You'll Never Guess What Brazil's Finest Coffee Is Made From

A hot cup of coffee in the morning can be the perfect way to start your day. Typically, most of us go for well-known blends such as a French roast or a tasty Kona blend. But if you're looking to step up your coffee-drinking game, you might want to look into Brazil's finest coffee — Wild Jacu Bird Coffee.

Jacu Bird Coffee comes from the feces of the Jacu bird, a species native to Brazil. The Jacu bird eats coffee berries, digesting them and eventually pooping them out. Farmers then gather these droppings and wash the beans hidden inside them to turn them into coffee!

Although it might sound gross, Wild Jacu Bird Coffee is some of Brazil's best coffee and is highly sought after. If you still need convincing that this coffee is worth its salt, here's what else you need to know about Brazil's finest coffee and how it's made.

Jacu birds are native to the Pedra Azul region of Brazil, and there, they often plagued coffee farmers by eating their ready-to-harvest crop. However, in 2006, one wise farmer decided not to try chasing these birds off but to try harvesting the digested coffee beans found in their poo.

The farmer in question was a man named Henrique Sloper de Araújo. Sloper de Araújo had recently learned about Kopi Luwak Coffee after a trip to Indonesia. Kopi Luwak coffee, like Jacu Bird coffee, is made by collecting the poo of an animal after it eats coffee beans. Then, the beans are washed and processed into a tasty beverage.

Sloper de Araújo, realizing the popularity of Kopi Luwak coffee, thought he could make his own Brazilian version of this bizarre coffee by doing the same thing with Jacu bird poo. Because Jacu birds eat only the best coffee cherries, the beans they were pooping out proved to be high-quality and perfect for roasting coffee.

Sloper de Araújo quickly began producing more of the coffee, and pretty soon, other farmers followed suit. Thanks to this unique discovery, Jacu Bird Coffee has become Brazil's finest and most expensive coffee.

If you're lucky enough to get a cup of the coveted Wild Jacu Bird Coffee, you might be surprised at the flavor. While it sounds like it could be an odd-tasting brew, thanks to the way it's made, Jacu Bird Coffee tastes quite delightful. Sloper de Araújo stated in an interview with Modern Farmer, "It's a unique, nutty flavor with nuances of sweet aniseed." On top of that, the other foods the bird eats and digests, along with the coffee, can also play into what a cup tastes like, altering the flavor of each batch of beans.

However, if you want to try some for yourself, you'll need help finding it. Because the beans must be harvested by hand, it's a highly time-consuming and labor-intensive job. As a result, the coffee beans are costly, retailing at about $220 for a standard 8-ounce bag of coffee. Thanks to the high cost of the beans, most coffee shops don't carry this blend, making it hard for you to get your hands on it.

One place where you will have some luck finding the brew is if you take a trip to the Pedra Azul region of Brazil and get it from the source. If that doesn't seem feasible, you can always buy the beans online and have them sent to you, but then you'll have to pay even more to cover shipping!