New York City Sells America’s Most Expensive Cup of Coffee

Getting your daily coffee fix can really add up, especially with espresso drinks typically going for $5 a cup. If you think that’s a lot, a new café in Brooklyn, Extraction Lab, is now serving what could be the most expensive cup of coffee in America for $18.

Now, why exactly would coffee be so expensive? The café, located in Sunset Park, uses a type of coffee bean called “geisha” (also spelled “gesha”) from Ninety Plus Gesha Estates, which grows and produces single-variety coffee in Panama and Ethiopia.

The rare coffee bean of tall Geisha trees was discovered in the mountains of Geisha, Ethiopia in the 1930s. The quality of coffee from the bean, which typically takes three to five years to harvest, is greatly improved when grown at high elevation, according to Perfect Daily Grind.

As for the taste, the coffee has been described as having a lighter flavor similar to that of Earl Grey tea.

In addition to its luxurious coffee blend, the café also uses coffee and tea machines called Steampunk, a system that uses steam and vacuum technology to replicate different brewing methods that cost around $7,000 per machine, according to The New York Times.