Elephant poo coffee

Source: Associated Press (You Tube)

One lump or poo: World's most expensive coffee at £30 a cup made using beans digested and, er, flavoured by elephants

Black Ivory is produced in northern Thailand costing $1,100 (£685) per kg

Elephants are fed the coffee and beans are taken from the dung

Unique coffee only sold in Thailand, the Maldives and Abu Dhabi

Forget robusta and arabica - this is the world's most expensive coffee, given its unique flavour by...an elephant's digestive tract.

The thought of a coffee bean passing through an elephant's internal organs might not leave coffee-lovers overly enthused.

But the unique coffee, created in the hills of northern Thailand, is now the world's most expensive variety.

The elephant dung coffee is created when the animals have eaten and digested the beans, with a gut reaction inside the animals said to be responsible for the unique flavouring.

Attendants scurry to collect the huge animals' dung, before forensically sifting through it for the valued beans.

The provenance of the beans may leave some connoisseurs feeling nauseous, but the coffee's price tag certainly places the bean at the highest end of the huge global market.

The coffee is priced at $1,100 (£685) per kilogram.

But for those brave enough to give the coffee a try, only the most well-travelled will be able to get their hands on a cup.

It was launched last month at a few luxury hotels in remote corners of the world - first in northern Thailand, then the Maldives and now Abu Dhabi - with a price tag of around $50 (£31) a cup.

The coffee's creator, Blake Dinkin, said scientific research had made him pursue the idea of using elephants to produce the coffee.

Dinkin, who spent $300,000 (£187,000) developing the idea, said: 'When an elephant eats coffee, its stomach acid breaks down the protein found in coffee, which is a key factor in bitterness. You end up with a cup that's very smooth without the bitterness of regular coffee.'

The coffee is similar to civet coffee, or Kopi Luwak, another exorbitantly expensive variety extracted from the excrement of the weasel-like civet.

An elephant's massive stomach provides a bonus, however. It takes between 15-30 hours to digest the beans, which stew together with bananas, sugar cane and other ingredients.

Dinkin, 42, from Canada, said this helped infuse unique earthy and fruity flavors.

He added: 'My theory is that a natural fermentation process takes place in the elephant's gut. That fermentation imparts flavours you wouldn't get from other coffees.'

At the jungle retreat that is home to the herd, conservationists were initially sceptical about the idea as they thought the caffeine would affect the elephants.

But Dinkin said he worked with a Canadian-based veterinarian that ran blood tests on zoo elephants showing they do not absorb any caffeine from eating raw coffee cherries.

As for the coffee's inflated price, Dinkin half-joked that elephants are highly inefficient workers. It takes 33 kilograms (72 pounds) of raw coffee cherries to produce 1 kilogram (2 pounds) of Black Ivory coffee.

The majority of beans get chewed up, broken or lost in tall grass after being excreted.

The process is also labour-intensive, with the wives of elephant mahouts responsible for collecting the dung.

They break it open, pick out the coffee and, after a thorough washing, the coffee cherries are processed to extract the beans, which are then brought to a gourmet roaster in Bangkok.

The coffee's unique production process has already spread across the world, inevitably leading to jokes.

U.S. chat show host Jay Leno quipped: 'Here's my question: Who is the first person that saw a bunch of coffee beans and a pile of elephant dung and said, "You know, if I ground those up and drank it, I'll bet that would be delicious".'

Black Ivory's maiden batch of 70 kilograms (150 pounds) has sold out and Dinkin hopes to create six times that amount in 2013, catering to a customer he sees as relatively affluent, open-minded and adventurous with a desire to tell a good story.

Source: Daily Mail

Vocabulary:

a lump (of sugar) -

poo -

to feed (fed,fed) -

dung (n) -

flavour (v/n) -

gut (n) -

to scurry -

to sift through -

a price tag -

brave (adj) -

to give stg a try -

to pursue (an idea) -

to break down (proteins) -

smooth (adj) -

to end up with -

bitterness (n) / bitter (adj) -

to stew -

earthy (adj) -

a jungle retreat -

a cherry -

raw (adj) -

to chew up -

thorough (adj) -

to spread -

a bunch -

a pile -

to grind (ground,ground) -

to bet -

a batch -

sold out -





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