In this episode, host Brendan Hanson is joined by 2-time U.S. Barista Champion Heather Perry and 2-time Brewers Champion Todd Goldsworthy from Klatch Coffee Company to discuss the award winning Klatch cold brew that took home 1st place in the 2016 Anaheim Coffee Fest America’s Best Cold Brew Competition.
Highlights & Takeaways
Cold brew coffee – Equivalent of the wild west – no standards yet
Klatch Coffee and U.S. Coffee Championship winners:
- Heather Perry / 2x U.S. Barista Champion
- Todd Goldsworthy / 2x U.S. Brewers Cup Champion
Klatch Coffee – 23 year old family run business
CoffeeFest / America’s Best Cold Brew – 1st Place Winner – Klatch Coffee and how they came up with their award winning brew
Nitrogen – Don’t use nitrogen just for the sake of using nitrogen… use nitrogen to enhance the taste and flavor of the coffee you’re serving
What we mentioned on during this show
Episode 32 Transcript
Brendan: Today on Drips & Draughts, we’re joined by Heather Perry and Todd Goldsworthy from Klatch Coffee to talk about their award winning cold brew that recently won the America’s Best Cold Brew Competition.
[Intro / Music]
Brendan: Alright, welcome to the Drips & Draughts podcast, as always, I’m Brendan Hanson and I’ll be your host. We’ve got a great episode for you today. I’m joined by Heather Perry and Todd Goldsworthy from Klatch Coffee Company.
I didn’t realize this at the time of the interview, but these two are a couple of coffee legends! We’ve got Heather Perry who is the 2003 and 2007 U.S. Barista Champion. Then we’ve also got Todd Goldsworthy who is the 2014 and 2016 U.S. Brewers Cup Champion. So, safe to say that Klatch Coffee makes champions.
The reason they’re on the show with me today is because they recently won, they being Klatch Coffee, the 2016 Anaheim CoffeeFest America’s Best Cold Brew Competition. Which happened to be the first cold brew competition that CoffeeFest has put on.
Those of you who have listened to the show before, you know that on a previous episode that Cary and I had talked about going down to CoffeeFest this year, we walked through the show and the tasting line at the cold brew competition, we did all that. Then we discussed the cold brew competition a little bit. So after that episode, a couple of you reached out to us and said, “You guys should try to get the winners [of America’s Best Cold Brew Competition / Klatch Coffee] on the show”. I figured, yeah, why not, that’d be cool, so I reached out to Klatch Coffee and I heard back with a message saying, “reach out to the marketing department, they’ll know who to contact”. So I reached out to marketing and sent an email to them, and a couple days later, I get an email from Heather Perry, saying, “Hey, I was forwarded your email and Klatch would love to be on your podcast”.
Little did I know, as I mentioned before, Heather Perry is a legend and that she would be bringing Todd Goldsworthy with her. Stoked to have both of them on the episode with us today. And looking back at the show now, geez I was out of my league in terms of coffee knowledge and coffee experience.
But I’ll tell you what, both of them [Heather and Todd] were super down-to-earth, super cool, super easy to talk to and shared a lot of good information. And Todd actually said that he does some homebrewing as well so we talked beer for a bit after we recorded the episode. A lot of good information in today’s show, but it was especially intriguing to hear Todd and Heather talk about how they came up with the winning cold brew recipe.
So with that, let’s get into today’s episode with Heather Perry and Todd Goldsworthy from Klatch Coffee.
[Music Interlude]
Brendan: Alright. Welcome back to the Drips & Draughts Podcast as always I’m Brendan Hanson and today I’m joined by two members of Klatch Coffee, Heather Perry and Todd Goldsworthy. How are you guys?
Heather: Good.
Todd: Great.
Brendan: Thanks for joining me, this is probably the third to fourth time we’ve actually had somebody in here in the “studio”. It’s exciting, glad to have you guys here. Before we get in to too much, would you guys each mind give a little background on yourselves. Maybe start with you Heather, how you got into coffee and-
Heather: Yes. Klatch is a 23 year old company. We’ve been in the business for 23 years starting in the Inland Empire, it’s actually my family’s business. I kind of grew up in it the whole time. I started competing as a barista while I was attending college at Cal Poly Pomona with the intentions of going on to law school. I was actually in the middle of filling out my law school applications when I won my first barista championship.
Yes, it gave me the opportunity to do some travel. You kind of, you know, well, you’re year as champion, you can have that year, where people want you, different places and so, I put law school on hold and decided to take advantage and it was really during that time that I– I really saw for the first time what a career on coffee could be. Up to that point, I would say– and this is over– wow, okay, this is 13 years ago that I won my first championship. Where coffee was 13 years ago, people can really stayed in their buck, you had you baristas, you had your roasters and it was really around that time that people started to kind of mingle if you will with people from the aside.
I would say it’s where you really start to decide where you really begin to see the idea of “seed to the cup”, kind of come to fruition and that chain really begin to get connected. I had the opportunity to go to Costa Rica which is my first trip to Oregon-
Brendan: Wow. [crosstalk]
Heather: –to do some training down there and I was like, well this is pretty awesome. Law school can wait, I’m going to keep doing this and I really just haven’t looked back since. I mean, I love what I do, I get to do something different everyday like awesome things like this. I really just found it kind of found my niche and I love working at Klatch, continuing to grow it and evolve and bring out new products and expand what we’re doing.
Brendan: Right on. We’ve had a guest on before who was talking about the waves of coffee first through third wave of–
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: You kind of got in, sounds at a third wave, where it became important to see from the seed to the cup.
Heather: Yes, I mean one of things of any good makes Klatch kind of a unique company is how much were willing to evolve. We started in the company that we were 23 years ago, I don’t even– I don’t even think we would recognize ourselves today, to be totally honest. We compete in a lot of thing because I’m sure we’ll get through. We love competitions, one of the reasons is because it pushes you to be the best that you can be and it pushes you to be relevant and make sure that you’re constantly learning and constantly evolving. That’s the thing that I’m really proud of that we do as a company.
When we started it in 93, it was mochas and flavors and syrups and that’s where the industry was. As we evolve with it, we kind of got a way from that. We changed our approach and did become more of that kind of seed to cup. We actually did not start as a roaster, we actually when we first open, it’s funny because these days you hear a lot of people buying from a lot of different roasting companies, well that we were doing in 93, we actually bought our coffee from four different roasters.
Brendan: Wow.
Heather: Yes, and we had various process that we bought from one company, we sold flavored coffees at the time, we bought them from another company, we had our blends that we brought from another and some single origins that we bought from another and our idea was well this is what these people do well, this is what we like from them, and that was what we were doing. When we opened our second retail store is when we actually got into roasting.
Brendan: Wow, that actually sound like a lot of cold brew companies that are starting now. They’re getting beans from– or at least, a lot of ones that I’m talking to, they’re getting beans different roasters, who are usually local to them. That’s cool.
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: Alright, how about you Todd? How about a little background on you?
Todd: I got my starting coffee at 19, I got my job at Starbucks. I was just in college, needs a side that job that was steady and flexible and being able to work through college. My kind of job at Starbucks as barista as working part time, also in television news, and at that time doing two television news stations and Starbucks and kind of working through that. Over time, just kind of fell in love with coffee more than television news.
Brendan: [laughs]
Todd: I was–[laughs] I was working a lot during the war in Iraq. I got this, I saw a lot, I did a lot, I was doing a lot of things on the backside of that or two new stations, one on the production side, one on the writing side. Did a lot of there and just kind of– that showed me what television news was going to be like for the rest of my life and I saw Starbucks and this coffee excitement for the rest of my life and kind of chose between the two at the time. That, yes, I like interacting with people, I like coffee, this is a little bit better. Yes, so I stayed with Starbucks for over 10 years, I worked with them during everything, starts as barista, work my way up, when I left I was the district manager.
I did a couple of special projects in between. Really got involved and in that time I think it was around 2009 maybe, I found that there was a competition thing happening in Hollywood right across the street from one of my stores and I never heard a specially cause association before, I’ve never seen a competition, anything. I literally walked in the door and was just lost. I think I was the most dressed up person in there besides some of the competitors. I was in a– my normal work clothes but I was in dress clothes and a tie and one else in jeans, t-shirts hanging out and I actually interestingly enough. Klatch was being served on the– it was called the “Fizz Bar” I think of the time.
Were just a roaster got the get time on a bar, and serve the audience, other coffee. Klatch have been served so it’s my first introduction to Klatch. Yes, just got the taste of coffee, see what’s going on the theme. I just started to get involved, I went to the SAA Show which is a few months later it was in Anaheim, it was nice and local and just blew my mind. See what was out there, what was going on.
Brendan: Yes.
Todd: I had a friend who worked for Starbucks in the Green Department, who blew down on what’s going on for Starbucks. I got that hang out with him but also get introduced to this whole scene and kind of– from there learned about barista camp. I went to barista camp, that’s where I actually met Heather for the first time, at barista camp that year in Santa Barbara and just kind of open my door as everything is going on, got more and more involved and in 2012 I left Starbucks and made it switch over to Klatch and haven’t really looked back since.
Yes, been a great, great transition, great move and lot of fun stuff like Heather said, We get to innovate, we’re got to do new things all time, continuously moving forward, get a compete in great stuff and always learning and growing. It was awesome.
Brendan: Awesome, it sounds like my home brewing, just always testing, always experimenting, always tweaking. You guys kind of answered a couple of my questions. Klatch’s family run, you’ve been around for 23 years you said?
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: That’s awesome.
Heather: Our family is expanded. I have a sister who is also involved in the business and she does the retail and her and Todd just got married this past year so Todd is part of the family as well.
Brendan: Todd mentioned that.
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: That’s are truly a family.
Heather: It is.
Brendan and Todd: [laughs]
Brendan: Where’s the name Klatch come from? Is there any story behind that?
Heather: Yes, my mom is a 100 percent Dutch and when she was growing up her she would see her grandma getting together and they would have clutches and it’s essentially old women getting together gossiping over cookies and coffee.
Brendan: [laughs]
Heather: It’s really what it comes down to you and when my parents started, yes, that’s where the name came from. It used to be Coffee Klatch, we had a very– we had a logo of a hand holding a cup of coffee with some steam coming out and we’ve rebranded probably over 10 years ago. Really met with the company in, kind of shared our desire to want to really create our own unique identity. I mean, Klatch is a very unique, we’re right with the logo, really didn’t represent that all. You could walk and you see that logo and it could be for any coffee company in the world. We really wanted something that represented it us and building upon that kind of conversation piece, we do a lot with quotes now.
Brendan: Okay.
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: Klatch is a Dutch word.
Heather: Its also very big in Germany.
Brendan: Okay.
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: Alright. Cool. Well, I guess one of the biggest reasons you guys were here is because I happen to try your cold brew at coffee fest in Anaheim and then surely after that I had somebody reached out saying Klatch won the cold brew competition. You guys trying to get them on the show. Here you guys are, let’s talk about your cold brew a little bit and what you guys think of the current state of cold brew, where it’s at now, where it’s come from and where maybe you think it’s going.
Heather: Sure. Where do you want to start?
Brendan and Todd: [laughs]
Heather: This is like– set of questions there [laughs]
Todd: Yes. That’s a lovely questionnaire.
Brendan: Let’s talk about the current state of cold brew.
Heather: It’s the wild, wild west.
Brendan: Yes.
Todd: Yes.
Heather: I mean, honestly, there is no standard for what cold brew is, you can see cold brew on a label that doesn’t really mean a whole lot, it doesn’t tell you necessarily what it is. I would say the only current standard that I have is when I already think customers see the word, cold brew I think they still expect kind of a rich, smooth brew. I think that’s kind of the only standard right now.
Todd: Yes-
Heather: Were the only expectation [inaudible 00:09:12]
Todd: Well, I would say its expectation, I don’t think that’s the standard anymore.
Heather: Yes, expectation.
Brendan: Yes, right. Maybe let’s try to define cold brew before we get into it. Brewed cold or brewed it as a speci– below specific temperature. Wha-
Heather: Wild, wild west again.
Brendan: I agree-
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: But-
Todd: I think for us to call cold brew, it’s going to be room temperature water or below.
Brendan: Or below.
Todd: Yes.
Brendan: Okay.
Todd: We do have some recipes that involve, ice so it does a little bit colder but for us it is that room temperature water being involved and longevity of brew times but again, that the standard out there and even is we’re playing, we’ve been doing 24 hours for a long time, we’re playing with a lot of different times right now, bringing out what’s next for us.
Brendan: Room temperature and below and then replacing heat with time
maybe.
Heather: Or you Hot blooms fit in there.
Brendan: Yes.
Heather: I mean like, for a year we have recipes that use Hot Blooms, and then use iced water. The actual brewing is, I would say, with cold or room temperature water, but there is that initial heat you’re that you add.
Brendan: Yes, to pull some extra out of the ground.
Heather: Yes, because I mean, if you look at coffee that’s hot brewed versus coffee that’s brewed, there’s a completely different chemical make-up of the final two products. They almost look anything alike, and you noticed that in the flavor, as well. I mean, we have these conversations a lot of what is it and at what point do you lose that and can you create a definition for what cold brew is. I think we all know what we’re trying to achieve there. The funniest thing, so we’ve had iced coffee on our menu for 23 years, and for 23 years it has always been made the exact same way, which is a 24-hour cold brew process, and we just changed it, today, I think the boards go up and we added the word cold brew to it. It’s like, it’s been cold brew this whole time, and so many people look for that now. I was like, “I guess we should call it out that it”s a cold brew.”
Brendan: Yes, play on that term, it’s becoming a lot more popular. Current state of cold brew, Wild, Wild West obviously, but that being said, cold brew has been around for a long time. You just said, you guys have been doing it for almost forever. A lot of the customers I talked to, have the same thing, they’ve been cold brewing forever but haven’t necessarily always called it cold brew until now. Where do you think this is going? Where do you think cold brew is going?
Heather: Well, I mean obviously you’re seeing it here more on bottles, I think if you look at– so something that the U.S. has lacked, if you travel to the rest of the world, coffee in Kansas still is very, very large. It’s a big part of what they have ready to drink, if you will. They tend to be cream and sugar based, if you go to Japan, you know what I mean, there are lots of Asian, there’s lots of black options of that. Here in the U.S. we really didn’t have any ready to drink option.
The closest thing to that is probably the bottled Frappuccinos from Starbucks, so it’s probably the closest thing you could buy off a shelf to drink. I think one of the popularity of cold brew, as we got in to specialty coffee, we talked about how difficult coffee is, and it’s like, we’re always making impossible for people to make coffee right at home it seems sometimes. Cold brew becomes something that’s very easy to enjoy, and you can pick it up off, of a shelf and I think that’s been part of the appeal of it, is the fact that it’s delicious, ready to drink product.
Brendan: Right. I mean, I get into it just because of the smoothness. Its simple, I’d make it on a Sunday, I’d have a jar on my fridge for a week. Now, my brother and I make 10 gallons of it, we used to take five gallon keg home, and it’s in my Kegerator at home. I walk out there and serve it out of my Kegerator every morning, and heat it up if I want to or just keep it cold. It’s definitely cool, it’s for sure a growing market, and its exciting. With cold brew, can you guys tell us or share maybe a recipe or how you guys went about winning the best cold brew at Coffee Fest?
Todd: Yes. So, as we kind of led up to it, as Heather mentioned earlier, I got married this year, I got married the weekend before the Coffee Fest. A little bit going on leaning up to that. Heather kind of took the range with kind of narrowing down what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do this, but that Monday before Coffee Fest, we took nine coffees that we discussed and talked about it, and narrowed down to, these are nine that we know, a few of them we like as cold brew, a few of them we know we like this flavor profile, and if either we like, this could be good.
Just brew them up, did nine potties, brew them together, take them all on Tuesday, let them sit on some Nitrogen overnight in the refrigerator, get them nice and cold, and on Wednesday, we pour them all out into nine glasses and just had them labeled what numbers, one through nine. We went through, me, Heather, Mike, and Holly, tasted all nine, and kind of narrowed down. We all scored them, gave them scores and narrowed down to top four. From there, there was kind of a hodge podge within us, I think, from those four of like which one was the best.
We took our entire production crew, had them all pick. With had baristas coming through the warehouse that day, who were doing training, we had them all picked. We had them all just kind of tell us what order, one through four, “How do you like these?” Like, “What’s the best or your least favorite?” We start marking that down, and it continued to be a hodge podge.
Brendan: You guys had a competition before the competition?
Heather: Yes.
Todd: Absolutely. Yes, which we do a lot for anything we do, and all the competitions we do this kind of thing. As we came down to it, we just kind of started looking at that, any one of these four could realistically win. Looking at– playing to the score sheets is a big thing we do, and looking at the fact that two-thirds of our points came from the audience. We had to, one, play to that, that the audience would love it, but then we have three judges that we have to ensure they’re going to love it. We wanted something that would really just stand-out from what we thought everybody else would be served.
As we start to look at that, we are able to say, “Okay, these two”, I think we knocked two out through that conversation, and went back to the final two and tasted again. I think we pretty unanimously agreed that this one was the one that we thought would appeal to a customer based or anybody who could walk through there, both regular consumers and coffee consumers, and anybody who just happen to be in our lives. It would also appeal to judges and stand-out for everybody else.
Brendan: Right on. I don’t really come from much of a coffee background, can you guys talk about some of the things that you guys were scoring it on just internally before you took it to competition?
Heather: Yes. The score sheet is made up of– I’m trying to think now.
Todd: We went off, of the judges’ score sheets that the three judges would be scoring off, of. It was [unintelligible 00:06:19].
Heather: It’s like [unintelligible 00:06:22] and then acidity.
Todd: I feel like acidity was in there or sweetness. They call it sweetness or acidity. There was like four different things that they were looking for. We all kind of scored based on that, and then we threw in a fifth category of just an overall, and so we scored it. Basically each category, we scored one to 10, 10 being the best, so it’s out of 50 points, and kind of scored our own. This one has the best body, this one’s a nine on body, eight on body, whatever it was scored to each one and had a final score.
Heather: Some of the things that led us to picking the coffee we ended up going with, so we ended up submitting an Ethiopian Gadab, it’s a beautiful wash Ethiopian, floral, really unique, lots of tropical and stone kind of fruits to it, but still very, I think, consumer friendly. Some of the coffees that we were looking at instead of this potentially, one was in Kenya, which was probably my favorite that day, but really bright.
Lacked a little bit of that body, and you know, when you’re looking at playing to an audience or to judges, when you think cold brew, you think of that body. Going with the coffee that just didn’t have that typical body that you’re looking for when you hear that word cold brew, it scared us a little bit. We didn’t want to go with that one, I think that’s how that one kind of got thrown out. And then the other one was the Elida Natural.
Todd: Yes. I came down to the Kenya, the Elida Natural, the Unity Blend and then the Gadab.
Heather: The Elida Natural, so, Elida is taken from Panama and Wilfred Lamases, we’ve been working with him for years. We actually used him in America’s Best Espresso, we used his coffee and some others, like most naturals, tons of fruits, his has latte with beautiful strawberry, little bubble gummy coming forward. I like naturals for like a sip or two, and then I’m like, “All right, that’s enough of that.” And naturals are very polarizing, typically people will love them or hate them. I think we would have gotten a lot of, “Oh my God, this is amazing,” and then I think we would have gotten with people like, “This is gross, what is going on with this?” That’s what got us to stay away from the natural. For the Unity Blend and the Gadab, I think it just came down to preference.
Todd: Yes. The Unity Blend had that natural in it, as well, so Unity Blend is actually the coffee Holly and I created for our wedding, the weekend before. We enjoyed this so much, and it was a percentage of that, Elida Natural, and then it had an El Salvador, a Ruby Honey in there, as well, those two coffees coming together.
When we kind of looked at the two, I think the Gadab just kind of stood out as a little more unique, compared to the Unity Blend, we felt there was going to be a lot of people who had similar flavor profile. It had some of that fruit that we’re looking for from that natural, but it was very balanced, smooth, just kind of what you would think about of a cold brew with a little extra fruit. It was great as a cold brew, but I think it just wasn’t going to stand out amongst somebody else.
Brendan: Like I said before, you guys really had a competition before you tasted coffee.
Heather: Yes. One of these that we never kind of internally say, “Well, this is probably the best, we’ll just go with it.” I mean, we definitely-
Brendan: Put it through the paces. [crosstalk]
Heather: Yes. We definitely looked for like descenders within the group, and why, and can we justify, and do we genuinely think as a group this is the best? We don’t think anything for granted and just pat ourselves on the back, at least we try not to.
Todd: I was going to say, I think that week before we started, we have about five coffees, maybe six coffees on the list, and the Gadab wasn’t on the original list of what we thought about putting through. Mike and I were having a conversation one day, and I was just like, “You know, we’ve done the Ethiopian Washed coffees before in the stores and they taste great and our customers love them, let’s just throw it in and see how it does.” That was kind of what we did with– That’s how we added four more coffees. Was like, “Oh, we’ve done this in the stores something like this before. Our customers like it. Let’s throw it in and see how it does”.
Heather: We also always when we do things like this, do them blind.
Todd: Yes.
Brendan: Yes. I think that’s probably the best way to do it, is to see what comes out on top and-
Todd: We have guesses internally where we’ll start talking about, “Oh, this is this one”, But 50% of the time we’re wrong.
Brendan: I do the same with beers. We’ll pour a bunch of beers or whiskeys, I enjoy whiskeys from time to time and every now and then the cheapest whiskey that’s on the table comes out as the winner. It’s interesting to see you’re usually surprised.
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: There were what? 32 contestants in the competition. 40 if you count all your other coffees, the other eight that you didn’t compete. Do you think some of the other companies who were in there created as many blends as you did, and cold brewed is much-
Todd: I don’t think anyone did as much as we did.
Brendan: Maybe a couple.
Todd: I would hope that a couple of companies experimented with a few before they jumped in there. I know some of the companies just took what they normally sell and just brought it and, “Let’s see how it does”, and did that, but I would say a few of them probably did at least a couple coffees I would hope.
Heather: Yes, I feel confident in saying nobody did as many as we did.
Brendan: I think your’s was the first one I tasted on Friday.
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: You guys were first in line if I recall, and I believe I voted for you before even knowing you guys.
Heather: All right.
Brendan: Get into that competition and going back to cold brew beer in the wild west. That competition was– I think I tasted one or two concentrates where they were actually poured over ice. I know there were some ready to drink ones. I think I got one or two nitros as I went down the line. What are you guys’ thoughts on the competition, how there were some–
Heather: Coffee Fest sent us a survey afterwards saying– I think they had comments on this, “Do you think nitro and cold brew should be separated?” I said no because I won, so I was happy. [laughs] I’m like, “Stick with– the same way”. I don’t know, they’re definitely different products.
Todd: I was going to say, I think they can easily measure up to each other though in the same way. You look at the top four, Passion House was third place I believe, and they had a cold brew, no nitro, no nothing, just straight out the bottle, it was delicious. I really enjoyed their cold brew. I could see why it was there in the top four with us. I don’t know if they need to be in their own category, I think that any of this kind of competitions are going to evolve. It’s the first time they’ve done it, it’s the first one, it will evolve in some way, shape or form but I don’t know that It’ll separate out.
Heather: Even for me, we serve nitro and cold brew in our cafes and what I get totally depends on what we’re serving on nitro. There’s certain coffees that I just don’t love on nitro, and I think are cold brew is better and depends on my mood. Even from my own perspective, I did not come into that competition as– cause I went through and tasted them all as well and there was nobody that I liked better or worse because it was nitro or still. For me it really did come down to the flavor of the coffee that you used, how you exactly served it, hopefully enhanced what you liked about the coffee but there was nothing where I was like, “Oh, well, this is a nitro verses a still. Clearly the nitro’s better”. Or clearly-
Todd: I was going to say– I can think of one that I felt like the way they did their nitro, I liked it less. Because I felt their coffee could’ve been better without nitro.
Brendan: Interesting.
Todd: Part of the competition is, you figuring out your coffee.
Brendan: You got to know how to serve your coffee.
Todd: We even discussed serving a still, that was part of our conversation and even tasting some of the coffees not on nitro and seeing how they played out as well.
Heather: Here’s an interesting thing and I don’t know and there were no parameters, there was no– not disclosure or there was nothing you signed in the competition guaranteeing that you were serving a cold brew, and the reason I state that is a company that I do a lot of work with, one of their favorite ways to serve their coffee is they hot brew and then immediately chill it over ice. They do it in large batches, so they’ll brew five gallons, put it over five gallons of ice and then they keg that product and that’s what they serve. We talked about, it’s a completely different flavor profile, still totally delicious but different. Somebody in the competition could’ve easily been serving something like that.
Todd: Yes, you previously have served some sort of iced coffee, cold coffee of some sort.
Heather: Right.
Todd: How it was brewed it could-
Brendan: Up in the air.
Todd: Exactly, it’s the wild west.
Heather: I just bring that up as an interesting point. I don’t actually know if everybody was cold brewing or if somebody had done something different.
Todd: As I was saying there were even company saying, “Oh yes, we used a proprietary method to brew this.” There were more like, “This is proprietary method of how we brew this” and who know how they actually brewed it.
Brendan: Sure. You mentioned hot brewing and then immediately cooling it. I’ve seen that done where it’s put through like a chiller coil that’s going through ice and then straight into a keg from there, have you guys tried that? You guys mentioned you could do a lot of different methods of cold brewing.
Heather: In large batch we haven’t. We do do that in store for single cups, you know what I mean? Like an immediate chill but we haven’t done it in large batch but talking to this other company I absolutely intrigued by doing that with some of our coffees. It’s like I said, for me personally, there’s coffees that I like better still– on nitro, so I see no reason why you couldn’t serve a still cold brew kind of an original next to a nitro, next to a hot brew over ice. I mean totally different flavor profiles.
Brendan: Yes, absolutely. Well let’s try some of this coffee. Do you guys mind.?
Todd: No. Not at all.
Brendan: This has been the driest show so far.
Todd: [laughs]
Brendan: What your guys preferred way to drink coffee? I know it can change from day to day.
Todd: For me, I just drink black coffee mostly, that’s probably the majority of what I drink. I start off my mornings with a– I brew up a little pot, throw it in my tumbler to-go and take it with me. I’ll do– during hot summers and everything, I would move on over to the ice coffee, and for me a big push for us doing the nitro and doing all these stuff we do, is I get for so long such terrible ice coffees out in the market place. I was talking to coffee shops. When I moved into these role at Klatch and came– I worked with wholesale customers. I’m out visiting with– our customers but also meeting with cafes all over all the time.
That first year I’d be out in places and I would try beverages from different coffee shops all over and Clovers was probably one of the most inconsistent beverages out there. Same roaster on the shelf but the ice coffee or the cold brew they were serving was completely different from [unintelligible 00:27:08]cafe. Talking to cafe owners, it sounds like the majority at least four years ago, it was a hodge podge coffee. It was whatever was left over, it was regular, it was decaf. It was single, origins and blends. It was dark rose, light rose.
Everything that was just kind of they had a little bit of everything, they’ve throw it in a bucket and when they have enough, then they grind it up then they make clover, and it was very obvious which cafes did that kind of stuff because they are cold brewed. If I drink cold brew, it’s black. I have cream with sugar and if they have customers who don’t have cream with sugar they can easily hide everything’s that’s going on there but for me it was just obvious who was doing that and it was terrible. It was bad.
One of the things I liked about, and I’m personally not the hugest fan of our cold brew that we do in our stores, I prefer the nitros usually, but one thing I liked about ours was it’s the same coffee everyday, every week, every month, all year round.
Brendan: Right.
Todd: It’s consistent.
Brendan: Yes. Consistency that’s one of the biggest things.
Todd: That’s the greatest part about it. And going to other cafes who kind of just hodge podge it up, it’s terrible. Now, some cafes do a great job but then they keep [unintelligible 00:28:19] from their roaster or at least they do one coffee for that batch, that coffee week which depending on what extra they have or whatever, but they use the same coffee that you can taste the difference between that and just the mixture.
Brendan: Sure.
Heather: Take a big sip Todd, because this is our in-house cold brew. [laughs]
Todd: I kind of have a feeling, it looks like it.
Brendan: Is this the winner or you guys do it differently?
Heather: No, I have the nitro for you as well, so this is actually just our in-house ice coffee, so if you come in and get an ice coffee this is what you get. We brew a concentrate, so some of our different brewing recipes this one we brew as a concentrate, then add water to before serving.
Brendan: Okay.
Heather: This is one of our blends that we’ve had forever. It’ s just very easy drinking, this is very typical cold brew if you will. Kind of easy, drinking, smooth, lots of those chocolate notes that you talk about and that you would expect at a cold brew and we serve tons of this for sure. I still love it, it’s still for me like a super easy drinking coffee.
Brendan: It’s very good.
Heather: Yes. Just nice and easy.
Todd: Actually a lot of our wholesale customers use this exact coffee, a lot of it because we do, but it is what most of our customers are looking for and are expecting out of a cold brew.
Brendan: It’s tasty. It’s absolutely tasty.
Heather: Yes. I mean, the other thing too is I think a lot of people who are drinking cold brew right now are drinking it with milk, and what I like about this one is– I think some cold brews out there and this is another interesting thing. With hot coffee I think we have like a general TDS that we can say is an acceptable standard. With cold brew you don’t. You’re TDS totally varies from place to place and the strength that you’re getting. What I like about this one is a lot of people I think add milk to cold brew is to cut them to make them a little bit more palatable and I don’t think this is what needs it. I think, it’s got that great creamy chocolateness to it, very easy.
Brendan: Yes. We got a second one here.
Todd: You should talk into the mic. This one is the Gadab, the America’s Best.
Brendan: All right. This is the winner.
Todd: Cheers.
Brendan: Cheers.
Heather: One of the things that I don’t love about nitro, and we have the growlers and the growlets for it, but obviously definitely, I don’t think it holds– prides as well as beer,you know what I mean, when you put it in a growler or growlet, because you don’t have any carbonation to it, it’s just nitrogen. One of the things, if you tried any at this show, a lot of people thought ours were as a still, because we do not have only nitrogenate it.
Todd: Nitroginate.
Heather: Nitroginate. [laughs] We don’t do a ton of it, you know, we want enough– just to really– again, going back to the recipes. We want to enhance the coffee, we don’t want to overwhelm the coffee or take away from what the coffee is.
Brendan: You guys just put a small amount of nitrogen in to–
Heather: Enough to push it out and enhance the body, give it that when it does come out the Australian Kegerator. It does give it a little bit of a head, but like we said, at the show, we saw some people who’s like the majority of the cup was at. There was a heavy, heavy amounts of nitrogen there, just almost like this proof that there is nitrogen in here or something. For us it gives a nice brown color that turn– creaminess look that you get, but without overpowering the cup.
Brendan: Yes. That’s one thing a lot of people ask me, is that, “How do I get that cascading bubble and the flow that Guinness has when you pour can of Guinness. That’s one thing that gets me, it’s like, I bought a bottle of, what was called, a nitro cold brew the other day, and I poured it and it was the flattest coffee I’ve ever seen. Yes, so the labeling and the term still have to be – I don’t know who’s going to standardize everything.
Todd: Realistically, they use nitrogen somewhere in there, so they’re calling it Nitro Cold Brew.
Heather: Maybe they use a nitrogen flush. I mean, who knows at this point?
Todd: Right. One of things that we are looking at bottles for us, and we’re trying to work on bottles and talk about bottles, and we talk about our growler but they don’t have and those press, it’s no point in putting like on a growler, they say coffee growler, there’s no point us putting the word nitro in there, because as you can see when you get it here, once you come out that growler, there’s not hat. That goes away, and that goes away really quick. I mean, I’m assuming how they bottled these this morning. Exactly. You know, only a few hours later, it’s gone.
Brendan: The nitrogen doesn’t hold carbonation would.
Heather: No, it does not.
Brendan: Actually, in the next couple of weeks, I’m going to have a guest on– their company makes nitrogen, canning and bottling and equipment. They claim to be able to can nitro coffee or nitro beers, and keep that cascading effect without like a can of Guinness has the widget inside, so without the widget. That should be a very interesting conversation because I know that’s a question that I get asked all the time, and I just don’t have any answers for it right now.
Heather: I think it’s interesting too, because you know, I think you should be really careful, coffees are really delicate. I had a lot of really good coffees in that cold brew competition, and I had a lot of really bad coffees in that competition. You know, he was saying enough nitrogen to prove that it’s in there, like, “I don’t care what you”re doing, just make it delicious.” I don’t need you to prove it to me, just serve me a delicious beverage that’s cold and coffee right now. That’s all I’m really looking for.
Brendan: Right on. Well, these are awesome, and congratulations, you guys on that win.
Heather: Thank you.
Brendan: I think that’s cool. The inaugural cold brew competition, you guys came out victorious. You also won the espresso competition?
Heather: Yes.
Todd: Yes.
Brendan: That was you?
Todd: No. That’s not me.
Brendan: Somebody else did that?
Heather: Yes. Another team effort though.
Brendan: Right on. Espresso, is that considered the purest form of coffee? Because they do that competition, what else was there? The latte art competition, I think I walked in when that was going on. That was kind of fun.
Heather: Yes.
Brendan: What’s the most pure way to have a coffee? Just to pour over and drink a black?
Heather: I would say, cupping. I mean realistically, yes. Everything outside of cupping, I think you’re really testing the skill of who’s preparing it and how it’s being prepared.
Brendan:So much can change in the process.
Heather: Right, exactly. In cupping, there’s a standard there, and so you’re able to really just evaluate the coffee, and you have your standard. As soon as you get into any other method, be it espresso, any pour-over, now you’re evaluating your recipe. Now, you’re evaluating your skills, as I’ve said your preparation method.
Brendan: Okay. I got you. Well, cool. I’ve learned a lot today. I really thank you guys for coming out here, and joining me. Anything else you guys would like to chat about before we cut this?
Heather: We went through the list. [laughs]
Brendan: Yes. We went through the list. We’re good. All right, well, with that, Heather, Todd, thank you guys so much for joining me.
Todd: Thank you.
Heather: Thank you very much.
[Music / Interlude]
Brendan: Once again, a huge thank you to both Todd Goldsworthy and Heather Perry for joining me today. If you want to learn more about Todd or Heather or Klatch coffee, go to klatchroasting.com Or if you’re in the great Los Angeles area, you can check out one of Klatch’s many locations. They’ve got one in Rancho Cucomonga, San Dimas, Ontario and a newly opened location in LAX airport, Terminal 7. Looks like they’ve also got a location in Korea, so you Korean listeners – get out and check out Klatch Coffee. If you want to connect with Klatch Coffee on social media, you can do so on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram – their handle is @klatchroasting
That’s about it for today. If you’re looking for show notes or links from this episode, you can find those at dripsanddraughts.com/32
We hope you enjoyed today’s show, and I hope it gets you thinking about how to get the most out of your cold brew like Klatch Coffee does – by creating multiple versions and comparing them – looking for the best characteristics in order to deliver the best product to the consumer.
Thanks to those of you who wrote in asking us to get Klatch Coffee, the winner of the CoffeeFest America’s Best Cold Brew Competition on the show. It was your encouragement that got two, 2-time champions on todays show with us.
One final thanks to Heather Perry, 2-time barista champion and Told Goldsworthy, 2-time brewers cup champion for joining me today. I’m Brendan Hanson and we’ll see you again next Friday on the Drips & Draughts Podcast.
