Strange Coffee: Weasel Puke and Civet Poop

There are some strange ways to produce coffee and these two are perhaps the strangest.

Coffee beans that have been puked up by a weasel or beans that have been pooped out by a civet.

Weasel Puke Coffee

In Vietnam there is a weasel that eats coffee berries, but then pukes up the undigested seeds(beans). The locals then collect these regurgitated beans and roast them. The stomach acid apparently removes the bitter properties of the bean.

Now this strange coffee is available for you in the USA. Drinkers say that it really has a unique flavor somewhat like chocolate. So if you’re adventurous or know of someone who is, why not give this a try and write in and tell us about it.

However, you could always go with the cheaper option of regurgitating your own beans and roasting them yourself, perhaps your pet cat could help out?

Civet Poop Coffee

Where as weasel puke coffee only make it to the weasel’s stomach, civet poop coffee makes it all the way through the civet, which is a cat-like mammal in the Philippines.

These Asian palm civets are free to roam the shaded coffee plantation as long as they like, eating as many coffee cherries as they like. Workers than collect there droppings for the extracted seeds.

I’m sure at some stage they are cleaned and processed but still, really?

The civet’s digestive tract breaks down the coffee to produce a smooth tasting coffee.

Caffeine Levels?

No doubt some of the caffeine would be extracted during the digestive process, but civet poop coffee is made from robusta coffee beans which are much higher in caffeine than what most people are accustomed to with arabica beans.

Weasel puke coffee looks to be a blend of beans, so determining a caffeine amount would be tricky.

In any event, both varieties are expensive so I can’t see most people turning to either as their regular daily cup of joe.

It looks like you can find both on Amazon.

Weasel here and Civet here.

Written by Ted Kallmyer, last updated on July 17, 2014