Many of the beers I enjoy are brewed only from malt, hops, water and yeast, for example IPA and Octoberfests. But, I don't shy away from beers that contain other ingredients. I generally like coffee stouts or coffee porters and also recently wrote an article about brewing with coffee (May/June 2010 issue). If you were ever to stop by my house, you'd also know that I like cats. So, imagine how happy I was when — a year or so ago — I heard of a beverage that combined beer, coffee and cats. 

Well, not cats exactly. The beer — Mikkeller's Beer Geek Breakfast Brunch (Weasel) — is an imperial oatmeal stout made with coffee. But not just any coffee. This coffee comes from coffee cherries that have been eaten, and the coffee bean excreted, by the Asian palm civit. Civits are small mammals that look a bit like cats, but aren't. (They are most closely related to genets, other small mammals that look sort of like cats, but aren't.) The beans are cleaned and then processed into a very expensive type of coffee called kopi luwak (in Malaysia), ca phe chon (in Vietnam) or other names, depending on where it is produced. The Mikkeller beer uses Vietnamese civit coffee and is brewed at the Nøgne Ø brewery in Grimsatd, Norway. 

Here's a picture of the bottle (and Austin ZEALOT Joe White proclaiming that the Austin ZEALOTS are #1!)

A few weeks ago, I finally had the opportunity to try it at a beer tasting hosted by Ken Swiech. Ken is an Austin ZEALOT and holds frequent tastings of beers he has found or traded for on the internet. Although some folks will claim (with some truth, I would guess) that using this coffee is just a gimmick, the beer is actually quite good. (It's very similar to Beer Geek Breakfast, Mikkeller's "regular" imperial oatmeal coffee stout — for which a clone recipe appears in the most recent issue of BYO.) The coffee flavor and aroma is hard to find, but it's a very solid imperial oatmeal stout. 

Of course, given the nature of the beer, someone who mentally never graduated from junior high school was bound to make some childish comments. And so, the jokes ensued:  "Hey, this sh*t is pretty good." "I could drink this crap all day." Fortunately for everyone, those were the only two I could think of. 

Fast forward to Boston, just a couple days ago. I found both the Breakfast and Brunch versions here at a liquor store in Allston (Blanchard's). So, some night soon, I'll have to taste them side by side and see how they compare. I'll probably put up a blog entry about it — I could write about this crap all day.