Thanks to Dennis for the catch on this… it begs the question: How far would you go for the ultimate in high-end coffee?
Pricey coffee good to the last dropping
Fri Dec 30, 9:09 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Would you pay $175 for a pound of coffee beans which had passed through the backside of a furry mammal in Indonesia?
Apparently, some coffee lovers wanting to treat themselves to something special are lapping it up.
Kopi Luwak beans from Indonesia are rare and expensive, thanks to a unique taste and aroma enhanced by the digestive system of palm civets, nocturnal tree-climbing creatures about the size of a large house cat.
“People like coffee. And when they want to treat themselves, they order the Kopi Luwak,” said Isaac Jones, director of sales for Tastes of The World, an online supplier of gourmet coffee, tea and cocoa.
Despite being carnivorous, civets eat ripe coffee cherries for treats. The coffee beans, which are found inside of the cherries, remain intact after passing through the animal.
Civet droppings are found on the forest floor near coffee plantations. Once carefully cleaned and roasted, the beans are sold to specialty buyers.
Jones said sales for Kopi Luwak rose three-fold just before the Christmas holiday compared with the first half of the year. The company started selling the rare coffee in February 2005.
He expects to sell around 200 pounds of the coffee this year, with orders coming from North America and Europe. So far, most of the orders have been from California.
Indonesia produces only about 500 kilograms, or roughly 1,100 pounds, of the coffee each year, making it extremely expensive and difficult to find.
“It’s the most expensive coffee that we know about in the world,” said Jones.
By comparison Jamaica’s Blue Mountain coffee, considered to be an expensive type, sells for $35 to $40 per pound, while a pound of Colombia’s Supremo arabicas can be bought for about $14.
I’d need at least $40,000 worth of expensive clothes and accessories and someplace to wear them to justify spending that kind of money on coffee. Even so, I’m not sure if I could get over the thought of where it had been.
Most coffee comes from South America and Africa, and you’ve got a problem with the beans being passed through the system of a rodent?
that is comedy, david. very nice. i think we should all toss in 15-20 and buy a pound just so we can say we’ve had some.
It’s the thought that counts, in this case.
Ill eat some coffee beans, pass it through my system then sell them on ebay. $200 a pound minimum.
Forget buying the stuff. We could have our own Hillside environmentally-friendly coffee ecosystem.
All we have to do is import a pair of palm civets to raise on the church property. They can live in the trees, poop on the playground, and we can get all the LittleLites to gather the berries, clean ’em off, and roast them as a “learning project.”
And then maybe we can have the little lites (is it a fat camp?) make basketballs and socks.
I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I bet it tastes like crap.
(okay, okay, was that too obvious? I was surprised no one else had said it already.)
forget the civets. I have a 10 wk old dachshund named PJ that would be glad to volunteer to be the “coffee bean processor.” Good times for some rich java.
You know what’s really strange about this? I had a dream the other night where a friend and I were at Starbucks and he suggested that we try the new coffee made from beans that bugs pooped out… I know the civets aren’t bugs, but it’s still kinda weird that this conversation should come up just a couple days after I had that dream…
Those would be some pretty big bugs.
…it might be time to call in Grissom.
When I worked at starbucks, before I got fired, in our “re-education classes” they told us about this coffee & it’s ins & outs. Dont ever try it or their fair trade blend. Fair trade is bad coffee from extremely poor people. It’s one of starbucks “outreach” type activities to make themselves look better. Try some & attempt to smile.