What is made from elephant poop. Vietnamese Luwak coffee: the most expensive coffee made from Terra Nera excrement from palm civet feces

The most expensive and most difficult to produce coffee, called "Black Tusk", is made in the province of Chiang Rai, Thailand. The secret of the drink is in its unusual processing method - Arabica coffee berries are passed through the digestive tract of elephants. It’s good for both people and animals! Firstly, the working elephants are fed deliciously. Secondly, with their “labor” they themselves sponsor the creation and support of elephant veterinary clinics in Thailand. Well, they earn a lot from coffee - one kilogram costs buyers $1,100. To produce it, you need to feed an elephant 33 times more fresh coffee berries.

(Total 25 photos)

1. Niang and Linda - two wives of one husband - collect coffee beans passed through the digestive tract of elephants, Chiang Saen, Chiang Rai province, Thailand. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

2. A Lisu woman picks ripe Arabica berries at a plantation in Phrao, Chiang Rai province, Thailand. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

3. Harvesting coffee berries. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

4. Ripe coffee berries resemble cherry fruits. In English they are called “cherries”. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

5. Mahut (man who rides elephants) walks with his elephant in the early foggy morning. At this time, elephants eat grass in the meadows. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

6. Indian elephant used in the “technological process”. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

7. Lun makes rice porridge with coffee berries especially for elephants. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

8. Washed coffee beans for porridge. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

9. Rice and coffee porridge. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

10. Elephants eat their lunch, which will then become the most expensive coffee in the world. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

11. Elephants really like this kind of food. However, they also eat grass in large quantities. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

12. Brown elephant eye. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

13. A mess of porridge scattered by an elephant while eating. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

14. The founder of the Black Tusk production, Blake Dinkin, personally feeds the elephants. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

15. Return “to base”. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

16. The long-awaited litter. It takes an animal 15-30 hours to digest the berries. In this case, most of the grains (only the berry is digested) spoil, break or are lost in the grass. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

17. Lun is resting while his elephants “work” - digesting coffee berries. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

18. Collecting coffee beans from elephant dung. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

19. This extravagant method of processing coffee was taken from Indonesian colleagues who make “Kopi Luwak” - coffee passed through the digestive tract of musang. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)22. Miki Giles from Hong Kong enjoys Black Tusk with 6-year-old stud elephant Meena. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)25. An Indian elephant serving for the benefit of people and its relatives. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Have you ever wondered how elephants shit? The question, of course, is philosophical. Well-mannered elephants shit in the toilet, and ill-mannered elephants shit right on the street. Gee-gee. Okay, much more interesting - how much shit can an adult elephant shit? Let's figure it out

As they write in pseudo-scientific sources, an adult elephant shits 110 kg of fresh shit in a day! Wow! That's more than the average person weighs! This amount of elephant poop can fertilize an entire farm. It's much healthier than just flushing poop down the drain.

Elephants pooping is a great force! The main thing is not to stand in the way of a shitting elephant, otherwise the consequences can be very dire.

For example, if you just gape, an elephant can immediately crap on you.

Elephants suffering from constipation are especially dangerous. At first they may not shit for a long time, lowering the vigilance of the workers serving them, and then they can pile up a huge pile of shit. True, constipation in elephants is quite rare, and very radical methods are often used to treat them...

But immediately after constipation, you are guaranteed an avalanche of elephant shit! The main thing is to jump back in time, which is not always possible...

Thus, elephants poop a lot, a lot - 110 kg of shit per day! And they fart a lot too - 2 cubic meters of methane per day! Walking shit factories, in a word Eh, this would be shit - yes, for the dacha, for fertilizer, and intestinal gases - for refueling the family car with biogas.

Well, do you want to get yourself an elephant? A useful animal for the household. In any case, you definitely won’t experience a shortage of shit

Many people have heard about paper frames made from elephant excrement, but for coffee... However, coffee that has passed through the intestines of an elephant exists! But are you willing to pay US$50 for a cup of coffee made from elephant dung? Be free from prejudice! Coffee beans that have passed through the digestive tract of an elephant make coffee much tastier, say knowledgeable people.

Coffee beans were used as food for elephants in the Golden Triangle area by the Asian Elephant Foundation, in the Golden Triangle Conservation Area in Chiang Rai.

Have you heard about coffee made from civet cats? These are "outdated" traditions! Now it is much more interesting to talk about coffee made from beans that have been digested by an elephant.

At least that’s what they say in the Anantara resort area in Thailand, where they clarify that they get their grains from the elephant camp in the Golden Triangle in Chiang Rai.

"Research shows that during digestion, elephant enzymes break down coffee protein," one of the hotels said in a press release. "Since protein is one of the main factors responsible for the bitterness of coffee, less protein means almost no bitterness."

But bitterly free coffee comes at a price. And Black Cat, the name given to elephant dung coffee, sells for $1,100 per kilogram - or $50 per cup - making it one of the most expensive in the world.

By comparison, civet coffee - which is made with the same concept: the animal eats the coffee, digestion breaks down the proteins - sells for about $500-$600 per kilogram, or $30 per cup.

For now, Black Ivory is only available at four Anantara resorts in the Maldives, in addition to the Golden Triangle resorts in northern Thailand.

Guests of Anantara who decide to order a cup of Black Ivory will see how the grains are poured by hand and boiled using a traditional siphon.

The seed preparation process itself begins with the selection of top Thai Arabica, grains that were collected at an altitude of 1500 meters. Elephants readily eat them, and before they are digested, they are excreted from the body.
The grains are picked up by the mahouts from the camp and their wives, then dried in the sun.

To date, the sale of coffee made from elephant excrement provides income to 30 elephants, along with their mahouts and their families. The obvious question that comes out of all this is: Is it dangerous to get a herd of elephants hooked on caffeine? Anantara's director, John Roberts, addressed this issue in a recent blog post, saying that it was originally related to the question of "what are we going to do with 26 very angry elephants who didn't eat coffee for breakfast on the days when No?

But to extract caffeine from coffee beans, it must be heated to a temperature above 70 C. Therefore, coffee beans are not dangerous to elephants.

Would you pay $1,100 per kilogram of coffee to get rid of bitterness? Have you ever tried Kopi Luwak coffee that passed through the digestive tract of an animal called a civet cat? Share your coffee experiments in the comments.

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Coffee is the most sold product after oil. There are coffee lovers in every home. Russia is among the top ten largest coffee lovers. Almost everyone loves coffee, but not everyone knows that the most expensive and most difficult, elite and prestigious is Kopi Luwak coffee (coffee made from excrement). This is a unique variety of coffee No. 1.

Gourmets detect in it an unusually soft taste of caramel with the most delicate aroma of dark chocolate and vanilla with a persistent pleasant aftertaste. One cup of coffee can cost up to $90 in Europe. This probably adds a special charm to the excellent taste.

The technology of its preparation will shock anyone. Exclusive coffee for a narrow circle is obtained in the most extreme way - this coffee is not for the faint of heart. The method of making aromatic coffee differs from the traditional one. This unique, most expensive type of coffee is chosen from the droppings (excrement, in simple terms - ordinary poop) of animals.

Soft to the touch and fluffy wild animals, distant relatives of the Rikki-Tikki-Tavi mongoose, resembling a cat with a big nose - the Asian palm civet (civet, luwak, musang or Chinese badger) are big fans of coffee berries. Moving from one tree to another, animals absorb the ripest and largest coffee berries in huge quantities.

Ripe coffee beans are red in color and resemble the fruits of a bay tree. During the day, one voracious animal can swallow up to 1 kg of coffee beans, from which only 50 grams of undigested coffee beans can then be picked out.

Coffee beans treated with gastric juice enzymes and civet: - dried, cleaned and peeled, washed thoroughly, dried again, then lightly and carefully roasted at a certain temperature. The exact roasting recipe is kept secret.

Outlandish beans obtained in such an unusual way can only be obtained for 6 months of the year, and the rest of the time the animals do not produce the enzyme that gives coffee a unique aroma. Grains obtained from males have a greater and more pleasant aroma. A high standard is applied to defects in the appearance of coffee beans; the beans go through up to 15 degrees of sorting.

The most expensive Kopi Luwak coffee with a unique aroma is produced in Indonesia in a special microclimate on the island of Java and earn huge money from it.

Some researchers tried to get the same coffee in Ethiopia, simulating the natural process, since coffee trees grow there and civets live there. According to the tasters, Ethiopian coffee is inferior in taste to the original.

The most expensive coffee in Vietnam is called Chon, this is the most expensive and unusual coffee.

The preparation technology is as complex as in Indonesia; coffee beans are used, processed by the stomach of an amazing animal. But the locals in Vietnam do not prepare coffee in a copper Turk or Jazz, but in a drip filter right above the cup.

The taste, aroma and thickness of coffee differs significantly from what Europeans are accustomed to. Vietnamese coffee is very thick, has a very rich aroma and a transparent dark color.

On the island of Bali, artificial small farms have been organized to produce delicacies for extreme sports enthusiasts. Luwak are kept in captivity, fed coffee berries and offer tourists a detailed look at the process of producing the most expensive coffee in the world, and if desired, even personally participate.

All work has not yet been mechanized and is performed manually. Lovers of curiosities with lots of cabbage love show-offs. Most fans of the special aromatic Luwak coffee with a delicate caramel taste are in Japan.

Huge profits from the sale of “Luvak coffee” inspired the hardworking, enterprising Thais to organize coffee production using the stomach of elephants. Therefore, a farm-zoo was created in the north of Thailand. The stomachs of a herd of 20 elephants process coffee beans for the elite Black Ivory Coffee (Black Tusk or Black Ivory).

The stomach of an elephant is many times larger than the stomach of the small predatory animal luwak (aka mussang). Coffee beans are kept in the elephant's stomach for more than a day, alongside a special diet of vegetables, bananas and sugar cane. During this time, coffee beans are saturated with fruit and vegetable aroma, processed by gastric juice, change their chemical composition and are naturally excreted, i.e. in the form of poop)

Since elephants are vegetarians, extreme vegans should give a clear preference to Black Ivory over civet coffee. To get 1 kg of coffee, you need to feed the animal 33 kg of selected Thai Arabika beans, hand-picked on highland coffee plantations.

Veterinarians periodically check the level of caffeine in the elephant's blood. Therefore, the cost of coffee for the elite rises to $1,100 per kg. Exclusive coffee is offered only in expensive Anantare hotels in the Maldives and in the Golden Triangle Nature Reserve between Burma, Laos and Thailand. The cost of one cup of coffee is only $50. The new variety of exclusive, original coffee is sold in very limited quantities - only 60 kg were offered for sale last year. It took $300,000 to develop a new type of coffee.

Coffee lovers, having tried a new variety of coffee, Black Ivari, note an unusual taste for which it is difficult to find epithets - it is a peculiar pleasant taste and an incomparable aroma.

In Russia, the first coffee house was opened in 1740 by order of Empress Anna Ioannovna. She was a big coffee lover. So Russian craftsmen should develop and put into production the production of coffee processed with Burenka. Its productivity with a constant appetite can compete with elephants, and the new coffee would be called Copi Burenka (or in our language: Burenka Coffee). And then you see, the name of the pioneer would be added to history, and even today the export of a new type of elite coffee would be added to the export of oil and gas.

If you, creaking your heart, gave your entire monthly salary as a teacher in Moscow for a package of coffee, then with bated breath, prepare yourself a cup, carefully preserving the foam while brewing, which from the first sip will fully reveal all the taste, divine aroma and make you want to drink everything to the end. Such delicacies greatly arouse curiosity, but sometimes reduce appetite, causing certain associations. For reference: Coffee from litter comes in different varieties. By far the most expensive is the original coffee made from Luwak dung, followed by coffee made from elephant dung. In third place is coffee made from monkeys!

And now we are trying to guess who is in fourth place? Enterprising farmers from the city of Minneapolis (Minnesota) have started producing coffee from cat droppings. And according to its manufacturers, anyone who has not tried this coffee has not tasted coffee at all!

I think you can guess that we are not talking about Napoleon here, but still about an elephant. And what he does on the field, everyone also guesses about the processes of his nutrition and digestion, as well as his excretory system.

Thailand and elephants are once again surprising and delighting the world.
It turns out that elephants can not only help people with hard work, entertain people with treks through the jungle, play polo and football, even draw, compete in running and throwing darts, and act out scenes of ancient battles.
What else are elephants useful for? Many tourists know that you can buy paper, various albums and notebooks made from elephant dung as a souvenir.
It’s hard to say now who first came up with the idea of making paper from poop.

However, I think there is one story about India worth telling.

One Indian businessman, while walking along the road to the temple near the Amber Palace in Jaipur, tells The Los Angeles Times, looked at a pile of elephant dung into which he had just nearly fallen and noticed that the texture of the herbivore's dung was very similar to wood.
“Eureka!” he thought. “Elephant poop paper.”
At that time, Vijender Shekhawat was 29 years old, producing handmade paper from cotton and struggling to make ends meet.
His family thought differently: “A complete fool.”
The Shekhawat dynasty came from the warrior caste. Yes, of course, the family has fallen into a bit of decline, but what will the neighbors think?
According to Shekhawat's mother, their ancestors once sat on the throne and the only thought,
which came to their minds about their son’s idea:
"How low we have fallen!"
Shekhawat's main buyer was also skeptical.
“This is too strange,” thought Mahima Mehra, director of paper production at Papeterie Co.
“This is simply ridiculous.” But Shekhawat stubbornly continued to experiment.
Paper made from 100% manure fell apart, 50% manure and 50% cotton was too fragile.
And finally, after many months, he found the right combination: 75% manure - 25% cotton.
Don't worry, the manure is washed first.
By then, Mehra had also backed the idea after researching the market.
It turned out that similar paper is already being made in Thailand, Sri Lanka, South Africa and other places.
To combat cynics, they cited Ganesha - the elephant-headed Hindu deity - saying there could be no harm in recycled divine waste.
"In our country, religion is everything. Suddenly, many people wanted to work with this paper," says Mehra.
Initially, there were difficulties in collecting raw materials, but Shekhawat solved this problem by feeding the numerous elephants that are used by mahouts to guide tourists in Jaipur. The quality of the raw materials improved, and everyone, including the drivers, was satisfied.
Initial attempts to outsource marketing to a German company failed.
The Germans were too serious for such a product.
"You can't be boring, you have to be funny with this kind of material," Mehra said.
And they decided to sell it themselves.
"Made from the best elephant dung in India" is written on the packaging of Haathi Chaap brand paper.
(elephant seal).
According to Mehra, some customers say "Ouch!" and refuse to touch her,
but the majority smile and hardly think about the smell.
"Once we explain how it's done, they absolutely love the idea."
The smell is truly indistinguishable, according to a journalist from The Los Angeles Times.
First, the manure is washed, then brought to a boil, adding salt and baking soda to moderate the smell.
This mass is beaten, sifted, and rolled into sheets. The final stage is drying, which takes from one day to a week during the rainy season.
Shekhawat experimented for some time: he tried feeding turmeric to elephants in the hope of creating yellow paper.
Did not work out.
He now adds organic colorings at the end of the process, including beet juice for the red paper, dried pomegranate skin for the gray and castor oil for the green.
Shekhawat's enterprise has been in existence for 8 years. He now produces 2,000 2-by-3-foot sheets weekly, which he sells to the United States and Europe.
Shekhawat has always had a penchant for charity. “As a child, he gave his lunch to the poor,” says his mother, “
Now he dreams of moving his workshop to the countryside to provide jobs for women who have little chance of leaving home, and to become an example for entrepreneurs."
“Call it God's providence or luck, but many things have fallen into place and I feel blessed,” says the successful businessman.
“They used to think I was stupid, now they think I’m a genius.”
Canadian entrepreneur Michael Flancman was also considered crazy by his partners when, in 2002, he brought from Thailand the idea of making paper products from elephant dung.
Today, Michael and his wife Tan's company, The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company, produces albums, notebooks, notebooks, photo frames, wrapping paper, bags and cards.
In addition to elephant poop, Elephant Poo uses horse and cow droppings, as well as panda excrement.
Products that are friendly to health and the environment are an inspiration for the couple.
They believe they have found the balance between environmental responsibility and commercial profitability, an approach that our planet so desperately needs today.
Michael and Tan Flankman also find it incredibly fun to sell poop for everyday use.
In their opinion, one should not take oneself too seriously.

Thais, as always, treat everything with humor.

And I am with him, and with a great love for big animals.

The technological process of paper production in Thailand goes something like this.
The most unpleasant stage of the entire production can be identified as the very first. It consists in the fact that the entire mass must be thoroughly rinsed. By the way, at this stage you can determine whether the animal is sick. Judged by the smell of the product being washed. An unpleasant odor is the first sign of diseases of the gastrointestinal system. If the animal is healthy, the smell will not irritate the specialist’s sense of smell.

The second stage is a little more pleasant than the first, because the smell still remains in the resulting substance, especially since the boiling process takes place at a high temperature of the decoction. It is at this stage that bacteria die. The boiling time is calculated depending on what the elephant ate. If it was bananas and grass, 3 hours is enough. After sugarcane and bamboo, you need at least 5 hours. The liquid obtained during the processing process goes to the fields as fertilizer.

Further processing consists of adding hydrogen peroxide and soda silicate to the resulting mass. This is necessary in order to destroy the remaining bacteria and give the mass a white color. After 30 minutes, the product acquires a straw color.

The next stage of creating unique paper involves grinding and selecting fibers by size. The machine, to pass this mass, works on the principle of selecting the smallest fibers. To soften the resulting fibers, use a soap solution. The output is a liquid light mass.

After all the necessary preparations of the solution, the scales come into play. You need koloboks of 300 grams each. This division is usually done by women. Next, these koloboks will be dissolved in water and the molds will be poured. The size of these forms in most cases is A2 sheet. After leveling the resulting mass in the molds, the future paper is dried. Drying occurs in the sun. After complete drying, durable paper is obtained.

The last stage of production ends, and the resulting odorless paper with an unusual texture passes into the hands of the artist or designer. Typically, various souvenirs are made from this paper, such as photo albums and photo frames. After all, it’s not a shame to give such a unique paper in many respects as a gift.

They say that in Australia similar paper is made from kangaroo dung.

Visitors to the Australian island of Tasmania will soon be able to buy paper made from kangaroo dung as souvenirs. According to the manufacturers, this is an excellent inexpensive souvenir that can not only please the guests of the island, but also suggest to the public a good solution to the environmental situation.
The Australians have already produced a trial batch of paper, but during the production process they unexpectedly encountered the problem of timely supply of raw materials, that is, kangaroo waste.

In this regard, the manager of a paper production company, Joanna Gair, appealed to her compatriots through the Advokat newspaper with a request for help in collecting the required number of kangaroo pellets. According to her, producers will be happy with any excrement: both fresh and dry. Joanna asks that kangaroo waste be collected in plastic bags and taken to Creative Paper's pulp and paper mill.

According to experts from the company that introduced the new paper production technology, about 400 sheets of A4 format can be produced from 25 kilograms of kangaroo manure. Therefore, according to experts, the new technology has every chance of successful development not only in Australia, but throughout the world. There is a real saving of money and an improvement in the environmental situation in a particular region.

In fact, enterprising Australians cannot be called pioneers. It turns out that in some countries this method of production has already been successfully implemented. For example, in Scandinavia, many institutions are happy to use paper made from moose feces.

But okay, you say, let the paper not smell beautiful and environmentally friendly, and cheap. And on my wall hangs a frame with a photo made of such paper. It hangs and does not smell :).

And you and I are pretty cheerful people and love elephants, but do any of you love elephants enough to drink...

"$1,100 coffee made from... elephant dung?

Previously, the most expensive type of coffee was considered "Kopi Luwak", the raw materials for which are obtained from the excrement of the Malayan palm marten. The price of one kilogram of such coffee beans is about $600.

Now a new variety of Black Ivory coffee produced in Thailand has set a new record. Its price is $1,100 per kilogram! Some coffee lovers are willing to pay up to $50 for one cup of drink.

But what is most impressive is not the price, but the method of producing the new coffee - it is obtained from... the excrement of Thai elephants. The principle is the same as with martens - once coffee beans enter the animal’s digestive tract, they are exposed to special enzymes that destroy protein. And since it is the proteins in coffee beans that are responsible for bitterness, the resulting coffee is not bitter at all.

It is believed that elephants are more suitable for such specific processing than martens because, unlike the latter, they are herbivores.

Today, only 50 kg of beans of this exclusive drink are available for sale. So we can say that this is not only the most expensive, but also the most scarce coffee in the world. "

We had a little fun, but now we get serious:

Depending on the degree of processing, both smooth and textured paper is obtained, which is used for design work. One of the large companies in this business area, ecoMAXIMUS, processes up to two tons of manure daily.

Such a business allows tens of square kilometers of forests to be saved from destruction, and also prevents air pollution from chemical emissions, which are inevitable during factory production.
In addition, the elephant population, which was previously mercilessly exterminated both for ivory production and to save farmland, suffers significantly less.
For many farmers, their crops were the only source of income, to which elephants caused irreparable damage. Now elephants are making a significant contribution to improving the economy of the settlements that suffered from them. Similar production has already been developed in India, Thailand, African countries and other natural habitats of elephants.

If you want to feed the animals, pay the mahout 20 baht for a small bag of the elephant’s favorite delicacy - pieces of the core of tender bamboo shoots and treat the giant.
But many people know that the mahouts are not the kindest people, who can hardly be called Thai Buddhists. I doubt they even believe in anything other than money if they act like that.
They offend these kind and noble animals, sometimes torturing them in order to train them.
The freedom that lives in the elephant's head interferes with the plans of the mahouts.
Elephants often go off their routes; like all living creatures, they can suddenly want to go to the toilet, chew leaves on trees, or simply choose a different path, and then sharp objects are used, traces of which can often be seen on the head and torn ears.

I met an elephant named Pum-Pui, and while communicating with him and walking through the forest, I was forced to repeatedly stop even the loud cries of such a mahout and his desire to hit the animal.
The driver was actually walking along the path nearby. I understand that I can change little in this situation, but I urge you all to ensure that no one dares to offend these smart creatures in your presence. It's not difficult for us, is it?

The Thais have a belief that walking under the trunk or belly of an elephant will bring good luck.
Give it a try.