Strange Brews Edition One - What Even Is This?
Today, we’re introducing our hottest new segment: Strange Brews. We think we’ve stressed enough that coffee is a VERY saturated space. Despite it being crowded with established companies, there are dozens (us) popping up every week. For those of you who went to business school—what’s the first thing you need to do if you’re entering a saturated market? DIFFERENTIATE!
Strange Brews will serve as a place for us to talk about everything that’s new, interesting, and even strange in the coffee space. With the sheer size of the industry, there’s going to be someone new and funky every week. What does that mean for us? Are we intimidated by them? Not at all! This is a fantastic way to generate some #content and further our reader’s knowledge about what’s happening in the world. At the very least, it will give you all something to talk about at your next dinner party. Well, if we ever have one of those again.
Are you Sh*tting Me?
This week, we’re going to talk about the magic of the most expensive coffee on the market, Black Ivory Coffee. What makes Black Ivory special isn’t that it’s grown in Thailand’s Golden Triangle, an area known for its opium production. It’s not the sustainable practices, or the rich soil that it’s grown in. That doesn’t get you into “Strange Brews.” Black Ivory is poop coffee.
That’s right, you heard us. Black Ivory is poop coffee. That’s not a commentary on the coffee’s flavor, it’s actually quite delicious. It’s poop coffee, because it’s quite literally brewed from coffee beans that have been eaten and pooped out. Even stranger, *ahem*cooler, is that the coffee is eaten and pooped out by ELEPHANTS!
No, really. It's For Science
What makes this coffee super cool is that this isn’t done for shock value. There’s legitimate science behind why Black Ivory does it. There are very specific reasons that it actually makes the coffee taste better.
Black Ivory’s founder, Blake Dirkin, explains why. “They eat a lot of grass and a lot of green, leafy matter. A herbivore, to break that down, utilizes fermentation to break down that cellulose,” he says. “Fermentation is great for things like wine or beer or coffee, because it brings out the sugar in the bean, and it helps impart the fruit from the coffee pulp into the bean.”
Essentially by creating a more sugary coffee bean, the finished product turns out much more mellow and flavorful than traditional coffee. Black Ivory likens it to a tea-coffee hybrid. Multiple reviews cite it as the most unique coffee flavor they’d experienced.
But they're not actually...are they?
More unique than the flavor, is the process. Dirkin currently employs a few elephants that “process” *HA* his coffee. The beans are mixed in with the elephant’s food, typically an array of fruit. Two to three days later, the coffee has moved through the elephant and workers pick through their excrement to find the beans. The beans are then washed and brewed into coffee.
What'll This Set Me Back?
So, have we peaked your interest? Trying this coffee will set you back a pretty penny. Currently marketed as the “Most Expensive Coffee” on the market, 1 ounce costs $100. Starting to make our NuRange Cold Brew Coffee look pretty economical?
Strange Conclusions
Needless to say this is one of the strangest and coolest brews on the market. Check back often to see what other unique products we feature on our Strange Brews blogs in the future. And if poop coffee isn’t what you’re craving, feel free to stop by our shop and pick up a case of our decidedly less-funky products.