This must be the one of the best kept coffee secrets in Seattle.

Every Monday at 3 p.m., Stumptown Coffee Roasters near Seattle University cups its most treasured beans for free.

The lineup rotates, and Stumptown cups coffee for the public every day at 3 p.m., but Mondays always include the best (what they call Grand Cru) beans. It's amazing that there aren't lines out the door.

Today, the star was a fruity, full-bodied, mouth-watering coffee from Panama that retails for $95 a half-pound. No kidding. It's too rich for my wallet, but the flavor was grand.

I thought another coffee from the same farm, Hacienda La Esmeralda, was close enough at $45 a half-pound. If you go, that's Esmeralda Especial Batch #3 with peaberries, which are coffee beans with a single seed, so they're round or pea-shaped instead of flat.

Another interesting comparison came from a farm in Guatemala, Finca El Injerto, that regularly wins the vaunted Cup of Excellence award, which brings prestige and high prices at auction.

Here's a case where I would not substitute -- but others might. I thought the 2008 Cup of Excellence winner -- at $65 a half-pound -- was much more vibrant than the same coffee picked at a different time, which Stumptown sells for $12 for 12 ounces.

Palates vary, and fellow cupper Xela Del-Campo (sniffing coffee in red, above) loved the $12 version.

It was her first cupping, which is coffee-talk for tasting. When she dropped by Stumptown for a latte, the super-friendly baristas told her it was about to begin downstairs.

Thinking they meant the Chinese medicine form of cupping, she thought, "that's kind of bizarre to have cupping down here."

But she meandered underground where roaster Wolfgang Klinker and apprentice roaster Adam Koehler do their magic, met them and Stumptown barista Zachary Carlsen, and discovered another form of cupping. "This is my first time, and I think it's pretty fantastic."

Who wouldn't? Even a couple of Starbucks baristas took part.

But a more pressing question is, on what occasion do you pay $95 for a half pound of coffee?

MELISSA ALLISON/THE SEATTLE TIMES

Delicious and pricey.