Kopi Luwak

Australia And Coffee A Love Affair

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Australia is a nation that loves its coffee and the brewing cafe culture has truly taken this country by storm. Coffee aficionados can easily get their daily fix at anywhere and anytime during the day especially with so many coffee stands available at every street corner.

Its unsurprising that out-of-home consumption has tremendously grown over the last five years and today, the coffee shop industry is worth at least $2.2 billion. In 2010, a report released by Datamonitor estimated that sales of coffee in Australia would be approximately $1437m in 2013, and its clear that the latest figures have surpassed earlier predictions.

The Aussie coffee culture isnt just a fad and its definitely here to stay. As consumers get more educated and informed about coffee, they are also demanding for more sophisticated brews that derive from exclusive beans from around the world. One of the most in-demand rare coffee beans in the world, Kopi Luwak, costs about $15 per cup and consumers are willingly paying to get a taste of this exquisite cuppa.

In their never-ending pursuit of a perfect brew, more and more coffee drinkers are beginning to drift towards boutique cafes that offer some of the fanciest beans and brewing methods available in Australia.

However, the demand for boutique coffee doesnt stop there. People want exclusive coffee at home as well and that is the reason why the at-home coffee category is still at an all-time high. Instead of buying typical powdered coffee, consumers are now looking for natural coffee beans or ground coffee simply because they know that these products will create better brews.

Australian suppliers like Les Schiratos Vittoria Coffee are meeting consumer demands by offering sophisticated coffee drinkers pure blends that are very similar to barista made coffee. Rather than selling the typical coffee powder that was so popular during the 90s, Aussie coffee companies are beginning to realise that low-quality blends just wont cut it, hence the creation of pre-packed ground coffee and pure beans.

Perhaps the prominence of the coffee and caf culture in Australia can be attributed to innovators like Les Schirato and his peers, but more importantly, it is the consumers love of coffee that has truly driven the local industry to greater heights.

Coffee lovers around the world are beginning to recognise Australia as a coffee mecca. Even cafes in the United States are beginning to adopt our nations proudest coffee invention, the flat white. So, it seems that we are headed towards exciting times in the future and its nothing but bright lights for the Australian coffee industry!

Michelle Williames is a highly regarded coffee critic whose thoughts and opinions have been widely featured in local and international F&B publications. As a former award-winning barista, Michelle understands the essentials that are needed to create the finest coffee possible. She currently runs her own coffee art classes in Melbourne.

The World’s Most Expensive Cup Of Coffee

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How much do you pay for a decent cup of coffee locally?

Well it depends what sort of coffee you like and where you buy it of course, but whatever and wherever, you can be sure that few other basic products have such a massive variation in price.

Remarkably you may only pay 10-20 pence for a cup of instant coffee from a coffee vending machine, up to about &#1634 for a large cappuccino from a speciality shop.

But where would you expect to find the most expensive cup of coffee on the planet?

Not surprisingly you need look no further than a country with a high cost of living and, according to a recent survey by the London office of U.S. consulting firm Mercers, if you go to Moscow you will find the average price is over 6.00 a cup.

Japan, however, is the place for astronomical prices, and since their rise to economic superpower status, a culture for high flyers to pay silly prices for unique products has developed.

One man who has shrewdly exploited his compatriots’ addiction to expensive luxuries is Keishiro Funakoshi. Mr Funakoshi is the proprietor of the Akaneya Coffee Shop in scenic Karuizawa, a popular mountain resort 100 miles northwest of Tokyo.

For around 22, he offers a cup of coffee that is perhaps one of the most expensive in the world – served as something of a ritual at a special table by a kimono-clad waitress. Funakoshi thinks that it is not so much the quality of his coffee (a home-blended brew of charcoal-roasted grains freshly ground for each customer) or the decor of his establishment (a narrow, dark wooden hut decorated in rustic Mingei style), but rather the uniquely exorbitant prices that attract wealthy tourists to his coffee shop.

“People come to Karuizawa with the expectation of spending money,” he says, “so why shouldn’t I help them in this endeavour?”

But the ‘honour’ of selling the most expensive cup of coffee in the world belongs much nearer to home – London in fact. Last year at Peter Jones department store in the West End you had to pay 50 for a cup of coffee!

Internationally-renowned barista David Cooper created the coffee, which is a blend of Jamaican Blue Mountain and the exclusive Kopi Luwak bean. Kopi Luwak or Civet coffee, is made from beans eaten, partly digested, and then expelled by the Indonesian civet cat.

These feline creatures, who inhabit the areas around coffee plantations, prefer to eat only the ripest and most tasty coffee berries. Enzymes in their digestive system break down the flesh of the fruit and after the animals have expelled the beans, they are collected from the plantation floor by workers who then wash away the dung and roast them.

It should be noted however, that all proceeds from the coffee sales at Peter Jones were donated to Macmillan Cancer Support.