The cat's meow in coffee

Dima Ingret, 36, of Ramat Gan, a support manager at the high-tech company Test Insight, has 30 kilos of coffee beans stored on the balcony of his apartment. He devotes very weekend to roasting them. "It's like a barbecue, but indoors," he calmly explains, "and the smell is actually pleasant. No once complains." Not even his 4-month-old son, whose room is next to the balcony.

Three years ago, Ingret became interested in coffee as a hobby. "I visited a friend, tasted some coffee and decided to go for it." He orders coffee on eBay when the opportunity arises, for example, when he stays at hotels in the United States on work trips. "I find specialty items there like Hawaii Kona beans that aren't here yet, or coffee from Nicaragua and El Salvador." Today he uses a coffee maker that costs NIS 7,000 and a roasting machine that also coasts several thousand shekels. He replaces the machines on average every year.

As of next week, Ingret and hundreds of other Israeli coffee lovers will be able to purchase locally rare gourmet coffee beans from Sumatra, Papua New Guinea, Guatemala and even the expensive luwak, another name for the Asian Palm Civet, which will be available at specialty shops. Most of these varieties were pretty much unavailable here until now.

"I use 15 kilograms of coffee per month and also roast beans for friends. So I'm happy that another obstacle has been removed and additional varieties are available in Israel," says Ingret.

Specialty coffee has been a hobby here since the mid-1990s. Much of the gospel has been spread by Ilan Shenhav, the owner of the Ilan's cafe chain, which opened in 1994 alongside the Tel Aviv chain Espresso Bar owned by Nurit Raveh, who imported the idea from the United States. Word spread. High-tech companies put stylish coffee machines in their corridors, and Israel turned into a specialty coffee powerhouse. Several major importers operate here, such as Ava Coffee, which roasts for the large cafe chains; Amigo, which also imports machines; and in recent years importers who focus exclusively on organic coffee such as the Love It outlets.

"Israel has become a coffee powerhouse and every few months, additional varieties arrive in Israel," says Shenhav. 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, says Shaul Rubin, the CEO of the coffee bean and espresso machine importer Amigo. The proof, he says, is that many of the club members have industrial machines fitted on top with a row of thermometers so the roasting temperature does not stray even by two or three degrees Celsius from the conditions for preparing "normal" espresso. Every month sales of roasting machines and coffee grinders add up to thousands of shekels. And the hunt is on across Israel to find luwak coffee, which will now become easier.

Luwak coffee, which comes from Indonesia, arrived here around a year ago and sells for something like $600 per kilo. Its processing may say something about the boredom of the modern consumer. The luwak, an animal native to Indonesia resembling a cute cat, eats the ripe fruit of coffee trees (each piece contains two coffee beans side by side). When the luwak excretes the still intact beans, they are removed and roasted and ground into powder like any other coffee. Hard-core aficionados say the flavor is intense and defend the roasting process, nothing that "the beans in any case are roasted and what can happen to them in the luwak's stomach?" Shenhav describes the taste and quality of luwak coffee as "creating sparks" and justifying the high price. The curious can taste luwak coffee at the Ilan's outlets, Amigo stores and branches of the Laga'at Ba'okhel chain. And if coffee already processed in another body does not appeal to you, you can order varieties such as Jamaica Blue Mountain or Puerto Rico Jako Selector (both sell for NIS 460 a kilo).

Coffee blends consist of Arabica, which is responsible for the flavor, and Robusta, which is responsible for the texture, and every blend contains a bit of both. Those seeking to boast of gourmet coffee will claim that it is 100 percent Arabica, but in practice a few percent of Robusta sneak in to add foam and "body" to the coffee.

Given the expansion of specialty coffee imports to Israel, anyone wanting to jump on the bandwagon and become a professional coffee consumer is invited by Rubin to try the following espresso recipe: "Thirty grams of water per seven grams of coffee in 22 seconds at a temperature of 90 degrees and nine bars (the pressure generated by a coffee machine). Less than eight bars of pressure produces coffee that is too watery, and with pressure of more than 10 bars we burn the coffee."

Machines that can yield this formula are sold across Israel by different importers for prices that range from NIS 2,000 to NIS 10,000 (and sometimes even more). The more expensive professional machines have a kind of nozzle from which the coffee is poured that is affectionately referred to in professional parlance as E-61. "Only a nozzle like this, known as a thermo siphon, removes the oil residue from the coffee itself," explains Rubin.

Roasting and grinding are also important: it is advisable to grind freshly roasted beans in a home grinder. Those who do not want to roast or grind, or transform their home into a small factory will make do with vacuum-sealed capsules opened immediately before use or pods, a sort of coin sealed in paper that is also vacuum-packed.

Rubin says Israeli coffee consumers are much more interested in knowing if the coffee is organic than if it is from fair-trading practice countries. "The Western individual apparently thinks mostly of himself," he notes, "and that is the case even though the more important issue to me as a coffee importer is the fair-trade policies and less so the extent to which the beans were treated with insecticides. If you buy coffee from countries that do not collaborate with the Western countries such as the U.S., or in other words, from more exotic places such as Ethiopia, Jamaica or Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, even there the chances that it will not have been sprayed with insecticide are great. These are countries with failing agricultural systems, and they don't even have the ability to spray, he says, whereas "in more central countries such as Brazil or Mexico, insecticide is sprayed and there it is possible to insist on organic coffee." Rubin notes that in all countries, laborers' wages are still very low. Coffee drinkers, who use NIS 10,000 machines, please be aware.