceful hunter/gatherers then scope out the discarded seeds, wash, roast, grind, and infuse them with hot water. Sounds enticing? You sicko. Read more here. Surprisingly – or maybe not – this coffee is reported to cost $300 per pound.

How anyone could make the intellectual leap from picking out coffee beans out of animal shit and then making a drink out of them is just ... yuck. Does not compute.

Anyhoo, Kopi Luwak inspired me to write a limerick about it. Like to hear it, here it go:

Ode to Kopi Luwak
Now why does this coffee taste odd?
What magic lies in these small pods?
Some say its great flavor
Is something they savor
Strong and earthy, reminiscent of sod

“The beans are not mixed with the dung.”
This notion is simply far flung
I don’t care what you say
It comes out the same way
None of this will be touching my tongue