Do you have discerning taste?  Are you a coffee connoisseur?  Perhaps you are willing to try the world's most expensive and exclusive cup of joe.  It is not easy to come by and when I tell you what you are actually paying for you may lose your appetite.
This top-shelf cup of coffee goes for $600 dollars per pound and around $100 per cup.  Talk about good to the last drop. Don't mind me, I'll be licking the bottom of the cup much like a cat lapping up a saucer of milk for that price.  Then again, when I tell you how it is derived you may not want to drink it at all.  

 Kopi Luwak

This hand-crafted cup is called kopi luwak and the reason why it is so expensive is that it has literally already been digested for you. These coffee cherries have been eaten by the Asian palm civet (a rat/raccoon-like animal) found in Indonesia, partially digested, and then pooped out.  The coffee cherries get fermented as they pass through the animal's intestines. Is your mouth watering yet? 
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Photo credit: Unsplash Clay Banks

Farmers Pick Through The Poo

Some lucky farmer has the task of collecting the civet poo and plucking the coffee out of it for harvest.  Why is this even a thing?  Producers of kopi luwak swear that there are two reasons to justify this price and guarantee that this will be the most epic cup of coffee you will ever roll over your palate. The first reason, farmers believe in the civet.

Civits Are Pickier Than We Are

They say that the civit itself is a discerning animal and they only select the best coffee cherries to consume.  They won't eat a dud so straight out the gate there is a special quality control going on.  This is what these guys look like:
Photo credit: Jordy Meow - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12818326
Photo credit: Jordy Meow
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The other reason is the digestion of the cherries.  Apparently, these animals have nothing short of magic intestines.  The biological and chemical qualities in their digestive tracts actually alter the coffee cherries in a way that we can't with a machine.

This begs the question, who was the first person to discover this and actually try it?  I have to know, did they brag about this discovery? Did their friends and family have him committed?  I have so many questions.  This is what the farmers hunt for after the civit passes it.

Photo credit: Wibowo Djatmiko
Photo credit: Wibowo Djatmiko
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Regardless, critics say this is the smoothest and most flavorful coffee on the planet. Are you trying it if given the chance? I'm a hard pass (that's what the civit said). I fully apologize for that joke.  If you want this coffee, you have to order through your local coffee shop and pay in advance or you could order direct through the internet but I have to believe there are some real scammers out there so a trusted source would be best.

Coffee is my morning fuel but what did fuel for your car cost the year you started driving?

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

 

 

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