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Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee, is the most expensive coffee in the world. The name "civet coffee" comes from the fact that the coffee berries are eaten by civets, which are mongoose-like critters, in Indonesia and the coffee beans are excreted by then after digestion. The beans are then cleaned and roasted to make the coffee.
A rare brew, this coffee is not available just everywhere, but Coffee & Tea LTD in Linden Hills, Minneapolis stocks it. The shop sells the coffee for $10 per 8-ounce cup, making it one of the most expensive cups of coffee in the country, if not the single most expensive. The owner, Jim Cone, buys green beans from Indonesia and roasts them to order in a vintage 1910 coffee roaster. He compares the coffee to fine wines, noting that it "might be too much to drink everyday" and describes the coffee as "having a rich and caramel-like taste."
Interestingly, Forbes has priced Kopi luwak at $160 per pound, while Coffee & Tea LTD sells it for $420 per pound. Granted, the coffee shop roasts its own beans on site, but it still seems like there would be a cheaper way to get your hands of a pound of the coffee than to pay retail there.
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1-09-2007 @9:34AM Kent said... Surely, this is a joke. Is it April 1st somewhere in the world?
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1-08-2007 @4:05PM James Hoffmann said... $420 is utterly ridiculous. Kopi Luwak is a painfully awful novelty coffee, and a great deal of it is merely poor quality coffee sold fraudulently. So many better coffees that actually taste nice...
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1-08-2007 @4:56PM BirdBarista said... Civets are actually not small rodents, but medium-sized mammals related to mongooses. The price is all in the scarcity and novelty, not in the taste, which ranges from repulsive to passable (no pun intended). Coffee & Conservation did an extensive review of kopi luwak, including more info on the civet, how the beans are gathered and processed, sustainability, and taste. All the ins and outs, shall we say!
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1-08-2007 @2:18PM cybele said... Civet Cats aren't quite like rodents, they're more like raccoons (they're actually a member of the carnivore family). The oddest part about the whole Civet Coffee thing to me is that people continue to drink it, even though SARS may have jumped to humans from eating their meat (however, the Civet Cats in question are a different species ... but still!).
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1-08-2007 @2:55PM Joe said... http://www.animalcoffee.com sells the stuff for much cheaper.
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1-08-2007 @6:52PM Word Diggity said... That's not caramel...
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1-08-2007 @4:34PM Nicole Weston said... I stand corrected on the civit matter. Correcting the rodent statement as we speak. Thanks, Cybele.
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1-09-2007 @8:34AM Allison said... Because Dave Barry is so awesome:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/11201512.htm
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1-11-2007 @3:10PM And0 said... James is right, much of what is sold as Kopi Luwak is just plain coffee. If you, as a grower, could get 10-20 times the price for your coffee just by changing the name, why wouldn't you? It's very difficult to tell if the coffee is authentic unless you've had the real stuff before, so there is a catch-22 with buying true Kopi Luwak.
If you want a $10 cup of coffee that's worth it, get one in Shibuya and sit for a while watching people.
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