Shame on me for I am a caffeine freak but haven’t tasted our very own Kape Alamid (I saw a jar being sold at Bag of Beans in Tagaytay) or what they call Civet coffee (Kopi Luwak in Indonesia and Weasel coffee in Vietnam). Aside from the fact that I find it a bit expensive—well it is actually the most expensive coffee in the world, I don’t have the guts to drink coffee from a cat’s poop. Not just yet.

To my understanding, these civet cats would pick the ripest, best quality coffee berries and gobble down their intestines. They will only digest the berries leaving the beans and during this process, digestion takes away the bitterness from the beans—naturally fermented in a cat’s digestive tract. The Vietnamese tour guide told us that it is believed that acid (probably he was referring to enzymes) inside the cat’s tummy is the main suspect for giving these beans a distinct and unique flavor. And why are they so expensive? The coffee bean farmers would pick those cat poops in the forest, get the beans, clean them, and prepare for roasting. So there you go a friggin $200-$800 for a kilo of beans.

In my recent trip to Vietnam I found out that Weasel coffee is being sold everywhere, not per kilo but per grams (45,000VND/100 grams). I thought it’s time to try. It took me a while to decide whether to buy or not but what the heck, it won’t kill me anyway.

So this weekend I will spice up my affair with caffeine, after all if it’s expensive it must be good.