RARE COFFEES

Civet Coffee, Kopi Luwak or Alamid

Civet coffee is one of the world's most expensive and coveted kinds of coffee.

It comes from an unusual source - the droppings of a nocturnal, cat-like animal called the palm civet.

Watch Video of Civets from Animal Planet

Asian palm civets, which live in the foliage of plantations across south-east Asia, are carnivorous but they also have a taste for the sweet, red coffee cherries that contain the beans. They are said to pick the best and ripest coffee berries.

Enzymes in their digestive system break down the flesh of the fruit before the animals expel the bean. The beans pass through the civet whole after fermenting in the stomach and that's what gives the coffee its unique taste and aroma.

The beans are then collected from the plantation floor by workers who wash away the dung and roast them.

David Cooper, who created the blend, said: "These rare coffees have been slowly hand roasted for around 12 minutes to ensure that we maximise the potential of each coffee.

"The final roast colour is quite dark to ensure that the espresso is perfect for a smooth latte or cappuccino."

Kopi Luwak in BBC News

The Philippines' taste for civet coffee or "Alamid" as published in BBC

Jamaican Blue Mountain
from National Geographic

Specialty beans like Jamaican Blue are all the buzz these days. The search for the world’s best coffee leads to a far-out Jamaican farm. Jamaican Blue Mountain is one of the world’s most sought-after specialty coffees, selling for as much as $54 a pound in New York City and $10 a cup in Tokyo. But it’s hard to find even in Jamaica, since the vast majority of the crop is commercially grown, machine roasted, and then exported. Only a few backwoods growers still roast the old-fashioned way, selling their harvest to locals and passersby. They accounted for 30 percent of imports in 2007 and, to meet demand, the world’s top importers are on a constant hunt for the next great bean. You can import the beans yourself. Blue Mountain’s Peaberry, a "fetish coffee," is as rare as it is expensive ($39 for 16 oz; bluemountaincoffee.com).

The world’s most desired coffee is grown on the eastern end of the beautiful island of Jamaica in the majestic range of hills known as the Blue Mountains. Cool misty conditions mixed with the rich earth and generous rainfall provides the perfect environment for growing coffee that is full-bodied and as smooth as silk.

Hawaiian Kona Coffee

Kona coffee is the market name for a variety of coffee (Coffea arabica) cultivated on the slopes of Mount Hualalai and Mauna Loa in the North and South Kona Districts of the Big Island of Hawaii. This coffee has developed a reputation that has made it one of the most expensive and sought-after coffees in the world.

Source of Kona Coffee Info

The Kona Coffee Festival

The Kona Coffee Council

KONA COFFEE FACTS
from Kona Coffee Farmers Association

Kona's coffee-growing belt mimics other coffee-growing origins in a way that the rest of Hawaii does not. Kona faces the setting sun. It lies on the western slopes of the enormous volcanoes of Hualalai and Mauna Loa. The coffee belt occupies ancient Hawaiian agricultural lands that for at least a thousand years supported thousands of Hawaiians on staple crops of taro, sweet potatoes, breadfruit, sugar cane, and bananas. Coffee was introduced to Kona in the 1820's.

1) Uniquely in Hawaii, the Kona district receives most of its rain in the summer. That replicates the seasons in most of the world's coffee-growing lands. The clouds that bring rain in the afternoon sea breeze, as they waft upslope, also shelter the coffee from the worst heat of the summer days. The annual rain fall total is 40-60 inches.

2) The coffee-growing belt is tiny by world standards and occupies a very small sector of the larger Kona districts. It extends north to south for about 30 miles if you include the outlying farms in South Kona, separated by 20th Century lava flows from the main northerly portion of the belt. Coffee is cultivated between the altitudes of 800 and 2500 feet. The main coffee belt is scarcely more than a mile wide, owing to the steepness of the mountain slopes.

a. Below 800 feet, it is too dry and hot for coffee to thrive.

b. Above 2500 feet, a natural rain forest naturally prevails, the seasonal rhythm of the rains disappears, and the coffee trees respond by blooming and fruiting all year long, which frustrates practical farming.

c. Elevations above 6000 feet are impractical because they are bone-dry in Hawaii and killing frost sometimes descends as low as 4000 feet.

3) Lava flows form the surface of the Kona coffee belt's land. Only in the area of Holualoa, has much mineral soil developed on lava flows that date back to the Ice Age. Elsewhere the coffee often appears to be growing on bare lava, with its roots feeding on the humic soil that accumulates in cracks and voids in the rock.

4) Because of several historical collapses of world coffee prices, and because the steep rocky terrain is laborious to cultivate, capital-intensive plantations have not prevailed in Kona. The coffee crop has for a century, come from small family holdings. Today's specialty coffee boom has encouraged more investment in farms where powerful excavators have smoothed the wild lava surface. But 50 acres remains an exceptionally large farm in Kona, and most of its 700-odd farms comprise fewer than five acres.

5) Professional cuppers report that the higher Kona elevations produce a brighter cup, but in fact, over the years the prize-winning entries in the blind cupping at the annual Kona Coffee Cultural Festival include many farms below 1000 feet elevation.

6) An heirloom variety of coffee -- arabica, variety kona typica -- produces the balanced and smooth quality of Kona coffee in the cup.