Kopi Luwak Chocolate "Dark 55%"

Mandailing Estate Coffee

I should probably make one thing very clear about this chocolate bar right off the bat, it contains poop. In fact, the entire gimmick behind this chocolate bar is the fact that it contains poop. It contains the poop of a civet cat (or kopy luwak) from Indonesia. Civet cats are famous for eating coffee beans, then pooping them out, and for some reason this makes the coffee better. I'm told it has something to do with the enzymes found in the civet cat's stomach, but I'm not too sure about the details. By this theory, this bar should be better than any other similar bar, because parts of it have been partially digested by this rare cat.

At first, I was under the impression that this bar was in fact made from cocoa beans that the civet cat had digested, but now I'm not so sure. It could be that this bar is a dark chocolate bar with bits of coffee that have been consumed by the civet cat. It's kind of hard to tell because dark chocolate/cocoa beans taste similar to coffee beans. They're both bitter, and can be slightly astringent. That's probably a good way to describe the flavour of this bar, bitter and slightly astringent. I should also point out that this bitter flavour is the highlight of this bar.

The cocoa/coffee flavour is pretty strong, but unfortunately, it's not very smooth at all. You would expect the creamy chocolate to mellow out the bitter flavour, but that's just not the case. The chocolate is actually pretty cheap, waxy, and not very smooth at all. I've had much better chocolate in much, much cheaper chocolate bars. What you're paying for in this bar is the fact that a small mammal has already partially digested it for you. This bar is a totally gimmick of a bar. There's nothing really redeeming about this bar, other than the fact that you can say that you've eaten civet cat poop.

The chocolate isn't so bad that it's inedible, it's just not really that great. I'm not sure if it's possible, but I would really like to eat a chocolate version of this bar where the chocolate highlighted how this civet cat's enzymes have improved either the chocolate or coffee contained in this bar. Right now, this bar is more like a vessel to let you eat the civet cat poop and tell your friends (and the internet) that you've in fact eaten another animal's poop.