Description
Black Ivory coffee
There are exceptional coffees because of their rarity. This is the case of Black Ivory. It is therefore very expensive, and even much more expensive than “Kopi Luwak” or “civet coffee”. Now, the most expensive coffee in the world is the one harvested from elephant excrement: Black Ivory.
A coffee prepared by elephants… Curiously, there is only one place in the world where Black Ivory is harvested. This coffee was created ten years ago in the remote rural province of Surin, Thailand and is made through a very special process. Coffee cherries are naturally ripened by Thai elephants.
These are exclusively Arabica cherries. They are picked on the heights up to 1500m altitude. The production of this coffee may seem strange because they go through a unique process: the coffee cherries are first ingested by elephants. They are then collected in their dung before being processed like normal beans to obtain the finished product.
Coffee fruits are brought to families who take care of elephants. Cherries are mixed with elephants’ favorite food. It can be rice, bananas and other fruits, bamboo, tamarind… Elephants are herbivores and can ingest up to 200 kg of plants per day. But the problem is that they only digest 40% of what they eat. This diversity of food ensures that the elephant enjoys its food and derives nutritional benefit from it. Above all, each elephant according to its taste, like humans ultimately makes its own recipe.
The transformation of coffee cherries by a process of incomplete digestion: Once started, the digestion process can take between 12 and 72 hours depending on how much food is already in the elephant’s stomach. When they are expelled in the excrement of the elephant, the intact coffee beans have nevertheless undergone some transformations in the transit of the pachyderm. Yet when they are recovered from the excrement, they appear intact.
The processing of Black Ivory coffee beans: the cherries collected from elephant dung are then collected and students are called in for further processing of the cherries: washing and drying the cherries in the sun.
After the green coffee beans are dried to a certain percentage of moisture, the cherries are then shelled and sorted by machine and then by hand for physical defects and size. Only the larger sizes are chosen to ensure even roasting. Then, the beans are roasted by master roasters and then carefully packaged to guarantee the Black Ivory’s freshness before being ground. The grains in grains are finally shipped to the most luxurious hotels around the world. A certain quantity is kept available directly on the blackivorycoffee.com website. You too could, whether you are an amateur or curious, test this remarkable coffee.
