Is The World’s Most Expensive Coffee Really Worth 75 US Dollars A Cup?

It’s rare, it’s from Panama and is said to be the world’s best-tasting coffee, but is it really worth 75 US dollars a cup?

By: Ringo Bones

Move over coffee lowak, there’s a new Panamanian coffee that’s rather “conventional” – i.e. it has not gone through any animal’s digestive tract – and yet it has been recently touted as the world’s best-tasting coffee, better in fact than the world famous civet cat digested coffee beans known as coffee lowak by a significant margin. But is it really worth its 75 US dollars asking price – as in twice that the average price of the “infamous” coffee lowak that’s being served in trendy Seattle coffee bars and other hipster coffee bars across the United States? Unfortunately, this upstart coffee has a rather storied reason justifying its 75 US dollar a cup asking price.

This upstart coffee variant is known as Elida Geisha 803 coffee and the 75 US dollar a cup asking price is via the Klatch Coffee Roasters located in the Bay Area. The price comes as no surprise given that the raw beans costs 803 US dollars a pound and up to 1,200 US dollars a pound when properly roasted. By contrast, the current going price for coffee lowak is around 100 to 600 US dollars a pound. But many people are probably asking what makes Elida Geisha 803 much more expensive than its closest competitor?

Back in 2018, Panamanian coffee producer Elida Estate broke the record for the highest auction price at the Best of Panama competition when its Geisha Green Tip Natural was auctioned off at 803 US dollars a pound – hence the number 803 of the coffee’s moniker. Of the 100 total pounds of Elida Geisha 803 auctioned at the event, San Francisco based Klatch Coffee Roasters owns 10 pounds worth of the famed coffee in the United States. The company plans to split their supply between their coffee shops in San Francisco and Los Angeles – the region better known as the “Bay Area”. This means that there are only 80 cups of the blend available for coffee drinkers in the whole of the United States. The lucky few who tasted the brew so far swear that it is by far the best cup of coffee that they’ve ever tasted – although a majority of them are rather quite skeptical of its “steep” 75 US dollar a cup price tag.

Does Looking At Pictures Of Coffee Make Us Feel More Awake?

Does the mere suggestion of looking at pictures of coffee - especially in the morning - is all that is needed to make us feel more awake?

By: Ringo Bones

I thought that the news story is just another April Fool’s Joke when I first saw it back in the beginning of April, but an actual scientific study had shown results that the mere act of looking at pictures of cups and mugs of coffee is all that is needed to make us feel more awake, especially early in the morning. The findings were first published in Consciousness and Cognition and the findings came from four studies involving hundreds of people across Western and Eastern cultures.

The effect, which can even be sparked by just thinking of anything that reminds us of a latte or espresso, is more pronounced than with tea. Based on the result, the observed effect is thought to spring from our ingrained belief, especially in the West, that coffee gets us up and running. Researcher Sam Maglio said: “We have this image of a prototypical executive rushing off to an important meeting with a triple espresso in their hand”. “There’s this connection between drinking caffeine and arousal that may not exist in other cultures.”

Participants of the study were given tasks after being shown coffee-or tea-related cues. Those exposed to thoughts of coffee perceived time as shorter and thought in more concrete, precise terms, researchers from the University of Toronto said. But for those who grew up in Eastern cultures, where coffee was less important than tea, the effect was less marked. Researcher Sam Maglio believes that the study reveals how subtle cues affect our decision making and how that might be used in marketing food and drink.