Chiang Saen, Thailand---In the lush, green hills of northern Thailand, a woman painstakingly picks coffee beans out of a pile of elephant dung, an essential part of making one the world's most expensive beverages.
This remote corner of Thailand bordering Myanmar and Laos is better known for drug smuggling than coffee, but Blake Dinkin decided it was perfect for a legitimate enterprise that blends conservation with business.
"When I explained my project to the mahouts (elephant riders), I know that they thought I was crazy," the 44-year-old Canadian founder of Black Ivory Coffee, which uses the digestive tract of elephants to create a high-end brew for coffee connoisseurs.
Initially, he considered using civet cats to make "kopi luwak" coffee, which uses beans collected from the droppings of the Asian cats. But the quality of the end product has weakened as demand has grown in Southeast Asia -- including in Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Civet cats are also often kept in cages and force-fed beans, a chasm away from Dinkin's desire to support rather than damage the environment.
Lions and giraffes also made the shortlist of prospective coffee filters, but eventually Dinkin settled on elephants after discovering that the creatures sometimes eat coffee during periods of drought in Southeast Asia.
He also teamed up with an elephant rescue charity which saves the creatures from the tourist trade.
But making coffee from pachyderm poop was harder than expected.
"I thought it would be as simple as taking the beans, giving them to the elephant, and out will come great coffee," said Dinkin, adding that the initial result was "horrible" and undrinkable.
"It took me another nine years to actually succeed in doing what I wanted," he said.
- Lose a lot of beans -
The enzymes in the elephant's stomach function as a kind of slow cooker, he said, where the coffee beans marinate alongside the herbs and fruits the animal also eats.
As the beans work their way through the elephant's digestive tract -- a 17-hour process -- the digestive acid takes the bitterness out of the bean.
"I lose a lot of beans in the bath in the morning," he said, explaining that the elephants sometimes defecate in the river while bathing.
The mahouts' wives collect the coffee beans from the elephant dung, before washing and drying them in the sun, a division of labour that is helping to boost the local community's income.
To make a kilo of coffee, the elephants have to have consumed around 33 kilos of the beans, along with their usual ration of rice and bananas.
AFP
