Disclaimer: I'm not a habitual coffee drinker, don't really like the taste of most coffees.
I experimented with cold-brewing some store-brand ground coffee a few weeks ago, and the result was rather pleasant to my ugh-its-coffee sensibilities. Very similar to a good oolong, only far more concentrated.
The nuggetboy though, is a mad coffee gulper, so when a Balinese colleague went home for the holidays, I got her to buy me some kopi luwak. It's much cheaper if you buy it back in Bali - the 50g bag of ground kopi luwak she got for me cost about US$15 - and a Balinese native is going to be able to get the authentic stuff.
Having brewed up this coffee and had some, both the nuggetboy and the nugget agree that the taste is incredibly similar to cold-brewed coffee, only of course, it's hot!
...so to all you coffee-gulpers out there who've tried kopi luwak - what's the big deal? It's so similar to cold-brewed (to my unrefined palate) that there's basically no difference - other than how you can have it hot. Is that it? If you like cold-brewed coffee, but want it hot, kopi luwak is your solution?
Because otherwise, it seems silly to pay that much for coffee when you can get a very close equivalent by using a store-brand and cold-brewing. Not to mention, you don't even need sophisticated equipment to cold-brew. A french press and some disposable tea-bags will do. (The tea-bags are for better coffee filtering.)
More stuff on the Interwebs about kopi luwak from an actual coffee drinker.
P.S.: Nuggetboy's review, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth that I was making him drink POOP COFFEE OMG POOP COFFEE was, 'Yeah, it's pretty good. Very smooth.' >.> While that's not a bad review, I'm still not seeing where the omgbestcoffeefeeintheworld is coming from.