Elephants make the world’s most expensive coffee, naturally. Coffee beans excreted by elephants – branded the ‘Black Ivory Coffee’ – are priced at $1100 per kilogram. That makes it roughly $50 per cup.
Coffee producers in Thailand feed coffee beans to elephants, whose digestive enzymes break down the coffee protein, reduce the bitter taste, and engender the beans with a ‘special quality.’ When the elephants poop them out, the producers pick up the ‘naturally refined beans’ and sell them for a pretty penny at select retail outlets in Abu Dhabi, Maldives and Thailand.
The elephant poop coffee may seem extortionate and overpriced for mere mortals whose monthly coffee budgets are below $1000. But there is a cheaper option – Kopi Luwak. Till recently, the Kopi Luwak, made from the coffee beans excreted by the Asian Palm Civet, was considered to be the most expensive coffee in the world, selling at $500 per kilogram.
With a fifty per cent reduction in the price, the Vietnamese Civet cat shit coffee may seem like a bargain compared to the Thai elephant poop coffee. But the elephant poop coffee beats the civet cat shit coffee in taste. The ‘Black Ivory Coffee,’ produced by ‘jumbo baristas,’ is ‘earthy in flavour,’ ‘smooth on the palate,’ and ‘very refined,’ according to coffee connoisseurs who tasted the black coffee from a ‘dainty demitasse’ in the ‘lush hills of northern Thailand.’
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