Coffee roasting and other gourmet hobbies
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Food, Israeliness
Hyper-specialized gourmet-themed hobbies are getting really big in Israel. It’s no longer enough to just be a “foodie.” I have a friend who has made really good beer, and I’ve met several people who have been involved in one way or another in boutique wine-making. Homemade-style chocolate boutiques are springing up everywhere now. Olive pressing (for olive oil) and curing is emblematic of the region’s symbology, with many of my peers debating various methods of cracking and spicing the fruit.
And then there’s coffee. Israel is one of the few countries that has actually survived an attempted Starbucks infiltration – and has responded by exporting our own espresso bar chain to the USA. The Eretz Nehederet sketch comedy TV show once spoofed newfound Israeli coffee snobbery with a poignant vignette (viewable here with English subtitles)
When I visited Vietnam a few years ago, I had the opportunity to enjoy “weasel coffee” (if you need to ask, click here), so I probably out-snob any of the local coffee snobs – without taking myself as seriously, of course. I buy cans of ground beans at Café Joe, after all.
But check this guy out. He takes coffee snobbery to a new level. Dima Ingret, a 36-year-old high tech worker who lives in metro-Tel Aviv, apparently likes to roast his own exotic beans, which he orders on eBay when he travels abroad on business. But more and more of these varieties are apparently appearing in Israeli stores, making things easier for Ingret and his fellow enthusiasts.
According to the piece in Haaretz which profiles Ingret, as well as Shaul Rubin, CEO of coffee and coffee accessory importer Amigo, the Israeli coffee aficionado scene has clearly reached a turning point:
Israelis have jazzed up their hobby with shiny machines and home roasters to such an extent that the hard-core members of the coffee clubs are invited to the launchings of designer machines (bothersome events that were reserved until now only for top-of-the-line machines). The coffee market in Israel has turned into an experts’ market….
Maybe we would’ve been better off had Starbucks succeeded here.
Image by jevnin from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Safed coffee factory runs on coffee
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Environment, General, Technology
Coffee-inspired energy is only becoming increasingly fashionable. Back in June, a team at the University of Leeds experimented with the same process used for roasting coffee beans as a method of releasing energy from a host of other crops, including wheat straw and certain types of grasses. The study concluded that this method has the potential boost the energy output of biomass power by up to 20%.
But what about using coffee itself? The concept of using coffee to obtain energy is hardly a new one, and here in Israel, where new energy sources are always an especially welcome discovery, coffee – especially the iconic Elite-brand instant – is a way of life.
Recently, Strauss Elite’s 1956-inaugurated instant coffee plant in Safed implemented a series of green measures, at an estimated expenditure of NIS 10 million, Haaretz reports. The measures include extending the height of the mill’s smokestack and upgrading filtration systems, with estimated efficiency increases resulting from the measures expected to pay for themselves within four years. But perhaps the most remarkable measure is that now the factory uses coffee regs to power itself:
At the beginning of this week, large furnaces were installed to burn the coffee beans at high temperatures to create steam. According to Strauss vice president Pini Kamari, the move will cut the factory’s shale consumption in half.
“This creates a direct connection between being ‘green’ and being efficient,” Kamari explained. “Motivation for the change came from our desire to cut costs, reducing energy costs and transportation costs for both the shale and the waste. At the same time, emissions will be much lower, both from the smokestacks and from the trucks [formerly needed to bring in fuel]. We will create less waste and need to bury less garbage. Noise will also be reduced.”
Image of Israeli coffee beans courtesy gkamin from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Nostalgia Sunday – Powdered instant coffee
Filed under: Food, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
For those who don’t understand the billboards now plastered all over town, Elite has just relaunched their “Hot Water, Small Glass” campaign for its Turkish coffee. The ads feature a charming Israeli commercial airline pilot who travels the world requesting that various waiters, stewardesses, bedouin “zula” proprieters and other serving persons, bring him “hot water, small glass” so that he can mix up a cup of that brown colored swill so beloved here, popularly known as “botz”.
“Botz” means mud, so you see that even three and four generations ago, our forefathers understood this brew was not quality, to put it mildly. For those unable to stomach even the sight of botz — not to mention botz with milk — there was one other option: Elite powdered coffee.
That’s right, kids. Israel used to have only bad coffee. There were no Lavazza home espresso-makers, no Bodum cafetiers, no Chemexes or Melittas with paper filters — and even if there were, all there would be to put in them would have been ground up cardamom-flavored mystery beans. All we had, children, was bad bad bad coffee that came in a small tin.
Visitors from the US were asked to bring salvation in a jar that looked like this:
Eventually, good coffee came to Israel but visit any office kitchenette in this country and you’ll still see a small (or large) tin of Elite powdered coffee. Even I drink it – it tastes good to me now.
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