Hi all coffee geeks do you know which is the costliest coffee available??
I heard it is Kopi Luwak coffee which comes from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, an area well-known for its excellent coffee. Paradoxurus is the little creature which eats red, ripe coffee cherry and ferments it in its tummy and after the seed exits from there it is cleaned roasted and the result is most exotic coffee rich, heavy flavored .
I wonder How does it taste ? anyone tasted it? What is the cost?
There is no excellent kopi luwak. None. it's commodity grade coffee with a marketing catch. There is also probably 5000% more kopi luwak sold each year than there is actually produced (production of the legit stuff runs less than 5,000lbs per year). Why? Because there's lots of snake oil salesmen packaging up plain jane inferior commodity grade indonesian coffees under the "kopi" banner and trying to get $300 a lb for it.
I have sampled Kopi for six years; 'crops' from 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006. I've had the marketing folks for Kopi try to get me to push the coffee on this website. I won't do it.
Kopi Luwak may come from feces. It tastes like it too, and not just from the feces contact.
I was recently given a sample of another civet-processed coffee from the Doi Chaang folks in Thailand. They only grow arabica, and the civets are just the wild ones roaming the farms. Anyway, the coffee was fine -- it was comparable to their peaberry selection. There were some subtle flavor and body differences, but nothing major. I don't have any ties to the Doi Chaang people, but have met them a few times and have always found them very up front and on the ball. All of their coffee is good.
sleekyG Senior Member Joined: 6 May 2009 Posts: 116 Location: US Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Sun Jun 21, 2009, 9:29pm Subject: Re: Excellent Coffee Kopi Luwak !!!
Hmm.. that sounds interesting. I hope I can try this out one day. I love tasting different coffee from different corners of the world if I get all the chances of doing that. :) Just like the way I have tried all kinds of coffee from different famous coffee shops like Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Starbucks, Seattle's Best, Figaro, etc. :D
I agree 110% with you, MarkPrince...Kopi Luwak is very far from being an excellent coffee. I find it amusing and bizarre that so many people actually want to drink this stuff, and are willing to pay so much for it! On a side note, I am new to this forum so, "Hello, fellow coffee geeks!"
I had a sample of Kopi Luwak from http://coffeeproject.com. It was an excellent cup of coffee as evaluated by 8 other homeroasting/cuppers that were on hand that day. It was like a smooth cup of Sumatran with excellent chocolates.
To dismiss all Kopi Luwak on the basis of our own small sampling seems incorrect. It would be like me saying, "All Kopi Luwak is stellar coffee," based on my own data sampling of one. I was just thankful that the sample was a gift as the price keeps my data universe very small.
I was going on my own personal experiences tasting Kopi Luwak in the past. I wasn't impressed with it, and was expecting much more from it due to all of the hype surrounding it, not too mention, the extremely high price tag. I would suggest that if given the chance that one should definitely taste it, afterall, some people obviously do enjoy it. Boldjava, I am pleased to hear that you had a favorable impression of the batch that you tasted...:)
Kopi Luwak is literally a 'dirty' business with a high percentage of corruption, abuse and fraud involved. There are no governing agencies to oversee quality control, standards, sanitation, or to prevent animal abuse or fraud. Lab studies have shown that a high percentage of Kopi Luwaks have been adulterated or outright fake.
And not all of these precious 'coffee' droppings are from civets, as squirrel and bat droppings are often thrown in for weight. Also, many civet cats are kept in tiny cages and force fed coffee, so the 'farmers' can more easily 'harvest' and sell the fecal matter, as opposed to the more time consuming endeavor of scurrying about forests looking for droppings before someone else finds them.
What I personally find unethical is that animals are involved in the production of this coffee, which as we know carries an extremely high potential for abuse.
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