Indonesia's Kopi Luwak

The Most Expensive Coffe in The World


K
opi Luwak at its finest...

Kopi Luwak or Civet Coffee is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $120 and $600 USD per pound and is sold mainly in Japan, United States and increasingly throughout other countries.

It came from robusta or arabica coffee beans which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Common Asian Palm Civet.

"Kopi" is the Indonesian word for coffee and "Luwak" is local name of this animal which eats the raw red coffee 'cherries' as part of its usual diet.

This animal eats a mixed diet of insects, small mammals and fruits along with the softer outer part of the coffee cherry but does not digest the inner beans, instead excreting them still covered in some inner layers of the cherry.

Locals then gather the beans -- which come through the 'animal stage' fairly intact -- and sell them on to dealers. It is believed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee's flavour through fermentation of some type.

Kopi Luwak is also known as...

1. Kape Alamid/Alamid Coffee - Philippines
2. Weasel Coffee - Vietnam
   (weasel is the local version of Asian Palm Civet)

Philippine Civet or Alamid eats only the ripest coffee cherries. Unable to digest the coffee bean, the alamid graciously deposit

~Philippine Alamid Coffee~

This is a photo of raw Alamid Coffee Beans.

...move over Starbucks!

The Philippines has recently discovered it produces one of the world's most expensive and coveted kinds of coffee. -BBC News Asia Pacific

Alamid Coffee is a kind of Civet coffee made from coffee beans eaten and passed through the digestive tract of Sugar Palm Civet (paradoxorus Philipinensis), or alamid in the local language forages in the mountains and forest of Philippine Archipelago.

In the Philippines, only 500 kg are produced a year and the roasted beans sell for more than $115 a kilogram.

The Finish Product!

...something will treat coffee lovers out there extra special!

Coffee Alamid brand is what you can usually found here in the local markets. It is a natural blend of liberica, exelsa, robusta and arabica beans that are found in abundance in the Philippines.

Noted as the "rarest coffee in the world" the commodity sold by Japan Airlines as a gourmet product on its business class section for 600 dollars for 100 grams and is exported under the Coffee Alamid trademark to China, Taiwan, Australia and the United States.

Shot in the Kowloon (Hong Kong) Harbour City Mall in the Tsim Sha Tsui area at an "upscale" Grocery Store/Shopping Center.