Chief Stool Sifters, gathering precious coffee beans post-Vivvy the Cat

I’m delighted to announce that we have developed the first homemade, decaf, Weasel Coffee in the world, using a domesticated cat, Vivvy.

Weasel Coffee or Kopi Luwak is a highly prized and expensive coffee produced from beans excreted by the Asian Palm Civet (commonly referred to as cats or weasels that inhabit forests throughout Asia) once it has eaten coffee berries. It is believed the digestive process improves the coffee flavour.

My journey towards creating my own ‘weasel’ coffee happened by accident when I spilled some coffee beans into my cat’s food bowl and before I could clean the bowl the cat had eaten them.

From little things, big things grow

Chief ‘Weasel’, Vivvy the cat, chowing down of a fresh bowl of decaf coffee beans

It seemed to love the beans so I experimented some more and here we are a few years later with a cat that demands coffee beans before it eats its ‘proper food’.

It was only when I noticed that the beans were passing through the cat intact, that the idea occurred to me of systemising the process in the hope of producing my own decaf ‘weasel’ coffee.

We had some sleepless nights at first, with rowdy behaviour from Vivvy, most likely due to the caffeine content.

But now that we use our low caffeine Baristador blends, everybody wins!

It is actually testament to Baristador Coffee’s specialist approach to creating a double roast blend of espresso coffees with modified levels of caffeine, that not only Vivvy laps it up, but so to do Australian coffee lovers who are insomniacs, breast-feeding, or under medical orders to reduce caffeine consumption.

It is a family affair

One of the surprising spin-offs from this enterprise is that it has helped me introduce my young daughters to developing a work ethic and understanding commerce, as they have taken on the role of sorting coffee beans from the cat stools.

I call them my Chief Stool Sifters.

We treat it as a game, hunting for beans or peas among the “mud”.

Then, after a little wash of hands and beans, followed by a grind in our commercial grinder, we have a sweet, earthy coffee with a unique taste.

It is not yet available for public sale but I am submitting samples for testing today, April 1st, and I am sure the wait will be similar to the waiting period between beans entering and leaving our prize cat, Vivvy!

Here is the ‘making of’ video, to give you a peep behind the scenes:

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