What are two things most of us absolutely need to do in the morning? Poop, and then get a cup of coffee to charge the body up for the long day ahead.
You thought coffee makes you poop. But in some parts of the world, poop makes you coffee!
Kopi Luwak or Civet Coffee
Made from partly-digested coffee beans eaten and pooped out by civets
This whole coffee followed by poo was taken to a whole new level when heard about Kopi Luwak (Civet coffee). For those who do not know what that is – a civet is a small, mostly nocturnal mammal found in the forests of Tropical Asia and parts of Africa. And it poops out the seeds of the coffee cherries after partially digesting it.
It looks something like this.
The civet poop coffee is the most expensive in the world, with prices going up to $3000 per kilo. But the popularity of the kopi luwak has made life miserable for the poor civets. Poachers are now keeping them in captivity and over-feeding them coffee cherries. I mean, guys, come on, we can root for civet coffee but not the I-was-forced-to-poop-for-this coffee. If coffee was like diamonds, then civet coffee would be the blood diamond.
Black Ivory Coffee (Northern Thailand)
Made from elephant dung
Yeah, so let’s move to the next exotic coffee on the list. And lo and behold, even this one is a poo related! Whaaaaaaat!
But wait, that right up there – it actually looks pretty good! How can that be?
Don’t be fooled by the 5-star presentation skills – that’s still poo laced coffee bean right there. To make it sound fancy, they even call it the Black Ivory Coffee and a small espresso-sized portion goes for around $13. Yep, and you thought Starbucks was expensive.
But why is it so expensive though? Well, the fact that it takes an elephant about 17 hours to eat the coffee cherries, semi-digest the beans and then poop them out, rules out any possibility of a fast-paced industry. And thankfully, elephants aren’t that easy to capture and cage which keeps away the poop-coffee exploiters from harming them. So, every season, about 440 pounds of coffee gets made, which tilts the power towards the supplier as there’s a huge demand.
To create 1 kg coffee, the elephants eat 33 kg cherries.
Black Ivory Coffee, started by Blake Dinkin, a Canadian, is created exclusively in Thailand with Thai arabica coffee. Elephants at the Golden Elephant Triangle Foundation, a rescue organization, are fed as many or as few coffee cherries as they like, which usually turns out to be quite a lot. Dinkin says that the elephants actually create a smoother bean because their diet is 100 percent herbivorous, unlike the civets. And the animals are not only treated in a non-cruel way, but 8 percent of Dinkin’s profits go back to the sanctuary.
All images from Fastnews .