Exotic coffee beans plucked from elephant dung

Blake Dinkin, left, watches as a Thai mahout feeds Meena, a 12-year old elephant with coffee beans mixed with fruits at an elephant camp in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand, Dec. 3, 2012. Dinkin's Black Ivory, a new blend from the hills of northern Thailand and the excrement of elephants, ranks among the world's most expensive cups of coffee. / AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong

GOLDEN TRIANGLE, Thailand In the lush hills of northern Thailand, a herd of 20 elephants is helping to excrete some of the world's most expensive coffee.

Trumpeted as earthy in flavor and smooth on the palate, the exotic new brew is made from beans eaten by Thai elephants and plucked a day later from their dung. A gut reaction inside the elephant creates what its founder calls the coffee's unique taste.

Stomach turning or oddly alluring, this is not just one of the world's most unusual specialty coffees. At $1,100 per kilogram ($500 per pound), it's also among the world's priciest.

A coffee bean is picked from elephant dung at an elephant camp in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand.

/ AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong

For now, only the wealthy or well-traveled have access to the cuppa, which is called Black Ivory Coffee. 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 the price tag of about $50 a serving.

The Associated Press traveled to the coffee's production site in the Golden Triangle, an area historically known for producing drugs more potent than coffee, to see the jumbo baristas at work. And to sip the finished product from a dainty demi-tasse.

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

In the misty mountains where Thailand meets Laos and Myanmar, the coffee's creator cites biology and scientific research to answer the basic question: Why elephants?

A Thai mahout's wife picks coffee beans out of elephant dung at a camp in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand.

/ AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong

The result is similar in civet coffee, or Kopi Luwak, another exorbitantly expensive variety extracted from the excrement of the weasel-like civet. But the elephants' massive stomach provides a bonus.

Think of the elephant as the animal kingdom's equivalent of a slow cooker. It takes between 15-30 hours to digest the beans, which stew together with bananas, sugar cane and other ingredients in the elephant's vegetarian diet to infuse unique earthy and fruity flavors, said the 42-year-old Canadian, who has a background in civet coffee.

"My theory is that a natural fermentation process takes place in the elephant's gut," said Dinkin. "That fermentation imparts flavors you wouldn't get from other coffees."

At the jungle retreat that is home to the herd, conservationists were initially skeptical about the idea.

"My initial thought was about caffeine — won't the elephants get wired on it or addicted to coffee?" said John Roberts, director of elephants at the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation, a refuge for rescued elephants. It now earns 8 percent of the coffee's total sales, which go toward the herd's healthcare. "As far as we can tell there is definitely no harm to the elephants."

Before presenting his proposal to the foundation, Dinkin said he worked with a Canadian-based veterinarian that ran blood tests on zoo elephants showing they don't absorb any caffeine from eating raw coffee cherries.

"I thought it was well worth a try because we're looking for anything that can help elephants to make a living," said Roberts, who estimates the cost of keeping each elephant is about $1,000 a month.

An expensive cuppa joe: Black Ivory coffee, priced at $1,100 per kilogram, is poured into a cup at a hotel restaurant in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand.

/ AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong

As for the coffee's inflated price, Dinkin half-joked that elephants are highly inefficient workers. It takes 36 pounds of raw coffee cherries to produce 1 pound of Black Ivory coffee. The majority of beans get chewed up, broken or lost in tall grass after being excreted.

And, his artisinal process is labor intensive. He uses pure Arabica beans hand-picked by hill-tribe women from a small mountain estate. Once the elephants do their business, the wives of elephant mahouts collect the dung, break it open and pick out the coffee. After a thorough washing, the coffee cherries are processed to extract the beans, which are then brought to a gourmet roaster in Bangkok.

Inevitably, the elephant coffee has become the butt of jokes. Dinkin shared his favorites: Crap-accino. Good to the last dropping. Elephant poop coffee.

As far away as Hollywood, even Jay Leno has taken cracks.

"Here's my question," Leno quipped recently. "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."

• no previous page
• next

1/2

[jeffkro]

Sure, you could put a little more sugar in your coffee to make it less bitter, but why do that when you can chase an elephant around and pick coffee beans out of its feces.

[jeffkro]

Sure, you could put a little more sugar in your coffee to make it less bitter, but why do that when you can chase an elephant around and pick coffee beans out of its feces.

[inketolstoy]

Hot coco for me, please.

[estabwary]

And the unexpected side effect of better long-term memory.

[Kovacsmaster]

The rich people paying extreme prices for elephant poo coffee must be rich spoiled slobs that inherited the money, not somebody that earned it the hard way. I will pass on elephant poo coffee even if 1100 bucks a pounds.

[ttipbc]

"Waitress - this coffee tastes like crap! Oh, it's supposed to? Well, I have to admit it's much better than that bitter stuff you used to serve". Just one question though - who had so much idle time on their hands that the only thing they could think of to do was dig through some elephant s**t & pick out coffee beans? And then to roast & brew them & convince others to try it too? Crazy.

[eroteme2]

Sounds great. But I hope our government does not require coffee bean labels descrbing how the beans were processed.