OneDoubleShot.com

I just finished my 3rd attempt at roasting coffee beans at home. This time I used Kenya AA beans, which I thought would be more straightforward than Tanzian Peaberries – the beans that I used for my first 2 (unsuccessful) attempts.

Roasted Tanzanian Peaberries - Scorched and with lots of chaff But they do roll nicely.

Kenyan beans can be roasted at all levels, whereas Peaberries need a Medium roast. I’m a complete beginner at this, and it’s really hard for me to tell one roast from another, so I figure Kenya might be a better bean to learn on – less picky.

Meet today’s bean – Kenya AA from the GreenBeanery in Toronto. Got a half-pound for $8.79, which seems expensive considering pricing from American Sweet Maria’s ($9.65 per pound), but it’s close to what we pay in Israel.

Kenya AA Green Beans (i.e. raw beans)

The first time I roasted on the stove the entire process was finished in 3 minutes, and the beans ended up scorched. They were burnt on the outside, and probably still green on the inside. Second time took me about 25 minutes, and produced terrible coffee again. And this time, I got to 15 minutes, and I managed to hear the second crack. Check out my roasting gear-

The Roasting Gear

Keeping the Beans Moving

I haven’t tasted this batch yet, but it looks really nice. The beans don’t smell like much immediately after roasting, so I’m going to check on them again tomorrow morning after they’ve released a good bunch of CO2.

I’ll update the blog with results from my most promising batch yet. Stay tuned!

Roasted Kenya AA Beans

Morning Update: The coffee is not terrible. Yeah so as it turns out, I have quite a ways to go in the roasting education department. This process is more aggravating than I expected, and I’m beginning to wonder if this method can actually produce good tasting coffee.

Long a major (and, often, controversial) producer of breast-milk substitutes, Nestle secured its dominant industry position today with its new BabyNes instant baby formula system. It’s a single-serve machine, similar to the Nespresso coffee machine, that uses a capsule with formula powder to produce a bottle – at the perfect temperature.

Displaying terrific synergy with its daughter company that already produced single-serve instant coffee machines and capsules, Nestle has utilized the expertise of Nespresso to make baby formula even more accessible to masses of mothers. The Nespresso system has two elements that make it a great choice for this task – its precise temperature regulation and its instant production.

Both espresso and baby formula must reach a certain temperature – and must not exceed that temperature. Espresso is finicky like that, and babies are also very sensitive. Furthermore, the fact that Nespresso provides instant gratification is a fact that caters to modern caffeine addicts as much as it will likely cater to mothers and fathers.

I am really blown away by this technology. Nespresso has been much copied over the recent years, and it was beginning to seem like just another single-serve provider amongst a sea of similar companies. But Nestle certainly has talent, and someone has creatively found a way to marry two areas that Nestle dominates, keeping both the formula and the Nespresso technology relevant. I can see this product really catching on, and if it can survive the kind of flack that Nestle is used to getting from pro breastfeeding groups (because this is clearly a victory for the formula industry), then this could become a household product for a lot of families.

Sorry, only available in Switzerland for now.

One of the downsides of living in the Middle East is that trendy new products only reach our stores months to years after being introduced and market-tested in larger countries.

Illy’s “issimo” canned ice coffee is an example of this. Ynetnews.com announced today that after having already been introduced in several other countries, Coca Cola will soon introduce these products at a price of 8-9 NIS in Israel. Unfortunately, only two of the three flavors will be offered – Cappuccino (coffee with milk and cocoa) and Latte Macchiato (coffee with milk). The caffe flavor will not be arriving, which is a pity because I understand that many prefer this one over the rest, finding that it actually tastes better than caffe-brewed iced-coffee. The other flavors supposedly taste artificial.

The Issimo line has been around since March 2009, the product of a joint venture between Italian coffee supplier Illy and Coca Cola, called Ilko Coffee International.

Now that this new iced-coffee in a can has finally reached our shores of the Mediterranean, the question is, how does it compare to the products that are already on the market?

The other product that comes to mind is Master Cafe’s various takes on the classic iced coffee.I personally don’t like Master Cafe – it tastes way too artificial, and it’s not cheap. Having a quality iced-coffee in a can would be a huge sell, but it looks like we’ll have to keep on waiting for that to arrive, since we’re getting only the dumbed-down flavored versions of Illy’s product.

For the past 2 months, I’ve been sitting endless hours in an artificially-lit room studying for the impending bar-exam this Tuesday. I badly need a vacation.

It’s kind of sad, but these are some websites that have been tiding me over until I can get the heck out of here. Happy travels!

1. Arounder – This site offers 360 degree tours of numerous sites from around the world. I took in some culture in Paris, and then jetted off to Tahiti for some sea & sun Check out this site, it is really amazing.

3. 360Cities – This site also offers numerous 360 panorama tours of places around the world. Notable, especially, is the gigapixel panorama of Prague in extremely fine detail. Technology has truly taken us to great places.

4. World Heritage Tours – This site allows you to experience 275 UNESCO world heritage sites as if you were there. The panoramic views are very high quality!

5. Earth Pano – Another site with panoramic images from around the world.

6. Google Street View – I used this to travel the London Streets, in preparation for the royal wedding. They don’t have street view everywhere, but they do have it in many major destinations. If you happen to be looking for a Thai vacation, this site offers a street view of popular city Pattaya.

7. Beach Tours – I especially like beaches, so I’ll include a category just for beaches

Israeli Beaches – YourWay is a great Israeli site with Panoramic images of tons of sites, as well as tourist info. 3dIsrael offers some fantastic FULL HD beach panoramas.

French Beaches – You can’t beat VR-Cotedazur for a virtual tour of the French Riviera. Strongly Recommended! This site also has some good VR pics of France.

If you only have time to check out a couple, I’d check out the French Riviera site and Arounder. But there are a bunch of really nice sites here.

Last night I had sushi in Jerusalem with a bunch of great people – one of whom is a dedicated vegan. I asked her what she ate for meals, and one of the foods she mentioned was a ‘green shake’. I thought that a shake wouldn’t provide enough nutrients or calories, but she reassured me that green shakes can provide most of one’s required nutrients. They’re made of a variety of fruit and leafy vegetables – and she stressed that she doesn’t taste the spinach in her shakes.

Well, I’ve been suffering from a lingering cold, and I’m in need of an energy and immune-boost. I’m not interested in it as a meal replacement at the moment, but I gave it a try today. My recipe definitely needs improvement, but I feel truly good after drinking it and I know that I’ve consumed a ton of nutrients. My recipe was as follows:

1 pear, 1 orange, 1 cup frozen raspberries, 1 avocado, spinach+rocket lettuce, ice cubes + water.

The shake actually tasted good – I didn’t taste any of the veggies, but it wasn’t quite as sweet as a fruit shake.

I think I diluted it with too much water – I thought I would need it for the blender to work, but I’m not sure it was necessarily. Also, next time I’m going to put in more lettuce (I only put in a big handful). I’m definitely going to try this again soon. What a great way to get my nutrients!

I’m looking to learn more about this, so feel free to give me tips!

Cold-brew is all coffee – and no acidic bite. It’s a way to make ice coffee without getting any of the bitterness that comes with pouring hot coffee over ice, and as an added benefit, the coffee won’t be watered down by ice cubes because it’s already cold! You basically steep fresh coffee grounds in water overnight, and wake up to rich ice coffee

The acidity is reduced because the extraction is done without heating the coffee, preventing many of the harsher oils from entering the final drink. It’s been described as the “Disney version of coffee. Smells good, tastes good, curiously harmless.”

The method is really simple. It involves steeping ground coffee in water for an entire day, and then filtering out the grinds. Some use the Toddy system – basically a plastic jug with a felt filter inside which is placed over a jar – and some rely on standard kitchen products.

One example of the latter approach is the New York times cold-brew recipe, according to which 1/3 C of ground coffee (medium-course grind) is added to a jar containing 1.5 C of water, which is then covered and and left to steep overnight or for 12 hours at room temperature. The resulting drink is then filtered twice in a coffee filter, a sieve lined with cheesecloth, or just a fine-mesh sieve, and then consumed according to taste [by adding equal parts water and coffee essence (or water to taste) to ice in a tall glass, and then adding milk and sugar].

Toddy System

Is cold-press the better system for making ice-coffee? Some swear by cold-press coffee, and are willing to pay a premium for it. Caribou Coffee is probably the largest retailer to offer cold-press on their menu, but my impression is that they are in the minority of major retailers.  This could be a great option for those who make their own coffee at home, since it produces espresso-quality concentration without any machinery. You can make a batch before heading to bed, and then wake up to superior ice-coffee.

Nonetheless, some like the “bite” of a normal brew, and prefer using one double-shot of espresso with ice and cold milk added. Starbucks and Second Cup (in Canada) have gone this route, as have most coffee shops in Israel, to my knowledge. It’s also the less time-consuming approach.

Whether or not you try cold-press, try making coffee-ice cubes – they relieve the watering down issue. Just freeze your leftover brewed coffee

Think Nespresso’s $0.50 espresso capsules are pricey? Illy has entered the market with a competing capsule that is even more expensive – $0.76 to be precise. My opinion: Brilliant.

If there’s one thing I know about business (and I know admittedly little), it’s that price should not be your main selling point – because customers buy on perceived value, and not on price alone. If you offer discount prices, customers will assume that you’re selling discount-quality products.

Notice how Hermes products never go on sale. Nespresso never lowers their coffee prices, and pricing has been one of Apple’s strong-points for a long time. Its products are relatively pricey, but Apple stands strong and refuses to lower them – effectively giving the impression that their true worth is greater than cheaper products offered by competing companies.

Illy has entered a crowded market, saturated by about 15 companies that offer different combinations of capsules and compatible machines (Nestle itself offers two different capsule systems – Nespresso and Nescafe Dolce Gusto). Who would have thought that another system would be successful?

Illy is no small player in the industry, and its strategy of charging more for its capsules than Nespresso was simply brilliant.

Nespresso laid the groundwork, with its aggresive marketing, for a gourmet espresso capsule, billed as an affordable luxury for the masses, and its prices were set accordingly. But Nespresso is owned by Nestle – known more as a proprietor of instant coffee than as a renowned selector of fine coffees. Given its existing reputation, and the fact that people were already willing to pay over half-a-dollar for Nespresso capsules, Illy was able to simply come in and position itself as a higher-quality alternative to Nespresso, and charge higher prices accordingly. Furthermore, by offering less choice in capsules (there are 4 different capsules), Illy is taking another cue from Apple. When you offer less choice, each offering is subject to greater scrutiny from consumers. So reducing the number of products is a sign of confidence in each one – a sign that further contributes to a perception of value.

Chalk one up for the incumbent – and for its monopoly over the sale of Nespresso-compatible capsules. Swiss Retailer Denner (a subsidiary of Migros, one of the major supermarket brands in Switzerland) has been ordered by a commercial court to stop selling its knock-off coffee capsules that are compatible with Nespresso machines. The capsules were being sold for $0.26, approximately half the price of Nespresso capsules.

This wasn’t exactly fair competition. Denner was ordered to remove all of their advertisements that were suspiciously similar to Nespresso’s George Clooney (”Nespresso – What Else?”) ads.

At Denner's - Where Else?

This week another branch of Coffee Bean will disappear from Israel, as budding coffee chain Café Greg replaces it with its own flagship branch at Azrieli mall in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, based on Café Greg’s website, this branch will apparently not be kosher.

Café Greg, founded by ex-New Yorker Greg Wolf, opened its first store in Haifa in 1996, and today numbers over 60 branches.

Last week this can of Dole 100% Pineapple Juice caught my eye at a snack stand in Jerusalem. I tried it, and it is amazing – far better than the Spring/Prigat juices. Also the can is pretty cool – it’s tall and thin, like those weird Sprite cans that I saw in stores for a while. Possible uses – in a pineapple vinaigrette, as a sweet addition to a stir fry, or coupled with some Malibu rum after a stressful day at work.

Local Tip: The nut store at the corner of Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion in Ramat Gan sells these cans for 3 for 10 shekels. I bought myself a large supply.