Do you know what the world’s most expensive coffee is?

We have reported on this before, but it is rather staggering and unexpected.

This coffee can command a value of $150-200 per pound.

Where does it come from?

The answer is strange: from the civet cat, or kopi luwak.

What is a civet cat?

It is an animal which is found in South-east Asia and southern China and looks rather like a kind of ferret.

It has been used in the production of coffee in a rather interesting way.

The animal has a nose for a certain kind of coffee berry.

Once it eats them, the soft fruit which surrounds the coffee bean is digested in the civet cat and the bean is excreted.

This bean is then retrieved, cleaned and used to create a roasted blend.

The resulting coffee is said to be delicious and can command high prices, which makes it one of the most expensive coffees in the world.

However, how can you tell that the product you are buying is not a fraud?

Or how can you tell that it has not been mixed with a cheaper coffee blend?

A news story has hit the coffee industry headlines as Japanese and Indonesian researchers have found a way to find out the real deal (a paper has been published by Dr Eiichiro Fukusaki in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry).

The ‘chemical fingerprints’ of the real coffee can be identified.

The ratio of various acids (citric, malic and inositol/pyroglutamic) were checked to work out the differences between the different types of coffee.

It was heralded as a first report in addressing authentication processes for this special coffee.

Customers should get what they pay for.