French bioengineers Camille Delebecque and Sophie Deterre founded the food Start-up Afineur in New York to revolutionize coffee.
You may have heard of the Kopi Luwak or Civet Coffee from Indonesia. If not, it’s a very special coffee and one of the most expensive with prices reaching €550/kg. The raw coffee beans are eaten by Asian Palm Civet (see picture below), digested inside their stomach, defecated and finally collected. This reduce bitterness and is supposed to give a specific taste to the coffee.
Afineur’s technology is inspired from Civit coffee but taken to the next level. It uses the concept of fermentation happening inside the stomach of the animal in a controlled way thanks to micro-organisms. This allows more precise control of which flavor molecules should be chewed away or added. The beans are then roasted in Brooklyn at Pulley Collective, a world class artisanal roasting facility, to bring the best possible roasting. This leads ultimately to Cultured Coffee, a special coffee that everybody can savor and enjoy.
In short, this could definitely be the best coffee in the World. And the best news is that you can already pre-order your pack of Cultured Coffee on Kickstarter. Prices starts at $29. The goal being the campaign is to raise $15k to produce the first big batch of coffee. Amazingly, Afineur raised this amount in only 6 hours after the campaign started. While I am writing this article, it already reached $41k. A great first success that you can make even bigger.
Below I have added the video they did for the campaign, in case you want more info: