When you think of expensive coffee, the first thought that comes to many is the Coffee known as “Kopi Luwak” or “Civet Coffee”, traditionally made on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Bali and in the Philippines.
It gets its name due to the fermentation process it goes through whereby a Civet (A bush-cat like animal native to Asia) eats the coffee cherry, digests it and defecates. The cherries are then collected from the fecal matter which is turned into coffee. Call it artisanal.
Because of this, it can be traded at around $100 to $500 per lb for the coffee.
However, the popularity of Kopi Luwak has brought with it a lot of negative press and criticism.
Local coffee makers are trying and mass-produce the blend and severely compromising the treatment of the Civets who are often left in battery cages.
Black Ivory Coffee, a sustainable and conscious coffee maker use a similar technique in its harvesting except Elephants are used instead of civets.
The harvesting starts by carefully handpicking Thai Arabica beans from altitudes as high as 1500 metres, these cherries are then taken to the rural province of Surin, Thailand.
Elephants are overseen by “care giving families’ who mix the cherries into the Elephants favourite diet which include bananas, rice and tamarind. This ensures the Elephants enjoy the process just as much as humans do while maintaining a nutritious diet.
Due to the enzymes in the body, each elephant can produce a different taste to the end product making every refined cherry unique to that elephant. Once ingested the process can take anywhere from 12 to 72 hours. It’s just a waiting game.
Once elephants have excreted, care-givers handpick each cherry which is then transferred to a local high school where students wash, rake and sun-dry the cherries.
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Once dried to a certain percentage, they’re handpicked where only the biggest are chosen so they can go into the roasting process and maintain an even roast consistently.
The beans are then packed in a one-way valve packet and only ever produced and shipped to order. Black Ivory Coffee never warehouse their products.
Approximately 33kg of Cherries are needed to produce just 1kg or Black Ivory Coffee. which when refined sells on their site for a whopping $2000 per kg.
To put it in context, that equates to around £17 for an espresso at cost before it is served (Starbucks do this at 16 cents).
Now that is one expensive cup of joe.
You can buy Black Ivory Coffee and read more about their product at Blackivorycoffee.com
Black Ivory Coffee is now also available on Amazon
