The world's most expensive coffee, "Black Ivory" produced by elephants in Thailand, has hit the retail market. A kilogram of this coffee costs $1,100 US. "Black Ivory" can be bought in Tesco Lotus and Big C.

Civet coffee? Old news. The new history of coffee these days is made from coffee beans processed by elephants.

According to Anantara Hotel, the best coffee beans are grown at the resort in Chiang Rai, in the Golden Triangle area. In the huge elephant camp of the Anantara Hotel, a unique variety of “Black Ivory” is created from them.

Until recently, "Black Ivory" was only available at four Anantara resorts in the Maldives and, of course, in Thailand at Anantara resorts.

Currently, Black Ivory coffee is on sale in retail stores. It can be found in Big C and Tesco Lotus.

Everything has its price

Research shows that during the digestion process, elephant enzymes break down the protein in coffee beans. Since protein is one of the main factors responsible for the bitterness of coffee, low protein levels indicate a lack of bitterness. But everything has its price.

Black Ivory coffee processed by elephants sells for US$1,100 per kilogram or US$50 per cup and is one of the most expensive coffees in the world.

For comparison, civet coffee costs around US$500-600 per kilogram or US$30 per cup. Civet coffee is coffee processed by cats and produced using the same technology - the animal eats coffee beans, the proteins are destroyed during digestion.

At the Anantara Hotel, guests who order a cup of Black Ivory will see the beans harvested from which they will be served a unique drink in a traditional coffee balancing siphon.

Eight percent of all coffee sales go to the Thailand Elephant Foundation.

Process of creation

To create a unique type of coffee, 30 domestic elephants and their mahouts with their families were recruited and rescued.

The process begins with selecting the best Thai Arabica beans, which grow at an altitude of 1,500 m. Elephants readily eat coffee beans, which are excreted from the body as nature dictates. Elephant mahouts and their wives select coffee from elephant dung and dry it in the sun.

The obvious question is: isn't it dangerous to get elephants hooked on caffeine?

Anantara Hotel Director John Roberts

At the very beginning, when the idea of ​​​​creating a new type of coffee arose, we asked ourselves the question: what will we do with 26 elephants who will receive coffee every morning, how we drink a cup of coffee and, if it is not available one day, we will deal with a herd of angry elephants?

But I learned that for caffeine to form, coffee beans must be heated above 70°C. So elephants do not become addicted to coffee.

The elephants that create Black Ivory coffee participate in major charity events in Thailand.

At the popular King's Cup elephant polo in Hua Hin, an elephant from Chiang Rai treated guests to his coffee

Another one has appeared - “elephant”, produced in Thailand. Coffee, the price of which exceeds $1,000 per kilogram, is highly valued by connoisseurs and is considered the most expensive in the world.

1. This coffee variety is called Black Ivory. Its production is similar to Kopi Luwak coffee: undigested coffee beans pass through the animal's gastrointestinal tract, are treated with an enzyme that gives them a unique mild taste and aroma, and are excreted naturally.

2. You can try coffee with a unique taste in several 5-star hotels located in the north of the country, as well as in the Maldives and Abu Dhabi. For a cup of Black Ivory coffee you will have to pay 50 dollars, and if you want to buy beans, a kilogram will cost 1,100 dollars.

3. Coffee is produced in the Golden Triangle - at the junction of the borders of three countries: Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. Previously, large quantities of drugs were produced here.

4. The production of this type of coffee was established by Canadian Blake Dinkin. As he says, coffee beans, when they enter the animal’s stomach, undergo natural processing: stomach acid breaks down the protein that gives coffee its bitterness. Thanks to this, coffee acquires a soft taste and aroma that sets Black Ivory coffee apart from other varieties.

5. Elephants' large stomachs take almost 30 hours to digest coffee beans. By mixing with sugar cane and bananas - one of the most favorite delicacies of elephants - coffee acquires an amazing taste and aroma.

6. The high cost of Black Ivory coffee is explained by the fact that to produce 1 kg of coffee, an elephant must eat 35 kg of Arabica coffee beans. But even such a high price did not prevent the sale of 70 kg of coffee during the first weeks of November. In 2013, Blake Dinkin plans to produce 500 kilograms of elephant coffee.

This is a continuation of my report from a coffee plantation. In the first part, I wrote about the most expensive coffee in the world - Kopi Luwak. About how it is produced with the help of small cute animals, musangs (palm martens), how it is packaged, how our tourists are deceived. If anyone is interested, read the previous review.

This review of mine is about another elite fermented coffee that is produced with the help of elephants, the so-called « Elephantcoffee". It is produced in parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. It is called differently in different places. Somewhere it is called “Ivory” or “ Black Ivory(Black Tusk)." In my case it's « Voi Prenn" , if translated literally, then voi is an elephant, prenn is the name of a waterfall. I managed to translate it as "Prennian Elephant".

It is unknown when the first elephant coffee appeared. But the history of its appearance is quite obvious. World fame and ever-increasing value Kopi Luwak for a long time haunted enterprising businessmen. And they began to experiment with different animals that could be fed coffee beans. The most obvious was the elephant - throw bags of Arabica coffee into it, like into a furnace, and get tons of raw materials as a result. Just have time to count your profits.

But everything turned out to be not as simple and obvious as with the musangs. The elephant is a vegetarian, and at the same time, is not particularly picky about food. He won't live on coffee alone. An elephant eats at least 50 kg per day. food and drinks up to 300 liters. water. The digestion process lasts approximately 30-35 hours. At the same time, the elephant breaks and chews many coffee beans. To get 1 kg. About 35 kg of coffee raw material suitable for further processing must be fed to an elephant. Arabica beans. Productivity is not very high. Let's add to this the labor-intensive process of washing and drying coffee beans. Hence the high cost of this coffee, commensurate with the cost Kopi Luwak.

In the elephant's stomach, coffee beans are processed by gastric juice, which breaks down the proteins that give coffee bitterness, and mixed with the juices of other plants (for example, bananas, sugar cane) that elephants love. Elephants have much softer gastric juice than musangs, so E lephant coffee turns out to be somewhat stronger and bitter than Kopi Luwak.

By aroma and taste E lephant coffee very different from Kopi Luwak. Its taste is not chocolate-caramel, but rather fruity-berry. But also very aromatic and rich. And its bitterness is more noticeable. E lephant coffee I would conditionally call “male” coffee, but Kopi Luwak - “feminine”.

Cooking E lephant coffee I usually work out in the mornings on weekends. My irreplaceable copper Turk “Ideal Wife” and my “signature” recipe help me with this.

High-quality coffee is not the cheapest pleasure. Therefore, a product that is sold at a low price does not inspire confidence, since it is most often a counterfeit or made from low-quality raw materials. However, the prices for coffee made from animal feces are surprising and perplexing to the average population of the planet. Only a few can afford this exclusive product.

These are such exotic varieties of coffee that not everyone will dare to try them.

However, it roughly looks like this:

1. Terra Nera from palm civet feces. The cost of 1000 g is impressive and reaches a value of more than 20 thousand dollars. It is sold only in one of the stores in the capital of Great Britain in exclusive packaging made of special thin silver paper.
2. Black Ivory is a drink made from elephant dung. The cost of such coffee is more than $1,100 per 1 kg.
3. Luwak is a coffee made from animal feces from Vietnam. Not everyone can afford elite Vietnamese coffee, since 1 kg of roasted raw material called Luwak costs around 250 – 1200 dollars. You can try it in very expensive restaurants or purchase it in the country of its production.

There are also many other expensive, but less popular varieties of coffee.

What animals “make” elite varieties of coffee?

Most elite varieties of coffee can be obtained by humans with the help of animals. Some of them have unique extrasensory perception and can find the finest grains. The most famous helpers in this matter are lemurs, monkeys, bats and even elephants. From an aesthetic point of view, many find it difficult to drink a drink made from grains that were once in animal droppings. However, coffee lovers claim that the taste of such drinks is amazing and incomparable to anything else.
Knowing which animal feces make delicious coffee, it’s easier to navigate prices and product names.

Elite Vietnamese coffee drink - Luwak from the droppings of the Musang animal

The secret is that musang loves to eat coffee berries.

Indonesian Luwak coffee helps produce a certain type of marten called musang. Their habitat covers many regions of Southeast and South Asia. All gourmets agree that it is not a shame to serve this kind of coffee from Vietnam to the king. The production volume is small and does not exceed several hundred kilograms per year.

Coffee fruits are the favorite food of Malayan martens. They are very picky eaters; they will never eat green grains, but will choose the ripest and most delicious ones. In a day, a marten can eat about 900–1000 g of grains, more than 90% of which will be digested in the intestines of the animals, and only 5–10% will come out in its original form, but without pulp.

While in the digestive system of the animal, the fruits of the coffee tree are treated with gastric juice and special enzymes, which gives them unique taste properties.

It is interesting that grains are selected from the feces of females only for 6 months, and the rest of the time “girls” do not produce an odorous enzyme.
The collected grains are thoroughly washed, dried and fried using special technology. Details of the production and processing of raw materials are kept secret, but manufacturers promise purity and high quality of the finished product. The drink made from it has an elegant bouquet of flavors of sweet caramel, delicate vanilla and bitter dark chocolate.

Today they are trying to produce this coffee on an industrial scale. However, this drink differs from the one made naturally. Apparently, in captivity, animals are not so generous with enzymes.

"Black tusk" from elephant feces

It takes an elephant about 15-30 hours to digest coffee beans.

This coffee is considered one of the most exclusive. It is sold only in a few stores in Thailand - the homeland of this brand - in a total amount of about 48 - 49 kg per year. These figures are not surprising, because to get 1000 g of coffee from elephant feces, the Thai giant needs to eat at least 34 kg of selected Arabica coffee fruits grown in the highlands. The process of collecting raw materials is unpleasant: after defecation, the wives of the elephant mahouts collect it and carefully sort through it, looking for surviving grains. Then the raw materials are washed and taken to another place for further drying.

Grains that are not digested in the elephant's body completely lose their bitterness, as stomach acid breaks down the proteins that give the drink a bitter taste.

Instead of the lost bitterness, the fruits of the coffee tree are saturated with the aromas of bananas, sugar cane and other tropical vegetation, which are so abundant in the animal’s menu. The grains stay in the elephant’s stomach for more than 20–30 hours, and this time is enough for them to completely change their properties. The resulting coffee has a soft, rich, delicate, slightly sweet taste without the usual bitterness.

You can try such an exclusive drink in just a few resorts in the Maldives. The beans are always ground right in front of the client so that he can fully appreciate the taste of the drink. A cup of freshly brewed coffee costs at least $50.

Terra Nera from palm civet feces

Due to special enzymes in the stomach and intestines of palm civets, coffee beans are processed.

Coffee of this brand is rightfully considered the most expensive, since the amount of product sold is only 45 kg per year, which is due to the unique method of its production. This coffee is “produced” by palm civets that live in the southeastern part of Peru. The grains, having been inside these animals and coming out along with excrement, acquire a unique aroma of cocoa and hazelnuts. The collected raw materials are selected, cleaned and fried to the desired condition. Ready-made coffee is divided into 6 roast classes, and this must be indicated on the packaging.

The cost of one package starts from 11 thousand dollars. All bags of coffee are tied with laces with 24-karat gold tags, where information about the manufacturer and degree of roasting is engraved.

Blue Mountain Coffee from Jamaica

This coffee is obtained in the traditional way. However, everything affects the taste: the unique composition of the soil, the direction of the winds, and the location of the plantations. The grains combine different tastes - from bitterness to sweetness and sourness. The aroma of the drink is unusual and resembles the smell of fresh nectarines.

More than 85% of the product produced in Jamaica is sold in Japan, so purchasing such a drink in our country is problematic. In addition, 1 kg of finished raw materials costs about 27 thousand rubles.

Not everyone is able to try all the exotic types of coffee. In addition to the high cost, there is a great danger of purchasing a fake. Therefore, it is better to try this drink in the countries where it is produced.

In Sri Lanka, they organized an unusual, but very profitable business on... elephant dung. Of course, their whole life there is built around elephants! In every hotel, in every corner of the country, all the entertainment for tourists is elephants. And then someone came up with such a bright idea - to make paper from elephant cakes!

And this paper, as well as numerous products made from it, fly away with a bang. Like hot cakes, excuse me for the inelegant comparison)
Firstly, all elephant manure is collected from the fields, washed and dried. Now it doesn’t smell, you can touch it, but we didn’t do it just in case there was a fireman.

Then the substance is again filled with water, fermented, and heated until it reaches the desired consistency. Just in case, this happens behind bars, since the properties of elephant dung are not fully understood, and there is a fear that a new dangerous form of life may arise there.

Then in special bathrooms it is all settled and mulched. If you touch the substrate with your hand for a long time at this stage, a mustache will grow.

That's it, now you can touch and even write on the liquid without fear. The paper is almost ready, it's time to dry it. To do this, it is poured into special forms and left in the sun.

After a couple of days, the almost finished product is taken out and passed through bulky hand presses.

It turned out to be quite real paper. The truth is very relief and textured. The inclusions are apparently the remains of the breeding elephant's breakfast)

Now we need to make a product out of this paper that tourists will like. Basically, these are, of course, notebooks, envelopes and albums.