Tuesday 4 March 2008

Cat Shit Coffee

Another Vice 'Wazzup' news piece on the most exclusive and expensive coffee you can buy.

There’s cat shit in my coffee!

It’s amazing the length that some people will go to in order to diversify their everyday addictions. Coffee, for instance. You wouldn’t think a lot of people would be massively inclined to sip a cup java made out of beans freshly collected from wild cat shit but like a bad joke out of some Saturday Night Live sketch, it turns out that this is the most expensive type of coffee in the world. It is sold for over £183 a pound and despite the obvious gross out factor every ounce of the scant 500kg produced annually gets snapped up
According to Ben Fowler, senior buyer at Firebox.com, the company that distributes the product in the UK: “The average consumer is someone looking for a rare and unique gift, wanting to obtain a luxury product or someone who loves exploring interesting and unusual types of coffee. Someone bored of Starbucks”.
Well, we were pretty bored of Starbucks so we dispatched the intern to Selfridges and spent a day drinking cat crap coffee.
Hour 1
The stuff turned up in 57g vacuum-sealed bag which retailed at £24. Although the packaging suggested that Civet shit-beans “make a great cappuccino” we decided not to sully with milk and went whole hog for a cafetiere of the stuff straight. We even skipped out on the sugar. The cafetiere yielded two cups and I got to necking the stuff eagerly.
It tasted exactly like any other Americano at any average high street coffee house. No poop vibes whatsoever on the palate. There was an almost immediate sense of slight euphoria and my heart was soon going like I’d necked a whole wrap of gutter speed.
Hours 2 and 3
After the initial body shock of cafetiere 1, I proceeded more cautiously. I don’t know where the whole caffeine heightening concentration myth came from but by this point I was totally zoning out and by cup 4 my computer screen was beginning to look like a Magic Eye puzzle. I had also developed a pretty chronic case of the runs.
Hours 4, 5 and 6
As I loaded up cafetiere 3 I was having weird flash backs to stuffing the bowl of a bong with skunk way past the point you knew was sensible. It was the end of the bag though so I pressed on despite serious hand tremors, a back sticky with sweat, my piss sinking of coffee and one of those annoying bouncy up and down legs. I think maybe my right eye was also palpitating in time with my fluttering heartbeat. As I drained the dregs I felt totally wrecked.
Aftermath
Having finished 6 cups of the stuff I headed out to a show and drank a few pints, nothing major. I suddenly found myself craving junk food. After my fill of hot wings from the 24 hour chicken place in Mile End I woke up to what felt like a hernia in my head, stabbing pains in my heart and lungs and the urge to puke and crap ceaselessly. This nauseous hell continued for the whole day. It sucked. Steer clear of cat shit coffee. There’s nothing classy about spending all day in the crapper.

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