If you want your cup of morning coffee to be a true taste experience, check out this list of the four most expensive coffees in the world!
If you’ve tried premium coffees before, like Hawaiian Kona and Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, you know how much of a difference in quality there is between premium coffee beans and the inexpensive ones you find at the grocery store (We won’t mention any names)! We made Hawaiian Kona our regular daily coffee after trying it, even though it costs a little more than we were used to paying. Once you go gourmet you can’t go back!
Did you know that there’s a whole tier of coffees that are even more expensive and premium than Hawaiian Kona and Jamaica Blue Mountain, though? We pay under $50 a pound for Hawaiian Kona coffee and under $100 for a pound of Jamaica Blue Mountain. But the rarest, most expensive coffees in the world cost well over $100 a pound. They’re probably not in our everyday coffee budget, but boy, are they worth trying at least once!
These coffees are incredibly complex and highly artisanal. Some even involve animals in their production to deepen the flavor. The most expensive coffee on this list is actually digested by elephants before it reaches your cup! How cool is that?
Finca El Injerto is a coffee plantation in Guatemala that’s won tons of awards for its coffee. Their coffee has a rich body and an incredibly balanced flavor. You’ll taste lots of sweet notes in your cup, like chocolate, cherry, nuts, and cola. Their coffee also has a clean, bright finish without too much acidity, so it won’t bother sensitive stomachs.
Finca El Injerto coffee is grown at high elevations of around 5,600 feet, which is why it has such a sweet, complex flavor! Coffee plants that are sown at higher elevations take longer to grow, allowing the beans to develop more of the sugars that create rich, sweet flavors like chocolate and cherry.
If you want to try it (who wouldn’t?) Stumptown Roasters have made some of the coffee produced at the plantation available on Amazon. They don’t sell the most expensive varieties grown at the plantation (we can hear your wallet breathing a sigh of relief), but it’s a good introduction to Finca El Injerto coffee! Try it and see if it lives up to the hype. Spoiler alert: it does!
What We Liked
- One of the best tasting coffees
- Delightful aroma from the bag
- Delicious and absolutely worth it!
What We Didn’t Like
- Very expensive
This type of coffee is one of the most expensive coffees in the world, not only because it’s high quality, but also because it’s shipped from a remote island. Saint Helana Coffee is made on, you guessed it, Saint Helena island! It’s an island about 1,200 miles away from the coast of Africa, so it costs a pretty penny to ship it to the mainland!
But the price is definitely worth it. This coffee is made of high-quality Arabica coffee beans that are grown at elevations of more than 2,000 feet, which is pretty high for an island coffee! The region also has an ideal climate for coffee growing. These favorable growing conditions produce a cup that has a balanced acidity and complex flavor that coffee lovers will adore.
When you finally get to taste a cup of this incredible coffee, you’ll notice flavors like chocolate, fruit, and spices. You’ll also taste some floral and citrus notes as well as some rich caramel. This coffee has a bright, clean taste without being too acidic, which you can’t say about a lot of coffees, so make sure you try it out!
What We Liked
- Great taste
- The historical link to Bonaparte is a great story to tell friends
What We Didn’t Like
- It’s pricey
Remember how we said the most expensive coffee on this list is digested by elephants? Well, this one is digested by animals too—Asian palm civets, to be exact! You’ve probably never heard of them, but they’re omnivorous and look kind of like raccoons. The only thing you need to know about them though is that they make some pretty delicious coffee!
Kopi Luwak coffee is a type of Indonesian coffee that’s usually made from a blend of Robusta, Arabica, and Liberica beans. The civets decide which coffee cherries make it into the final bag of coffee beans by eating the ones they like. Apparently they’re pretty picky—they’ll only eat the best, ripest cherries, so the coffee beans that end up in your bag are super high quality. What a cool selection process!
The civets excrete the cherries after a few days and then the coffee growers harvest them. They go through a thorough cleaning and roasting process, so you don’t need to worry about any dung ending up in your cup of joe.
What will end up in your cup is delicious flavor! The fermentation process that the beans go through in the stomachs of the civets gives them a rich, earthy flavor and makes them much smoother than regular coffee beans. If you don’t like acidic coffee, you’ll love Kopi Luwak!
Our favorite brand to get this kind of coffee from is Kopi Luwak Direct. Some plantations that produce Kopi Luwak keep the civets in cages, but not this brand! They only harvest beans from wild, free-range civets. No civets were harmed in the making of this delectable coffee!
What We Liked
- This coffee is amazing and delicious
- Fresh beans with sweet aroma
- It is smooth with a mellow taste yet strong
What We Didn’t Like
- Expensive
We saved the best and most expensive one for last! Black Ivory is a brand of coffee that’s produced in northern Thailand. The coffee company only uses the finest Arabica beans produced in the mountains of Thailand at elevations of almost 5,000 feet. Coffee plants that are grown at higher elevations have more complex flavors, so it’s no wonder why this coffee is so good!
Workers pick the best quality coffee cherries off the plants and then feed them to the elephants. After the elephants eat, digest, and excrete the beans, they go through an extensive sorting, sun drying, and roasting process, so you don’t need to worry about these beans being unsanitary. All you need to do is enjoy the rich, complex coffee in your cup!
The fermentation process that the beans undergo in the stomach of the elephant take out a lot of their bitterness. The result is a coffee bean that tastes like a cross between coffee and tea when it’s brewed. It has complex flavors like chocolate, a hint of tobacco, and red cherry. The flavors are so sweet and mild that it doesn’t need sugar or milk. It’s best enjoyed black so you can taste all of the delicate flavors in these exceptionally unique coffee beans!
Surprisingly, you can get Black Ivory coffee on Amazon! It’ll cost you a pretty penny, but we think it’s worth it! It’s a cool experience to try coffee beans excreted by an elephant, and the flavor makes it a true delicacy worth shelling out for.
What We Liked
- Smooth coffee for special occasion
- Coffee is excellent quality with a very nice aroma
- No bitterness just tranquility tickling your taste buds
What We Didn’t Like
- Very expensive
