My earliest recollections of drinking coffee are at minyan Sunday morning with my grandfather a”h. After davening, the old men at the minyan would enjoy herring, Chivas, orange juice and coffee for breakfast. I, of course, wanting to be just like the men, would make my own cup of coffee, which meant I would drown half a cup of coffee in enough milk and sugar to make it palatable for my juvenile taste.

Over the years I have enjoyed coffee as a day starter, as a pick me up, a late-night boost, and socially, without giving much thought to the quality of the drink I was drinking. Brewed, espresso, instant, it all went down the same way.

Sure, I can tell when coffee is so thin as to be insipid, or the beans have been burnt beyond recognition, or when it’s a very good cup, but I never really cared. After all, it was the utility as a caffeine delivery vehicle that really mattered to me.

A few months ago, while strolling through Machane Yehuda, I came across a small shop that had – among the grains, legumes and hair care products – large burlap sacks of green coffee beans. I purchased a half kilo on a whim and threw them in the freezer, where I would eventually get around to ‘doing something’ with them.

Fast forward a few months, and I’m shuffling though my morning routine, and neither in the pantry nor in the freezer could I find coffee. No Elite powder, no Nescafe Red Mug, no pre-ground beans from previous trips to the market. Nothing. Well, that wouldn’t do.

I opened the freezer again and found the bag of raw beans. Ethiopian, to be precise. Without using Google to cheat, I “winged it” and put a single layer of beans in the toaster tray lined with foil, cranked it up to 250°C, turned on the top elements, and slid the tray in.

About ten minutes later I looked in, and the green beans had indeed started turning a pale mocha. I kept checking on them, and it occurred to me to redistribute the beans to cook more evenly, i.e. shake the pan.

A little while later, I could start to smell the roasting of something. However, it wasn’t  the pungent smell of coffee, rather the acrid smell of something burning. Panicked, I pulled out the tray, and the coffee beans were darkly roasted. Maybe a little too much. Hell, I thought, I burned them. Oh well, Let’s see what happens. After all, I’ve had Starbucks and lived to tell the tale, right?

I pulled out my grinder and poured some of the still smoldering, slightly oily beans in. I pulsed the grinder, then opened the lid. The smell hit me like a thunderbolt.

Coffee.

Not just coffee, perfect, deeply scented, nuanced, rich, robust. All those adjectives that you’ve seen used for coffee finally made sense. I brewed a cup, the excitement building as the aroma began to diffuse through the kitchen. Hesitantly, I added a touch of milk and some sugar.

We don’t get many epiphany moments in life. This was one. The coffee wasn’t good, it was beyond phenomenal. It was strong with flavor, strong with depth. It was an ode to Coffea canephora, a hurrah to plantation workers worldwide. It was why Hashem put coffee on earth to begin with.

The oils released from fresh roasting make a world of difference in the brewing. Prepackaged ground coffee lacks those oils, and even whole beans that have sat on supermarket shelves lack the depth of fresh roasted beans.

So now I don’t drink just any coffee anymore to start my day, it’s always fresh roasted. I  have several varieties of raw beans from Central America and Africa that I roast in small batches, enough for five, maybe six cups at a time. I still drink that other stuff on Shabbat and at social gatherings, but each sip is a mockery of what is to me real coffee.

Stop by for a cup the next time you’re around!

Final note: Okay, it might not be Kopi Luwak – a coffee harvested from the droppings of an Indonesian feline called a civet, selling for $320-$550 a pound – but then again I am never, ever going to drink that, so I’ll never know.

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