Brew Bomb Review & Testimonials; Death Wish Coffee Nitro Recall

In today’s episode, we’ve got a quick overview/review/testimonial of the Brew Bomb cold brew system. Since announcing the Brew Bomb, there has been quite a few questions about how the system works, how it brews, how it filters, cup quality and more, so we’ve got a quick interview/testimonial with Heather Perry from Klatch Coffee about how Klatch is transforming their cold brew program using the Brew Bomb system.

Episode 77 Transcript

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Brendan Hanson: Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Drips & Draughts podcast. As always I’m Brendan Hanson and I’ll be your host today. Ever since we released the Brew Bomb System a couple weeks back we’ve been getting a lot of questions about it. How does it work? Is it really that great? Is it easy to use? Just all sorts of questions. What we’re going to do on today’s episode is I’m basically going to be using some audio-video testimonials that we started getting from some of the clients who are already using this system and I’m basically just going to turn it into an episode.

In making the testimonials we had some technical difficulties caused the recordings to be a little bit bad. Bear with me on the audio but hopefully you guys get a better idea on the Brew Bomb System what it does, its capabilities, how it can be used, and what makes it so much different than traditional methods. One of the technical difficulties that we had while we were recording the testimonials was that the interviewer, the person asking the questions their mic was not on or just not set right. What I’m going to do is I’ll just dub myself in, asking the questions and hopefully that works out.

Before we get into today’s episode though just a couple more of pieces of business. One, a little scare here in the cold brew coffee world today. Death Wish Coffee just announced the recall of all of its nitro coffee cans. All the headlines out there range from, “It’s just another food recall,” to, “This might actually kill me.” Here’s a couple of headlines just in case you guys haven’t seen them. “Death Wish Coffee Issues Recall on RTD Line.” “Death Wish Cold Brew Coffee is being recalled for potentially being deadly.” “Death Wish Coffee could have fatal consequences.” “Death Wish Coffee may actually kill you.”

The headlines are one thing but then some of the articles kind of get into it too like this New York Post article. “Truth in advertising has never been so frightening. Coffee Company Death Wish is recalling one of its drinks because it might actually cause death.” Apparently, the way that Death Wish is currently producing their coffee it’s being produced [unintelligible 00:03:00] environment. They could lead to the growth of botulism or botulin spores I guess is the way to say it. From what I could tell in both the FDA statement and all the articles I read, botulism wasn’t found yet it’s just the processing which the coffee’s being canned. It’s leaving a little bit of a room for error and the recalling just as a safety precaution.

According to the FDA website, it says, “Death Wish in conjunction with an outside Process Authority has determined that the current process could lead to the growth and production of the deadly toxin, botulin, in low-acid foods commercialized in reduced oxygen packaging.” In continuing on in the recall statement that you can find at fda.gov. It says, “Death Wish is halting production of Nitro Cold Brew until an additional step in the manufacturing process is implemented.”

Again, it sounds like nothing was found and this is more of a precautionary recall but nonetheless pretty scary. If you’ve got any Death Wish coffee at home and the 11 oz. Nitro coffee cans make sure to take those back or get rid of those immediately. I might have to reach out to these guys and see if we can get them on the show on a future episode to talk about one, their coffee and their brand. They’ve done an awesome job with branding but two about this. This is great information to share and to spread just to make sure that everyone who’s cold-brewing is using the best possible procedures and practices.

With all that being said, if you’ve got any information or details you want to share about this reach out to us and let us know. We’d love to have a conversational topic and get as much information out to everybody as we can. Last little bit of business before we get into the short episode today is the part where I ask you to go to iTunes and leave a review like Niel from Potion Coffee did. Niel left a five-star rating. The title of the review is “All the knowledge, all the topics you could hope for.”

His review says, “I’ve been listening since after the first couple of episodes and this podcast has really helped me gain confidence and gather ideas as a cold brewer. Brendan and Carey have evolved their format and their craft as hosts as the episodes have rolled by, and after more than a year of consistently interesting shows, they’re still going stronger than ever. Anyone producing cold brew on any scale who isn’t listening to this is seriously missing out. Niel from Potion Coffee.” Niel, thanks a ton for leaving us a review and to everybody else out there if you listened to the show before, if you’ve listened to it for awhile, and you haven’t gone and left us a rating or review yet, please hop on over to iTunes and do that, helps the show out a ton. All right guys, with that, if you’re looking for links or show notes from this episode you can find those by going to dripanddraughts.com/77. As I mentioned at the top of the intro we’re just doing a quick little recap on the Brew Bomb System, if you didn’t hear the first episode where we featured the brew bomb and its inventor Ray Berger, you can go check that episode out at dripanddraughts.com/72. All right, let’s get into today’s episode, it’s a quick little interview and testimonial about the Brew Bomb System featuring Heather Perry from Klatch coffee.

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If you’re looking to learn more about cold brew or draft coffee make sure you check out Keg Outlet Ultimate Guide to Cold Brew Coffee and Serving Coffee on Draft. Hey, don’t just take my word for it, here’s Daniel Browning from the Browning Beverage Company in Mumford, Texas.

Daniel: I got on the Internet and started looking around and I found Keg Outlet’s Ultimate Guide to Cold Brew Coffee and read it a couple more times. When I read anything in my life, that was pretty much all the research I needed.

Brendan: If you’re looking to start your journey with cold brew or draft coffee check out the Ultimate Guide to Cold Brew Coffee and Serving Coffee on Draft. A free 34 page e-book offered a kegoutlet.com. You can get there through the drips and draughts website by going to dripsanddraughts.com/ultimate guide.

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All right, here’s Heather Perry from Klatch coffee.

Heather: I’m Heather with Klatch coffee, and we have been in business for over 20 years. In that time some of the things that have really led to our success is constant evolvement. One of the things that we really trying to do here at Klatch is we never [unintelligible 00:07:48] sit back and say, “Well, we’ve got it all figured out now so I guess we just let the boat keep going.” We’re constantly looking at how can we do things better, what can we be adding, what can we be taking away, how can we be evolving.

Brendan: How do you keep evolving, making coffee after all is just coffee and water?

Heather: The way we keep evolving- there’s a few different ways. One you have to continue to evolve with what expectations you’re setting for your customers. As much as coffee is extremely simple, it’s coffee and water. We do lots of things around how you introduce those two together. Then what you can provide and what you can add to enhance the experience of the coffee. One of the things that makes coffee really unique is obviously you have coffees from all over the world that have their own unique characteristics but you can also build upon those, take those characteristics to new heights.

Doing different things with what you’re doing with that coffee and water is what’s going to allow you to have those different experiences.

Brendan: Got it. Tell us about Klatches Cold Brew Program?

Heather: We’ve been in business for 23 years, we have made ice coffee in our cafe the exact same way for 23 years. It’s ground coffee, it’s water, it sits for 24 hours in a metallic bucket, you drain them. About two months ago, Holly and I we were [unintelligible 00:09:00] together. It’s like, “Oh, my God. Our menu doesn’t say cold brew anywhere on it.” We’ve just always called it ice coffee. Two months ago we put cold brew on our menu but it’s the only way we’ve ever made our ice coffee.

Cold brew is delicious. It’s funny how polarizing it [unintelligible 00:09:16] right now and how much controversy it brings up. Ultimately it’s another the way that you can drink coffee. One of the things that makes coffee– and this is such an interesting time for coffee right now is– coffee is one of those things. I always say there’s black and there’s white when it comes to coffee, there’s, “Here’s absolutely wrong, this is bad standards, here’s absolutely right, best practices.” Then it’s filled with a whole lot of grey in the middle and a whole lot of opinions and a whole lot of science.

We’re in a funny place with coffee where you’re seeing people do a lot of different things some for better some for worse. One of the mistakes you can make with cold brew is not accentuating the flavors of the coffee but just looking at it brewing and saying, “Okay, well, this is what this tastes like.” It’s like, “Well, is that the best you can do with that coffee, can you do more out of it, can you treat your cold brew recipe differently, can you treat the coffee differently during the frosting process? Are you really maximizing the coffee’s potential here?” That can get left a little out with cold brew.

We take Michael’s what he calls as pick up flavor roast profile. I think you have a pick up flavor cold brew recipe where you’re going to maximize that’s coffee’s flavor and bring up the potential. Mere mixing water and coffee is easy and you’re going to get something drinkable, drinkable doesn’t necessarily mean enjoyable. You have to create things that are enjoyable.

Brendan: Klatch has been cold brewing for 23 years, tell us about your cold brew process and how it’s recently changed?

Heather: We’ve brought in the Brew Bomb which has been great for us. One of the problems that we ran into is Up until a few months ago, you came in, we literally had dozens of tiny buckets out because we were making everything by the batch. We’ve been looking at advancing our cold brew technology and trying to do larger batch sizes for probably a solid two years now. With everything that we’ve tested, we ran into a lot of issues, the number one for me being the taste just wasn’t as good. Ultimately it comes down to taste.

It’s not about trying to make a huge batch of a crappy-tasting product, it’s about something that gives me that versatility to be adaptable for lots of different recipes and letting lots of different coffee shine. That’s really what we’ve been missing, and so the Brew Bomb really allows us to dial in each coffee like we want to, and that’s one of the things that makes us really excited about it.

Brendan: So you’re able to dial in recipes for different coffees with the Brew Bomb. Tell us about the filtration process and the final cup quality using the Brew Bomb system.

Heather: Now, one of the great things is like I said, we worked a lot with- a lot of other technology, and the reason that we didn’t end up going with those is because the cup quality was not there for us. We also spent a lot of time filtering. You could talk to anybody who’s spending any time with cold brew, filtering, filtering, filtering. It’s like the million-dollar secret.

So one of the things that’s great about this is it’s one little filter but it produces a much cleaner cup than we were getting with the [unintelligible 00:11:58] we were doing double filter. And so it gives us a great cup clarity. We new we had to change some of our recipes to match what we were doing before, but for new coffees, I think we have better [unintelligible 00:12:08] we’re getting better potential out of the cup in the first batch, so.

Brendan: How was the yield used in the Brew Bomb System compared to your prior methods?

Heather: Yeah. Our yield’s probably increased on average 15%, versus what we were doing before. That’s one of the big complaints with cold brew, is the yield off of it. So being able to get a higher yield in a shorter time is a big advantage.

Brendan: All right. There you have it. If you’ve got any other questions about the Brew Bomb System, let us know. We’ll try to get Ray back on another episode for a little deeper dive into the system. We’re still putting information on our site about it, still putting some videos together, still working on some testimonials for it. So stay tuned for all of that.

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Brendan: All right. Thanks for listening. That’s going to do it for today’s episode. Again, if you didn’t listen to the first episode about the Brew Bomb system, you can go back and check that out by going to dripsanddraughts.com/72 or you can hop onto iTunes and find it in there, or Stitcher, or Google Play music, however you get your podcasts. If you’re looking for links or show notes from this episode, you can find those by going to dripsanddraughts.com/77. That’s going to do it for this week. Looking forward to seeing you again next Friday on another episode of the Drips & Draughts podcast.