Being an avid coffee drinker can be a pricey habit. And if your favorite cup of joe is one of these javas, it's certainly an investment. Savor this: These are 10 expensive coffee beans on the planet.
10. Starbucks Rwanda Blue Bourbon Coffee
Cost per pound: $24
This bean comes from a coffee plantation in Rwanda and has a highly acidic flavor with hints of butter, cherry, and spiced nut.
9. Mi Esperanza Coffee
Cost per pound: $35
Honduras is becoming an increasingly popular place to grow coffee. Coffee from this country has a bitter aftertaste and nut, fruit, and spice flavors for a rich taste experience.
8. Los Planes Coffee
Cost per pound: $40
This award-winning coffee is grown at a family-owned coffee plantation in El Salvador and boosts multiple flavors.
7. Fazenda Santa Ines Coffee
Cost per pound: $50
Grown at the foot of Brazil's Mantiquera Mountains, this unusual tasting bean is sweet with a strong hint of fruit flavor.
6. Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee
Cost per pound: $50
This mildly flavored coffee, which is grown on the mountains of Jamaica, has a strong customer base in Japan.
5. Molokai Coffee
Cost per pound: $51
Many believe Hawaii is the best place in the United States to grow coffee. This particular coffee is produced by Coffees of Hawaii in Kualapu'u, Maui County.
4. St. Helena Coffee
Cost per pound: $79
The supreme coffee-growing conditions on St. Helena, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, cannot found anywhere else in the world.
3. Kopi Luwak Coffee
Cost per pound: $160
Kopi Luwak Coffee is produced by feeding coffee cherries to civets—carnivorous mammals that look like a cross between cats and otters—before collecting the coffee beans from their feces and processing it into the finished product.
2. Hacienda La Esmeralda Coffee
Cost per pound: $350
Hacienda La Esmeralda's expertise and experience affords the specialty coffeemakers the opportunity to charge a significant price for their Panama-grown beans.
1. Black Ivory Coffee
Cost per pound: $500
In Northern Thailand, this company produces their coffee by feeding Arabica coffee cherries to elephants. As the coffee is passed through the elephants' digestive systems, it gains more flavor and breaks down the proteins that create bitterness, which creates a smoother cup of coffee than otherwise possible. The cost of this variety is so high because very few coffee cherries make it through the production process.
