Coffee beans made of elephant poop, which were offered for the first time in Thailand in late 2012, have recently been introduced at a coffee festival in central Vietnam and fetch about US$1,504 per kilogram.

Nguyen Van Hoa, director of Cao Nguyen Viet Coffee Co. Ltd. in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak, revealed that the beans were made from elephant dung, which involved a complicated process.

Elephants were fed fresh, red, ripe Arabia coffee beans which had been carefully washed and dried.

The beans were mixed with vegetables, sugarcane, banana, pineapples, and other kinds of food before being given to the elephants.

It takes from 16 to 30 hours for an elephant to digest the mixture and poop it out. Workers later collect the coffee beans from the elephant dung, washing and drying them. They will move on to shell the beans, roasting and grinding them to produce “elephant coffee.”

“During the elephant’s ingestion and digestion process, there are many beans that break and disappear. Therefore, we need around 30kg of fresh coffee beans to produce only 1kg of elephant coffee. The natural fermentation in the elephant’s gut will create a special coffee flavor,” Hoa said.

The director added that the special coffee taste is made from the fermentation of the mixture that elephants ingest, not to mention that the acid in the animal’s stomach can help reduce the bitterness of the beans.

The elephants used to make this new, special type of coffee beans were initially used to serve tourism.

Thailand successfully produced the specialty in 2012, attracting many high income customers.

The products are priced at about $1,504 per kilogram in Vietnam.

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