Bennett's Fresh Roast sells rare, expensive coffee
Bennett’s Fresh Roast is celebrating 2 years in business this month.
To celebrate, they are bringing back a limited supply of Kopi Luwak coffee. It’s the world’s rarest and most expensive coffee, and sells for $20 a cup.
“In September we ordered a pound and sold out within a few hours,” said Bennett’s owner Bob Grissinger, a.k.a. former local morning DJ C. David Bennett. “So we decided what better way to celebrate our second birthday than to bring back Kopi Luwak but this time for a good cause, not just our own curiosity.”
On February 8, 2010, the coffee shop will once again serve the Kopi Luwak coffee while supplies last for $20 per cup. five dollars from each cup sold will be donated to the Gulf Coast Humane Society.
Kopi Luwak is also referred to as “cat poo coffee”. The coffee has been featured in Forbes Magazine, on Oprah and in the movie The Bucket List.
Kopi Luwak are Arabica coffee beans that have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Indonesian Civet. This process takes place on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago.
“Kopi” is the Indonesian word for coffee and “Luwak” is the local name of the mongoose like animal that eats the raw red coffee ‘cherries’ as part of its usual diet. The Luwak lives in trees and 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.
Indonesians gather the still-intact beans from the forest floor and sell them to coffee dealers. It is believed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee’s flavor through fermentation of some type. The resulting coffee is said to be like no other. It has a rich, heavy flavor with hints of caramel or chocolate. other terms used to describe it are earthy, musty and exotic. The body is almost syrupy and it’s very smooth.
But because of the strange method of collecting, there isn’t much Kopi Luwak produced in the world. The average total annual production is around 500 pounds of beans.
For Bennett’s anniversary, Grissinger has ordered almost five pounds of the raw pure Arabica beans costing $190 per pound. he plans to roast them in his shop to be ready for serving on February 8 while supplies last.
In Australian cafes, cups of this coffee have fetched over $40.
Bennett's Fresh Roast sells rare, expensive coffee
