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Transcript

Coffee Smarter Week 6 - Brr! It's Cold (Brew) In Here! · Coffee People Podcast

0:00
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the roast West
0:15
Coast coffee podcast. I am your host Ryan Walt, and we
0:19
are here for another coffee. Smarter session, with our
0:22
resident coffee expert, Chris O'Brien, he is the proprietor of
0:25
coffee cycle in Pacific Beach, and the guy who turned all of
0:29
his Dave. Whose band concert t-shirts into
0:31
a quilt. Chris does not like cold brew
0:34
coffee. So, of course, I decided to ask
0:36
him about it and he gets into it.
0:39
He dives into the science really dives into the science and why
0:44
he feels the way he does about cold brew, full disclosure.
0:48
They don't serve a true cold brew at Coffee cycle.
0:51
Chris and his team make flash chilled or Japanese style iced
0:54
coffees, which are essentially made to order brewed pour overs
0:58
quickly dropped into a glass filled with ice.
1:01
Be sure to check out roast westcoast.com for more
1:04
information about Flash chilled coffee.
1:06
In this episode's recap. You will also find all of the
1:10
links referenced on this show. Updates from our guests and
1:13
coffee industry Partners, Coffee News and much more.
1:17
Check it out, that's roast westcoast.com.
1:22
Now let's see if Chris can help us get a little coffee smarter
1:25
today. Mr. O'Brien, thank you for
1:34
coming back after we left things.
1:36
Last. Last time we were talking about.
1:38
Kapu. I felt there's a little tension,
1:41
but it feels like maybe that is, you know, enough time has passed
1:44
that. We've simmer down.
1:46
God, forgive you? Okay, that's not where I was
1:50
going with this, but I think we can sincerely say that we're
1:53
glad to be here again today to get coffee smarter.
1:56
Absolute. And so I wanted to to thank you
2:00
for being, you know, the OG coffee smarter expert on the
2:03
roast West Coast podcast and now you should say something nice
2:06
about me. Well, I think you are incredible
2:10
for gathering this group of excellent coffee people
2:13
together. I think you've come up with some
2:14
awesome questions that season. I think you actually might even
2:19
learn a little something from, at least one of these episodes.
2:23
Chris, I appreciate that compliment and for Is question.
2:27
I wanted to ask you about cold brew.
2:31
How is cold brewed different? From a regular cup of coffee?
2:34
I mean, cold, brew is everywhere.
2:36
Obviously, with the past few years, it's exploded in
2:38
popularity, a ton of our local Roasters are making some
2:41
variation of cold brew available in either a can or by The
2:44
Growler on draft. Is it as simple as just brewing,
2:47
a regular pot of coffee and throwing it in the fridge for a
2:49
while and if not then you know how do we make it?
2:52
And then what are some of the characteristics of say a good
2:55
cold brew. Yeah.
2:56
This is, this is kind of a funny question for me and I didn't I
2:59
didn't warn you when you send me the preliminary list of
3:02
questions that this is sort of funny for me.
3:05
But since you worked with me for a little bit, you may remember
3:08
that? I don't know exactly what's your
3:10
number like, you've probably repressed, a lot of those
3:13
memories working with me, but I'm not the biggest cold brew
3:17
fan, most of the time, and that's kind of funny to me when
3:20
I look back at my history of coffee because cold brew toddy.
3:25
As we used to Most of the time was that she won the ways that I
3:28
really got into coffee, and at the first rose tree, I ever
3:32
worked at back in Cleveland Ohio, Phoenix, Coffee Roasters,
3:35
I remember, I took coffee home with me and I made cold brew out
3:39
of there. Tends Ania peaberry because we
3:41
always made cold brew out of their their Mexico Chiapas and I
3:45
made a Tanzania peaberry and then I made a mantra cold brew
3:49
and I remember both of those being really unique and
3:52
different and I just thought it was so cool that I could take
3:56
this. These different coffees and get
3:58
this different taste out of it with this different Brewing
4:00
method and at the time, I was really sold.
4:04
Also on, you know, the talking points that people talk about
4:07
cold brutal say, house, lower acidity, and gentle on your
4:10
stomach. Sometimes they'll say it's
4:12
higher caffeine preface. This probably overly long
4:16
winded. Answer to your question, which
4:18
is, you know, the guts of our interview is that basically
4:22
there's a lot of misinformation about cold, brew out.
4:24
There will Brew Is exactly what it sounds like it is.
4:29
It is cold coffee. But rather than just being cold
4:32
coffee, it's coffee. That's brewed with cold water
4:36
and not necessarily cold, like, refrigerated water or ice water,
4:40
but just cold as in, not hot. So, in specialty coffee
4:45
Association specifies that 194 tu-204 208 at a minimum of Four
4:56
degrees Fahrenheit is needed to brew a good cup of coffee hot
5:01
but then cold brew. So why can we get good coffee
5:07
with water? That's less than 194° 194
5:10
degrees is required why Cold Brew can, I guess, sure I'm
5:15
going to guess it's the other side of that equation, and it's
5:17
time. And that is basically how cold
5:20
brew works at all. Is that when we brew a hot
5:23
coffee? So excellent.
5:26
One job Ryan. I'm so sorry.
5:29
Compliments. Today, I'm fist-pumping in my
5:31
little podcast Booth right now, good, so excited, that I got
5:34
that, right? So, yeah, with a regular hot
5:38
coffee, you're Brewing it anywhere from, you know, three
5:40
minutes up to maybe six or eight minutes on a big batch of gallon
5:44
and a half coffee. But it's, you know, three to
5:47
eight minutes is a pretty short gap of time, cold brew, you're
5:51
Brewing anywhere from 12 to 48 Hours, usually people say 24
5:57
hours but it really can be anywhere from 12 to 48 hours.
6:01
It's a lot longer than I would have guessed.
6:03
Well, have you ever made some tea, you know, we just take tea
6:06
leaves or tea bags and you put them in a mason jar.
6:08
Full of cold water, and you stick it out in the sun for a
6:10
day. The concept is pretty much the
6:12
same. You're just letting it happen
6:15
over a longer period of time, with minimum, agitation, and
6:18
sort of letting it happen, you know, who to naturally or, you
6:22
know, organically to me that feels more like a science
6:25
experiment than something. I would drink.
6:27
Yeah, and I think early on cold Brews, it was very much a
6:31
science experiment and I think that a lot of the misinformation
6:36
and pour cold Brews that people have experienced come from this
6:41
sort of experimentation early on in cold, Brews popularity.
6:45
So brewing coffee with cold water, was really made popular
6:51
in the United States by a company called the toddy
6:54
company. The toddy company was Selling a
6:57
cold Brewing device. That was basically a plastic
7:00
bucket with a nylon mesh filter like a bag and a paper filter
7:07
inside of that. And it's some variations on that
7:10
some that were just with papers and that we're just, the nylon
7:13
mesh, should see some with this felt disc kind of compressed
7:18
felt disc in a felt like the other cloth and you would keep
7:22
this disc in the refrigerator soaked in water and all these
7:25
all these Processes. But the toddy company made it
7:29
very popular and one of the selling points that toddy
7:33
advertised was that cold, brew was one-third, the acidity of
7:38
hot coffee and therefore more gentle on your stomach now.
7:42
I haven't seen this confirmed with you no official study and
7:47
with you know, peer review. But I have seen an informal
7:50
study done by someone who worked as the head of a cold brew
7:53
Department of a fairly large coffee.
7:56
Jane, they did his own experiments with all the tools
7:59
that he had at his disposal. In the last 5-10 years, he did
8:02
pH readings on a bunch of his is cold brew and hot coffee.
8:07
That was around in the cafes that you was working for.
8:10
And the largest percentage difference, he found between any
8:14
of his cold Brews. And any of the hot bruise was
8:18
less than one point five percent.
8:21
So it's kind of a misnomer that it's not as harsh on your
8:23
stomach. It's just colder, so maybe
8:26
you're not It's like sensing that bitterness right off the
8:28
top. Yeah and maybe that that 1.5
8:31
makes a difference, maybe it's psychosomatic.
8:34
You know, like I said this is not a pure reviewed official
8:37
study but there's at least some data to suggest that this 1/3
8:41
the acidity marketing term. That the toddy company used was
8:47
a marketing thing instead of real hard science.
8:51
What about Flavor though? I mean are the flavors still as
8:55
specific as They would be in a hot coffee.
8:57
Are they watered down? I mean, which seems like an odd
9:01
thing, but I guess just sitting in the water longer, are they,
9:04
I've heard from other from Coffee Roasters that sometimes,
9:07
they think a package cold, brew is a more accurate
9:12
representation of their coffee, because nothing changes.
9:14
Once it's packaged and say I can or something like that and
9:17
they're not worried about their customer brewing, it you know,
9:20
and impacting the flavor of the coffee but does that seem legit
9:24
to you or is that something that you've looked into or Know
9:26
anything about is as how the cold brew impacts the flavor.
9:30
Absolutely absolutely. So I mean cold brew when it's
9:33
packaged in cans and bottles is usually brewed with a fair
9:38
amount of apparatus and infrastructure that is not
9:42
readily available to your average home.
9:45
Cold Brewer, it's beyond this toddy maker bucket system,
9:50
essentially it still is a bucket system, but one of the problems
9:54
with tati or cold brew, In general, is that it's really
9:59
hard to filter. All the grounds out when you
10:01
have hot water and a paper filter because the way the heat
10:05
act upon the filter and the hot water, and the grounds act on
10:08
the filter, all the water tends to flow through this paper
10:11
filter. But if you have cold water and
10:14
the same coffee grounds, the grounds, the ultrafine
10:18
particles, tend to clog up the holes in the paper filter and
10:24
sort of locked up the water from draining.
10:26
Down. So you can't really gravity
10:28
filter things, the way that we normally do.
10:31
We normally like gravity pull the water through the coffee
10:33
grounds and pull it down. And then if you try to do a
10:37
different method, instead of gravity, you're going to tear
10:41
the paper because paper is only so strong and it's wet paper.
10:45
It's not that strong. So most of the time when we've
10:48
got a really nice canned pulled Brew, it's been forced through a
10:53
fairly thick filter. Something like felt like we
10:55
talked about before. Or fairly thick filter, and it's
10:58
pumped through using some pressure, and it's going to be
11:01
kind of similar to like a, like, a lot of the time they use beer
11:04
pumps and filters to really make sure that none of that ultrafine
11:07
sediment gets in the final product and that ultrafine
11:11
sediment. In addition, to clogging up your
11:13
filters. If it does get in the final
11:15
product that faults through those holes in the filter.
11:18
If you're using a metal filter or just the nylon mesh bag,
11:21
something that's not as intensive, filtration as Felt
11:27
plugs or a good paper filter. If you're using anything, that's
11:31
less than that. You're going to get too much
11:33
ultrafine particles and fine particles that end up floating
11:36
in your cup or can of cold brew. Those particles are going to
11:40
continue to extract and they're going to extract.
11:43
Undesirable, compounds are going to extract things that are in
11:47
the coffee being that you don't want to taste.
11:49
That's why if you leave, your French Press sitting and you
11:51
forget about it while you're watching your episode of The
11:54
Morning News or whatever. You leave it sitting for 15
11:57
minutes and then you plunge it and you pour your cup, it tastes
12:00
so much worse than if you were paying attention and steeped it
12:03
for the four to six minutes that you wanted to steep it for.
12:05
So it's important to filter that stuff out and that stuff can
12:10
have a really bad effect on the flavor of your coffee.
12:13
And so those can cold, Brews are really dialed in to really
12:17
eliminate all those factors that can cause a bad flavor in the
12:21
coffee. Now, all that being said,
12:23
there's still not that many cold.
12:25
Brews I, Ali love. And the reason for that is I
12:30
like to break coffee brewing down to this you know sort of
12:34
simple signs of extraction. I try to break it down into ways
12:38
that are easy for me to understand and easy for me to
12:40
communicate. So I talked a lot about
12:42
extraction of different flavor compounds that we like and don't
12:46
like. So the main compounds to talk
12:48
about extracting are acids salts caffeine and sugars.
12:54
So, inside your coffee bean inside Or coffee grounds.
12:57
You've got 800 different compounds that the human palate
13:00
can detect that all these different organic acids that
13:03
make fruit flavors. You've got malic acid taste of
13:06
apples and peaches. You got citric acid, taste of
13:09
citrus fruit, you know, you've got you've got some salts that
13:13
sort of act as flavor enhancers and sort of balance out other
13:16
flavors. You've got caffeine which is
13:18
something that we love when we're sleeping in the morning
13:20
but has a bitter taste to it and then you do have a small amount
13:24
of naturally occurring sugars. And a lot of those flavors acids
13:29
are usually sour. But if you pair them with
13:32
sugars, that is Juicy. Salts can taste salty or
13:36
metallic. But when you pair them with
13:38
sugars, you get sort of like a salted caramel type effect and
13:41
it is extra sweet and then you take a bitter with sweet.
13:45
You get Bittersweet, which makes everything a little bit easier
13:48
to a little bit more palatable. That's the basic way that I like
13:53
to break down, coffee extraction, one, I'm teaching
13:56
about it and how the different things that we do and we're
13:59
brewing coffee affect the taste of the ultimate.
14:02
So now that I've said that think about two of those compounds,
14:06
think about salts and think about sugars because acids,
14:09
salts and caffeine are all very soluble.
14:11
They all mix in water very easily like salt.
14:14
So you take salt and you put it in the cup of hot water and the
14:18
salt is dissolved and take a teaspoon of sugar and you put it
14:21
in a cup of hot water sugar dissolves.
14:24
Pretty easily you do the same thing.
14:26
NG with the salt and a cup, and the sugar and a cup.
14:29
And now you add room temperature water, even if you leave those
14:33
cups, sitting for 24 or even 48 Hours, the salt one is going to
14:38
dissolve more than the sugar 1. And so, this is my problem with
14:42
cold brew is that ultimately, even if you're extracting, a
14:45
certain percentage of the flavor compounds out of the beans and
14:50
into your cold brew and your liquid beverage, even if you're
14:53
extracting the right percentage, we say that. 18 to 22 percent is
14:58
the ideal extraction percentage. That means if you've extracted,
15:01
if you've taken 18 percent of your coffee grounds and you've
15:05
dissolved them into the water of the beverage that you're serving
15:08
that you've probably got a good balance of sugars.
15:12
Caffeine salt and acids, that's what that means.
15:15
And then if you go more than 22%, if you take more than 22%
15:19
of those coffee grounds, and put them in your beverage, then
15:21
you're going to be getting things that you don't like to
15:23
taste in there. Phenols, chlorogenic acids
15:27
things that just don't taste good.
15:29
There's no sugars that are going to balance out.
15:32
Your phenols are closer than the gases are going to make them
15:34
taste good. It's just the just going to
15:35
taste bad they're going to taste things like rubber or banded.
15:39
If there's like all kinds of bad ways, the coffee can taste and
15:43
you might have experienced them. When you left that French Press
15:45
sitting around well cold. Brew, even if it gets to that 18
15:49
or 19 or 20 or 21 or 22 percent, even if it gets to the right
15:53
ideal percentage of Extraction, it's so hard to get those sugars
15:58
in there. The chances are if you're
16:00
measuring it at 18, 19, 20 Level blah.
16:03
Chances are, if you're measuring it, and you say, okay, this is a
16:05
good extractor because I measured it.
16:07
You've probably extracted some of those undesirable compounds
16:11
and not quite enough of those sugars.
16:14
It's just so hard to get sugars to dissolve easily.
16:18
In unagitated room, temperature or colder water that you're
16:22
never to me, going to get the Deal flavor balance out of the
16:26
coffee. Now.
16:29
This is a long scientific ran. I've just been going on about
16:31
different flavor compounds and I'm sorry if it was a little too
16:34
esoteric there for a minute. I wasn't glazing over at all.
16:37
Don't worry about it. I heard you snoring.
16:41
But you know, the thing is is that all that being said I have
16:45
had cold Brews that I've enjoyed.
16:47
I did find some of my earliest coffee passion and cold brew and
16:51
it doesn't mean that you can't find a pretty good cold brew
16:54
doesn't I mean that some of those cold rooms that I've had
16:56
weren't good because some of that Sugar will dissolve and you
16:59
can get a pretty good balance of flavors and the fact is is that
17:04
when brewing coffee however much science were putting in it.
17:07
We're still working in the real world with real things and
17:11
everything is imperfect when we grind coffee.
17:14
We're not grinding it to a perfect uniform even particle
17:17
size no matter how many dollars you spent on that fancy Burr
17:21
grinder. It doesn't matter.
17:22
You're never going to get it totally totally.
17:25
Perfect. So you have to accept those
17:27
compromises already. When you're Brewing hot coffee,
17:30
when you're bringing espresso and you're doing pour overs
17:33
French Press. We're always accepting those
17:35
compromises. So it is possible to get a good
17:40
cold brew batch, where you've gotten a sufficient balance of
17:43
sugars to make those other compounds taste good without
17:46
extracting too many undesirable compounds.
17:50
The easiest way to do it is to do it with a coffee that has the
17:53
sugars more. Easily soluble.
17:56
There's no MM. Coffee is that are tend to be
17:58
more soluble where the all the all the good stuff gets in
18:02
there. Pretty easily most copies from
18:04
Brazil or like that. A lot of coffee from Sumatra is
18:07
like that. And sometimes you can roast your
18:09
coffee a little bit darker to sort of get that same effect or
18:12
a similar effect where you've kind of broken down, some of
18:15
those undesirable compounds with the extension of your roast
18:18
time, and you've caramelize, some of those sugars to make
18:21
them a little bit easier to extract so cold, brew My
18:25
favorite, but it is possible to get a pretty decent one and the
18:28
canned ones tend to have the biggest infrastructure behind
18:31
them that gives them the best chance of being good.
18:35
It reminds me a little bit of something you said right away
18:38
and season one that I think we need to take with us through all
18:42
of these conversations, which is the best coffee for you is.
18:46
The one that's getting you excited about coffee.
18:48
Yes. And taking to the next level
18:51
which is something you just said, you know, you started with
18:53
cold brew and you've moved on to all these other things.
18:55
Things. But maybe if it wasn't for that
18:56
experience of cold brew, you wouldn't have been.
18:58
So jazzed up that day to do something else, total and jazzed
19:02
up, not just excited but also like caffeinated wordplay that's
19:08
all that. It's all that.
19:09
I know, I coffee cycle, you don't necessarily serve it cold
19:12
brew, but you do kind of a flash chilled coffee, right?
19:15
Which is not the same as leaving it.
19:18
Sit overnight or anything like that, but it's just a, it gives
19:21
the illusion of a cold brew to somebody who's really wanting a
19:24
cold brew. And I much, I want to say a
19:26
better quality, but just in a, in a more craft appropriate way.
19:30
Yeah. I mean, it lets us avoid some of
19:32
the pitfalls that I've highlighted about cold brew
19:36
while providing, you know, a really good product.
19:38
Basically, we're brewing a hot coffee, extra concentrated and
19:43
bring it directly over ice, in a way that melts the exact.
19:47
Right? Amount of ice to bring the
19:49
dilution of the beverage back to the proper dilution.
19:53
So that it is that 18 to 22 percent extraction.
19:57
It tastes good with like a 1.4 percent.
20:00
Total dissolve solids at a strong.
20:02
It doesn't taste watery. It doesn't taste extra strong.
20:05
It tastes just right. It's a little labor-intensive
20:07
but it tastes good. And more important than all that
20:10
science stuff. You just said, is it looks cool
20:12
when it drops from like little container down into the glass
20:15
eyes it does look cool. It does look very cool.
20:17
You got to do it in glass and clear and it just it looks cool.
20:21
I've always wanted to look cool if you're not into coffee to
20:24
look cool than Are you even doing in the space?
20:26
Honestly, I really, I really don't know.
20:28
Chris. I feel like I got smarter and
20:31
then Dahmer and then smarter again in that explanation of
20:34
cold brew. So I really appreciate you being
20:36
here again. And we're already like leaning
20:39
into the second half of of the roast West Coast season 2.
20:43
So I'm really excited to get you back here in a couple weeks to
20:46
talk about different types of coffee and about coffee farming.
20:50
And all these other things that we've kind of been talking about
20:52
getting on the schedule and And I look forward to seeing you
20:56
again soon. Thanks a lot buddy.
20:58
It's always so good to see you. And you know, I really enjoy
21:01
that part where you had to look at your dictionary.
21:03
That was it's not a dictionary it's just like little
21:07
tic-tac-toe games. I've been playing with myself
21:09
while you're talking over there. All
21:23
Have I told all of you about the voice of San Diego podcast yet,
21:27
if you are into politics, specifically San Diego Regional
21:31
politics, then there's another show you should check out.
21:34
It's called voice of San Diego and it is a Weekly News podcast
21:38
for local politics nerds. Every Friday, the editors at
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voice of San Diego breakdown, the biggest stuff that happened
21:45
that week and then they give their take on what it all means.
21:49
You can check it out now. Wherever you listen.
21:51
This show, again, it's voice of San Diego.
21:55
Now, back to some coffee smarter, I actually do feel a
21:59
bit coffee smarter after the show today, Chris has a depth of
22:02
coffee knowledge. That always amazes me.
22:05
He doesn't like cold brew yet. He just gave us a 20-minute
22:08
in-depth. TED Talks tile education on it,
22:12
amazing, today's coffee vocab phrases are as always inspired
22:16
by the show and it is really to help myself clarify the
22:20
differences between cold brew iced and Flash chilled coffees
22:24
cold. Brew is Is just coffee brewed
22:26
with cold water over a very long period of time.
22:30
Generally 24 to 48 hours, nearly the same iced coffee is a hot.
22:36
Drip coffee, that is then combined with ice to make it
22:39
cold and finally, Japanese style or Flash.
22:42
Chilled coffee is a brood pour over cup of coffee.
22:46
That is then quickly drained over ice.
22:49
I think I got it, I will be back next week with an interview with
22:53
Jason Simpson. He is the Owner and proprietor
22:56
of Camp coffee and downtown Oceanside Camp coffee has
23:00
quickly established itself as a hub in the downtown community
23:03
and a place that stands for inclusivity acceptance and also
23:07
great service Jason. And I talked about how he
23:10
created the vibe there, where Camp originated, and how his
23:14
business has navigated both the coronavirus and some of the
23:18
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And finally, thanks to Joe at Cape Horn coffee Brokers for
23:49
that fund coffee. He gift pack, he sent this week,
23:52
you'll find links to all friends of the show right on the front
23:56
of roast westcoast.com. Thank you all for listening to
23:59
the show today. If you've enjoyed it, I'd
24:02
appreciate it. If you would tell a friend that
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is the best way to help me grow this show that, and maybe give
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it a share a follow or a shout out on Instagram, Facebook or
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Twitter at roast West Coast and of course sign up for that
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newsletter. It's on roast westcoast.com and
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new. Newsletters come out every
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Tuesday and Friday, during the season.
24:24
This episode of the roast West Coast podcast was written
24:28
produced and recorded by me Ryan.
24:32
I hope this show has found you happy healthy and with at least
24:35
enough sanity to make it through another day and please always be
24:40
sure to drink. Good coffee.
25:08
Hey everyone, this is Cody from San Diego's first and longest
25:11
running local beer podcast, beer night in San Diego.
25:15
If you love the local beer Community Check out br9, San
25:18
Diego available everywhere podcaster found each and every
25:21
week we bring you great local beer, discussion beer, education
25:24
news, and tons more with a touch of Comedy, check out br9, San
25:28
Diego to laugh and learn with us.