Steaming gently in four small, porcelain cups in front of us, Kopi Luwak seems very much like any other cup of coffee - it's brown; it's hot; it smells like an instant hit of sunshine, dust and cigars, and it would put a terrible stain on a white shirt. But two things set Kopi Luwak apart from the crowd - firstly it's the most expensive, rarest coffee in the world, and secondly, it's made out of cat droppings. I've invited three friends around to do a tasting and to decide whether it could possibly be worth the £65 a cup it would probably cost in a Dublin cafe. In the interests of a fair trial (and because I don't want to scare my testers off) I've neglected to mention the coffee has been through a cat.
Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee and Luwak is the nickname for the palm civet or paradoxurous hermaphroditus, a racoonlike cat fundamental to the making of this particular blend of coffee. First, the luwak climbs to the top of the coffee tree and scoffs the best and ripest coffee cherries. Stomach acids break down the fruit surrounding the coffee beans, which then ferment happily for some 12 hours before the cat excretes the beans. These are collected by pickers (no doubt, muttering furiously that there must be an easier way to make coffee), cleaned, and packed up to be flogged to discerning coffee drinkers the world over.
The cats are free-range and, obviously, the coffee-gathering process can be rather arbitrary, so only 200-300lbs of Kopi Luwak are available each year. This means the coffee joins the likes of truffles, fine caviar and certain types of blowfish from Japan - rare, very pricey, slightly weird and very, very sought after by foodies. When David McKernan of the Java Republic Roasting Company contacted an American dealer to buy a pound of raw green Kopi Luwak beans, he had to make several calls and send over his company brochure before a precious parcel was couriered to Dublin at a cost of $380 for a pound.
Such a coffee deserves a bit of special treatment, so I head out to the Java Republic roastery in the Citylink business park to check out what is done with the beans once the cat has finished with them. Nestling in the hands of Paul Mooney, one of Java Republic's two coffee roasters, they don't look like much. Pale khaki green in colour, they are curiously diverse in shape - some look like beans, others have been ground to the size of small pebbles by a luwak with a very active stomach. There is rather a lot of sludge-coloured chaff on them, which I try hard not to think about.
Luckily, I'm not very squeamish about food - I've eaten chocolate-covered ants in Colombia, slugs in Taiwan, and pigs' feet at home. (The taxi driver who brings me and my precious cargo of coffee home will prove horrified at the thought of drinking cat-poo coffee; "Ah Jaysus, stop it. You'd have to tie me down to drink that." Truth be told, the final grounds couldn't possibly be anything other than pure coffee because the heat at which it is roasted, 220C, would make short work of any detritus, germs or other yuckiness.) In any case, the Java Republic roastery is going full throttle.
A marvellous piece of machinery full of pipes and dials, it's painted bright blue and yellow, making it look as though Willy Wonka was a Tipperary supporter. Java Republic also owns the only coffee-bean blender in Ireland, as the company is unique in blending its beans after roasting rather than before. McKernan believes each bean should have its own roasting recipe: "You wouldn't boil potatoes, carrots, peas and beans in one saucepan, so why would you roast beans together?" as he reportedly pointed out to Patrick Guilbaud.
Paul is standing by the rotating oven and watching with the concentration of a hawk a roasting consignment of Sumatran coffee. When he judges the beans to be ready, he pulls open the oven doors and the beans go whooshing into a giant hopper below, and the air fills with a smell of coffee which will scent my clothes for days. Most commercial coffeemakers cool their beans by water-drenching them, which adds substantially to the endweight, but this is a process which makes McKernan bristle. "If you love coffee you've absolutely no right to be water-drenching it.
It's morally wrong." He's obviously doing something right because the company's Bluebird Expresso blend recently won a prestigious gold medal at the Great Taste Awards in London, beating off 22 rivals from England and Ireland. My Kopi Luwak beans certainly won't be let anywhere near water until they're going to be made into coffee. As the quantity is so small, Paul roasts them up in a tiny, rotating hand-roaster to my exact specifications.
They eventually emerge from the grinder a beautifully rich mahogany-colour. McKernan also gives me some of his latest product, an organic coffee from a New Guinean located in such remote bandit country the producers have to be paid oain cash dropped from a small plane three times a year. These aren't just coffees, they're small, imbibable myths.
Back in my flat, I make up the coffee, managing to spill a good £4-worth in the process. Cups are distributed and I ask for comments from my testers, who include an Argentinian coffee fiend and the owner of a food company. "Strong and rich but not acidic"; "Really easy to drink"; "Light, but it tastes strong, a bit like Red Bull really" and "the Sancerre of the coffee world" come the approving comments. I use the organic coffee as a contrast which brings forth the comments "That's normal coffee now", and "A much softer coffee with less of an aftertaste". Although the coffees are very different, three of us agree we prefer the Kopi Luwak with the Argentinian vote coming down firmly on the side of the cat coffee.
Which is when I reveal just what the coffee has been through. There's a little silence before one tester observes rather pithily that she always thought my coffee tasted like shite. Somebody else points out that she'd rather it had gone through a cat than through extensive chemical processes. Everybody agrees that the fact it was made out of cat droppings wouldn't put us off. The price, however, would: "That's just silly money."