{"id":22,"date":"2009-09-23T10:23:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-23T16:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coffeewhisperer.wordpress.com\/?p=22"},"modified":"2009-09-23T10:23:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T16:23:00","slug":"the-coffee-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/?p=22","title":{"rendered":"The Coffee Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mid morning light cut and shimmered through the misty jungle air.
\nThings were quiet.\u00a0 The canopy of leaves far above swayed in silence; a natural ceiling that barricaded the harsh light and protected the warm cradle of life below.\u00a0 There was no noise, no breeze to shake the leaves, no movement to create the natural creaks and pops that are a part of this protected environment.\u00a0 The bird listened, but heard nothing.\u00a0 No enemies, no competitors, nothing for it to worry about.\u00a0 The bird darted and rocked his head from side to side.\u00a0 Back to the work at hand: it was time to eat.<\/p>\n

The bird stepped along the edge of the wild canopy, looking for a crop that was near and dear to his heart.\u00a0 It knew that just outside the bubble of the jungle canopy was something that would fill it’s empty gut.\u00a0 Something juicy and rich, something that would break and yield in it’s powerful beak.\u00a0 The round, red cherries of ripe coffee called to this bird, and it would answer.\u00a0 Its hunger was only the first step in the strange voyage of the Jacu Bird Coffee Bean.<\/p>\n

Eating Man’s Crops; drinking ….uh…<\/h3>\n

\"jacu\"The bird, known as a “Dusky Legged Guan” reminds some of a dark, perhaps athletic looking chicken.
\nUnlike most wild foragers, this bird is free to wander among the crops carefully cultivated by Brazilian coffee farmers.\u00a0 The bird only chooses the ripest, largest coffee cherries, and eats them one after the other.\u00a0 It would seem common sense that such an attack upon a farm crop would mean brutal counter-measures by the local farmers.\u00a0 But that doesn’t happen here.\u00a0 The farmers have learned how to take lemons and make lemonade from a seemly bad situation.\u00a0 Actually, they’ve learned how to take bird droppings and make very, very expensive coffee.<\/p>\n

A Special Process…<\/h3>\n

Preparing coffee beans for export usually involves either a drying process that takes the ripe cherries and dries them on screens until the fruit can be removed, or a wet process where soaking does the majority of the work.\u00a0 The idea is free the seed inside from the fruit that surrounds it.\u00a0 The chicken – sized jacu bird of Brazil aids in the process by wandering the coffee fields, eating the nicest of cherries, and then naturally stripping them of their flesh while riding about in their gut.\u00a0 The seed is then unceremoniously deposited; to be collected by excited farmers as a premium bean.\u00a0 The “stripped” bean is washed and dried and otherwise prepared for export and “Jacu Bird Coffee,”\u00a0 the coffee prepared inside a bird’s digestive tract.<\/p>\n

What’s It like?<\/h3>\n

Some say it’s great, somehow changed by the enzymes found in the bird’s digestive tract.\u00a0 Others say it’s about the same as any other Brazilian coffee.\u00a0 But no matter the taste, Jacu Bird Coffee commands special attention and a special price.\u00a0 It is obviously a coffee in limited quantities, and does command a premium wherever you might find it.\u00a0 But what is nice to see is that man has learned to profit from the natural habits of the animals around him.\u00a0 Instead of killing them off, the coffee farmers have turned the bird into a partner.\u00a0 Farmer gets a special crop westerners will pay dearly for and the bird gets the bean.\u00a0 Can’t ask for a better deal than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mid morning light cut and shimmered through the misty jungle air. Things were quiet.\u00a0 The canopy of leaves far above swayed in silence; a natural ceiling that barricaded the harsh light and protected the warm cradle of life below.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}