Coffee Greatness.

Worlds Top 5 Most Expensive Obtainable Coffees
Kopi Luwak = $120/lb (yes, it’s real, I’m stunned.)
Hacienda La Esmeralda (Reserva de la Señora) = $107/lb (good luck getting it at auction prices)
Blue Mountain = $39/lb (what I’m drinking right now)
Kona = $29/lb (a fine cuppa, I’ll have to write a review on it sometime)
Los Planes – $16.66/lb (fallen from $40/lb, never tried it)

Of course, if you do a quick Google search, you’ll find an article listing the 10 (or 11) best/most expensive coffees cut and pasted into every publication imaginable (I found it via Forbes) for the last 4 or 5 years. Well, things change. St. Helena’s plantation was destroyed by invasive weeds, El Injerto seems to have vanished from production and retail, along with Fazenda Santa Ines, Starbucks Rwanda, etc… I’ve hunted down the top 5, linked the most recently available purchase price page, and now that I’ve done my homework, it appears Blue Mountain is #3.

Now the reader may be thinking “Fantastic, but what does this have to do with Steampunk?” If you have to ask, you’re either new to the genre, or a godless tea-drinking heathen!

"Girl Genius" even did a subplot about it.

Coffee represents the very ESSENCE of Steampunk. The best coffee machines are made of brass and copper boilers, with lots of random valves, gauges, and pointy bits.

WANT!

Sometimes the coffee itself is made via shooting boiling hot steam through the delicious lovely lovely beans into a drink that keeps the mad scientist working from late night to early morning. You can’t do mad science on tea, much less malt liquor. You need liquid ambrosia with the jolt of a thousand “jiggawatts” behind it.