Brewing & Distributing Kegged Coffee - An Interview with Bona Fide Craft Draft

On this episode of Drips & Draughts, we’re joined by John Goerke and Spencer Weiner from Bona Fide Craft Draft in Santa Barbara, CA. Bona Fide Craft Draft provides kegged coffee to to both food service operators and now direct to consumers. As we often compare the draft coffee industry to the craft beer industry on this podcast, Bona Fide is definitely a leader in this space – pushing the limits and boundaries of what coffee is and how it can be delivered and consumed.

Pour yourself a nice cold (or hot) cup of coffee and get yourself ready to learn about #TransformationalCoffee

Highlights & Takeaways

“Looking for long term stability in the process when putting coffee into kegs – Maintaining flavor profile over time is of the utmost importance.” – John Goerke / 'Maintaining flavor profile over time is of the utmost importance.' - John Goerke Click To Tweet

Brewed in a nitrogen environment – first time the coffee sees air is when you pull the tap handle.

Zero waste process – donating grounds to a local farm.

'One of our core values is sustainability' - John Goerke Click To Tweet

Widened the category with cold chain products – Sweet Nitro Latte, Nitro Chai Latte

Beer people seem to be very collaborative, coffee people not necessarily as much

Cold coffee is the fastest growing segment of the coffee industry in the US – $46 billion/year retail coffee industry

What we mentioned on during this show

Episode 47 Transcript

Brendan Hanson: Hey, there you’re listening to the Drips and Draughts Podcast. We’ve got a great show for you today as we’re joined by John Goerke and Spencer Weiner from Bona Fide Craft Draft brewing company. If you haven’t heard of Bona Fide Craft Draft yet, you should definitely check them out. they brew and keg coffee using their proprietary brewing process. When I say they keg coffee, that’s their primary distribution model so they keg a lot of coffee.

The cool part is, they do both their own coffees and they also do coffees for their partners. I know on this podcast a lot of times we relate stuff that we see in coffee, we relate it back to the beer industry and the brewing industry. It was really cool getting a chance to sit down with these guys because what they’re doing very much reminds me of the craft beer industry. That’s pushing convention, pushing the norm. They call it transformational coffee.

Before we get into the interview with John and Spencer, I just wanted to know this is episode 47 which means we’re five episodes away from episode 52. 52 since this is a weekly podcast means that we’ll have been doing this for one full year. As we lead up to episode 52, reach out and let us know what you think we should do for that episode. Whether it’s trying to get certain guests on, whether it’s a recap of everything we’ve done and covered over the past year, or if you’ve got another suggestion let us know. Shoot us an email podcast@dripsanddraughts.com.

You can reach out to us on social media. On Twitter and on Instagram we’re under the handle @DripsDraughts. You can find us on Facebook, facebook.com/dripsdraughts. Or, hey, want to get crazy and have some fun call us and leave us a voicemail 888.620.2739 ext 6.

All right, last bit of business before we get into today’s episode. If you haven’t done so already hop on iTunes and leave us a review. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it doesn’t cost you a thing. That’s going to do it for the long intro. If you’re looking for show notes from today’s episode you can find those by going to dripsanddraughts.com/47 let’s get into the interview with John Goerke and Spencer Weiner from Bona Fide Craft Draft brewing company.

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Brendan: All right, welcome back to the Drips and Draughts podcast. Brendan Hansen in studio today with Cary and we’re joined by John Goerke and Spencer Weiner from Bona Fide Craft Draft. How are you guys?

John Goerke: Great, very good. Happy to be here.

Cary: Welcome. Thanks for coming up.

John: Thank you.

Brendan: Good to meet you guys. Maybe a little quick background on each of you, find out where you’re from, how you got into coffee and a little bit personally before we get into the company.

John: Okay, well, I’ll go first. I’m John Goerke. I came from Bozeman Montana and I settled in Santa-Barbara California a long time ago.

[laughter]

It seems it is just five years ago but it’s actually been 33. I got in the coffee industry literally 30 years ago. I started my company 30 years ago in June of 2016 as especially copy roaster. We started selling to restaurants and hotels and offices back then. The business caught on that first curve of the especially coffee wave so we enjoyed a really rich business over the years.

Then a few years ago I started just- was bored, I guess, for lack of better word. I wanted to be where the next wave of coffee is and I started looking at what was going on with the ice blended drinks and people are drinking iced coffee. When I started nobody even considered it. I decided to start a filling around with cold coffee. I figured there was probably an emerging opportunity.

Fast forward a few years we actually launched a ready-to-drink product with cream and sugar. Almost as a market test wanted to feel the market out. We got clobbered in this retail shelf space. We were head up against Illy and Starbucks and some of these majors, and it’s really hard to get shelf space. Somewhere in there, I started thinking about the idea of how cool it would be to put coffee in a keg. I think a lot of us in the industry we’re looking at it.

I started googling it and found, wow, there’s some guys actually doing this. I went up to Seattle met with a couple people that were putting cold coffee in kegs. I came back and decided I wanted to go in that direction. That was back in early 2014. I’d already developed this technology over about four years at that point, that was a preservation technology which I developed from my RTD product. I was pretty impressed with it.

We’re getting some pretty significant stabilities out of our product without using any preservatives. I thought well maybe that would work good in the keg. I was right, it actually worked really well. I happened to meet Spencer. Our kids went to the same school. I was looking for a new edgy brand identity for this product.

Spencer and I got together, started talking, and I liked his view on things. We share a lot of the same values on sustainability and just world peace. We figured, “Hey, come on board and help me with this project.” That was May of 2014. That’s where we launched. I’ll let Spencer pick up his participation.

Spencer Weiner: Allegedly, I grew up in San Francisco. I was a photojournalist for 30 years so I’ve always been a coffee achiever getting up and going. It turns out I was a coffee nerd. I’ve been to 15 20 countries that grow coffee. I’ve always searched out coffee. At some point in my career, I decided I wanted to start telling stories for conscious commerce.

I segwayed out of journalism after 30 years and I started working with some NGOs and helping them tell their stories. Launched some companies, helped them rebrand themselves. That’s when I met John. I was looking for my next project and his- like he said, everything about us sinked as far as sustainability and-

Brendan: Happened to be in the coffee space.

Spencer: – being a coffee lover. I got to help him reinvent his 30-year anniversary look and feel for his legacy company and then Bona Fide Craft Draft brewing company was something that we got to invent.

Brendan: Awesome. So Bona Fide didn’t exist when you guys first met?

John: Yes. First, we launched our coffee program under the Caribbean banner. After a while, we realized they’re two different directions. We knew we were going to stay business to business, primarily sell-sell company, but we needed a brand for the brewery. So Spencer coined the Bona Fide brand and we got the trademark on it. Which is not that easy these days because all the good names are taken.

We launched the Bona Fide Brewing Company about a year ago. Things just started falling into place at that point and we learned a lot in the first year. By the time we launched the Bona Fide brand we had a much more clear path to the market figured out.

Brendan: All right. For people listening who aren’t necessarily familiar with Bona Fide can give us a quick overview on what it is and what you guys do?

John: Yes. We say Bona Fide Craft Draft is cold coffee done correctly. That’s not meant to put anybody down it’s just the cold coffee evolution, it’s been around long time. When I first got in the coffee business, people were doing cold brew. It’s always been considered unusual way to brew. Then I think it’s picked up its legs because it was ready to.

At the same time being a coffee affectionado I’ve never been crazy about the process because I feel generally it’s exposed to air. A lot of your best coffee flavors, they vaporize, they disappear. I was looking for, how can I calibrate a process, craft a process that allows us to keep all those interesting flavor components in the brew. That was my focus.

For me, it was about taste because I’m a coffee nerd and not so much– I didn’t really care about process as much as I wanted it to be scalable. From a business perspective, I wanted something that could actually grow into a business. So, when we started looking coffee in kegs I was thinking about long terms stability. Because how does beer get moved around? It’s put on trains and trucks and shipped across the country.

Also from an environmental stand point we wanted to do something in ideally stainless steel kegs. We wanted to do something that didn’t require lots of refrigeration all the time because it costs money and ties up precious resources. We had a lot of goals. Fortunately, we were able to craft a system that helps us meet some of those. At the same time it still, for me, maintaining flavor profile over time is really important. We’re getting some pretty significant stabilities out of our process and that came about by a lot of hard work. There’s a lot of science involved in it.

Also just being in the industry and pulling out of the industry, and looking at what other processes we’re doing for other products. I was able to invent effectively a process that does what it’s doing now. Craft draft, we call it craft draft because it’s technically not a traditional cold brew, it’s craft draft. It is a cold coffee, but we’re not using the same process that everybody else is using to do it.

Brendan: Okay got it. So what is your stability looking like on the keg orders?

John: We guarantee 90-day stability when held in the refrigerator most of the time. Typically we can ship a pallet of kegs to New Jersey and once they get to our distributor they go on the cooler. There’s a lot of room for handling mistakes on the way. They can actually be set out and left overnight. We guarantee up to 30 days of unmanaged control. Our PET kegs we, actually, guarantee 75-day ambient stability on. When we say stability, we’re basically saying we want our product to taste as good as–

Brendan: As day one.

John: Exactly. Internally we’ve done tests where we’ve had product that’s seven months old. We put it on tap and it tastes like it was brewed last week.

Brendan: Amazing.

John: We know we’ve got a really special thing with stability. At the same time though, we don’t try to meet other people’s idea of taste profile. The coffee determines what that is. When you taste our products, for example our Peru, it’s got a profile on it’s own. A dark roast, like our hair raiser, it tastes like a dark roast. When I’m taking those same coffees and brewing them with cold brew the flavors start to merge together. There’s a slight difference but you’re not going to get the significant changes. That’s because we’re completely protecting the product from any interaction with air or oxidation.

Brendan: Yes, I think I saw in one of the videos that was maybe linked in one of your guys emails. That said, “The first time that the coffee sees air is when–“

John: Is when you pull the tap handle.

Brendan: Yes, amazing. Brewed entirely in a nitrogen environment or blanket or?

John: Exactly.

Brendan: That’s cool.

John: There’s a lot of process standard that has to be met in that, but we end up with a really stable product.

Brendan: So you’ve mentioned the PET kegs that you guys are starting to do. That’s going to be a business to consumer sort of distribution of your product?

John: Yes. What Spencer and I see, and Spencer you’re welcome to chime in here. There’s a lot of– I’d say just after early adopters- early adopters are in the back room doing cold brew and serving out in the front, or serving at their parties or whatever. Then at some point people realize it’s a lot of work to take and make a batch of coffee in 16 to 20 hours. And guess at how much you’re going to make and hope you sell it all out that day or the next day. And not have to carry a bunch of it over because it’s going to go sour. There’s a lot of those wild card issues.

Spencer and I feel that there’s an opportunity for the people that are like, “Hey, look, I need a scalable program.” Maybe it’s the coffee bar that wants to serve cold nitro coffee and doesn’t have the resources or want to take the resources and try to do it themselves. They’re a perfect candidate for our product. Go ahead.

Spencer: I was just going to say, our program treats it like a very precious commodity. A lot of the home brewers, they’re doing batches and there’s nothing like having that artisan fun. Like I see you have a bread making machine in the corner. People make home–

Brendan: It’s actually an ice maker.

Spencer: It looks like a bread maker.

Brendan: We should get a bread maker in here as well.

[laughter]

Spencer: At some point you’re getting really fond of having that fresh baked bread, at some point you find a baker in your neighborhood and you start bringing it home. It’s a lot easier. With our kegged coffee there’s zero waste. A lot of these shops are pouring out 50% of what they make.

John: Or running out and missing out on profits in the late afternoon.

Spencer: So, one of the disruptions to what’s going on right now in the cold coffee is that all of our kegs there’s no waste. You have 90 days. You’re going to drink 80 cups, there’s about 88 cups in a keg.

Brendan: In a five gallon keg.

Spencer: No one’s sending us back aged out kegs. They’re all coming back empty and then we get to clean them and refill them. It’s almost carbon neutral at that point instead of thinking about how you have to pick each bean by hand initially, right? Every bean is picked one at a time. It breaks my heart when I see pour out.

Brendan: Sure. Speaking of waste, you’re brewing a ton of coffee. What do you guys do with your grounds? Are you composting, are you–?

Spencer: Hundred percent of our grounds actually get sent to organic farms. So we get to control– not only is John controlling the end consumers experience. Like every keg is basically in the wine and beer category. It’s how he wants his dark french roast to taste, how he wants the light Peruvian to taste. He’s certain that it can have the perfect water quality, the perfect preparation, and it’s pouring exactly as he wants it to pour. Here, San Diego, San Francisco, Florida, wherever we have customers. Anyway we also control the waste stream. All of the grounds are picked up happily by a couple of organic farms in Santa Barbra area and they’re doing vita-culture.

Brendan: That’s awesome. We were just talking about that with somebody. Wondering if there were services out here that would come and pick up organic waste.

Spencer: John was actually donating his organic coffee grounds to these farmers already from the legacy business.

John: Mostly like chafe and byproduct of the roasting process.

Spencer: Suddenly we had control of all of the grounds. Some shops will put out five gallon bags for their customers to take home to put in the garden. We suddenly had a large volume.

John: Like 500 pounds a day.

Spencer: We have prestigious valley farms, which is a nice organic farm. They put it in their avocado fields and they’re growing culinary mushrooms in it. Apparently, it’s going game busters for them.

Brendan: Awesome, very cool.

John: Yes, so that’s fun. That’s just another, again, it meets another one of our important co-values is sustainability.

Brendan: Sure, nice. You guys also have a business to business model?

John: Yes we do. Where the PT model fits in, we can say dropping bombs, we can do a smart bomb to North Dakota. Someone wants to start pouring cold coffee in North Dakota, in three or four days they can have a keg, on tap it and pour it. Obviously, we’re a little bit separated from the service standard. We can’t be there to help them with their keg cooler and set it up but it’s pretty simple. They’re going to have a good experience and it’s going to be easy for them to get the product.

In southern California we have a direct distribution program. We’ve got direct store distribution, DSD. That is an evolution that we started out with, made a lot of mistakes, started working with distributors, then came back around to this DSD model. Our chief revenue officer has a pretty extensive experience in the beverage category. When he came on board he really pushed us hard to revisit the idea of a DSD. Based on his experience in big beverage he really helped us see the need to knock down all of the barriers for our customers.

What that program is now is we show up with a four tap keg cooler with a glass door on it so you can see our Bona Fide kegs really clearly. We can have four different products on tap. That equipment is provided on a free loan. The kegs have no deposit associated with them. Our delivery driver shows up once a week and delivers the kegs. We maintain the cooler, we do the tap cleaning maintenance periodically. We help with the training. We provide the cups that go with the product. Like those Bona Fide cups that you see there. We provide a sleeve of those with every keg.

Everything’s built into the cost of the keg. That way there’s no reason the customer shouldn’t do it because we guarantee them a minimum as 55% margin if they just follow exactly what we tell them to do. The pricing, the whole thing.

Spencer: What John likes to say, he removes all of the X factors from cold coffee. So if someone sees the Bona Fide brand they know they’re going to pour, it’s going to taste perfect. whether they’re in Santa Barbara or San Diego.

Brendan: Sure. It’s like the big breweries, they put the same product out time to time.

John: Exactly, it’s like that. With that, we do have a couple of products that are just- they’re pretty much cold chain custody because we’re in control of it now. Now we have a sweet Nacho latte that we have that has milk and sugar and we have a chai latte we just introduced. We also have a couple of black teas that don’t have quite the stability that our coffee has.

We offered those products. Which we see is interesting is, a lot of people just want to have cold coffee but when they see that, “Wow, I could have a nitro tea or nitro latte on tap. Wow, let’s do that.” That, like our sweet nacho latte has quickly come to probably a number two selling product in our just DSD program. In fact, there’s is right here in your neighborhood at the bank café.

It’s fun because now we’re doing something that’s really unusual and disruptive. We actually have we’ve widen the category. We actually have 10 products available on tap now with our DSD program. The most recent one is a pure Kona, a wine extra fancy coffee which it’s- if you order our PET keg it’s like $195 a keg. But there’s a niche market for that.

Spencer: We’ve done more expensive ones. We did the Good Land Organics that was about $400 a keg.

John: We did a Geisha.

Brendan: Amazing.

John: Which is fun. Our process allows us to do some cool nichy products and we don’t have to worry about drinking the keg in two days.

Brendan: Yes, no kidding. I think that’s where this industry is going to go, is being able to have all these different regions on tap at the same time so you can compare them side by side.

John: We talked to some big retailers who feel that this whole tap beverage category for the consumer could literally go to where– well, you see it in the Pacific Northwest where you can go and do ground refill stations, get cum-boots and beer and wine and coffee. All these kind of craft root beer. It’s all part of that same category and to me, if companies like us and others can keep nurturing that we’re going to see the consumer have a lot of options.

We’d be cool to build a walk into a whole foods and not just fill up with granola and much other stuff. You could actually take home a couple of growlers of products you really like, wine, beer. I know there’s a lot of like ABC laws that affect the wine and beer business but all that can change over time with the consumers demand.

Cary: I was up in Idaho a few months ago and that was my first experience. I went to the grocery store and there’s big old bar set up for growler fill. I was like, “This is amazing.”

John: Yes, exactly, they’re doing it in Oregon too.

Cary: I was like, “They got to get this out in California.”

John: Exactly, yes.

Brendan: There’s quite a few places within Southern California that people could go and fill a growler right or at least taste a cup.

John: You can.

Spencer: Oh, yes, if you go on our website we’ve got about 60 customers who have four flavors each. All of our growlers have a little QR code so you can find the fill stations. All of–

John: The QR codes can be there on the growler. You can scan and figure out where you’re going to refill.

Spencer: It’s pretty much San Diego to San Francisco and then into Las Vegas is our main area of influence right now, where we’re pouring a lot. Because we can ship ambiente and it’s very stable, we do have customers in Kentucky and Florida and New York, and New Jersey and–

John: Massachusetts.

Spencer: Starting to roll in some new distributors who are coffee fans who have the same customer base. It’s a nice safety net when a small brewer has their roast perfect, has their cold brewing technology but then they get to a place where they’re like they need help. We’re that solution for the scaling.

We have several customers who are their own brands up in [unintelligible 00:25:04], in Arizona, and they hit a certain plateau where they were doing small batch brewing and they had a following and then they needed to scale. That’s how we were able to come in and calibrate with their roaster John, goes round and round tasting, calibrating until they have exactly what that roaster wants their coffee to taste like and then it’s scalable.

Cary: A coffee shop or even restaurant or whoever they can buy kegs of your coffee. If they need help just brewing and producing, you guys can do that for them as well.

John: Correct.

Spencer: Yes, we like to say it’s technology that’s too good not to share because it creates so much savings in the supply chain that everybody and every stakeholder benefits.

Cary: Is there a minimum order if–?

John: Yes, 20 kegs is kind of our–

Spencer: The economy of scale for shipping. Twenty kegs fit on a pallet and there’s a savings, 40 is the deal.

John: Actually, that’s the low end of our production capacity to do. It’s funny because we also have some customers that are taking several pallets at a time. We have some customers- a lot of customers that are taking 20. We have customers that want their product and then they’ll also pick up a couple others of ours. We’ve tried to cast our model like the Keurig K-Cup model. It doesn’t have to be our coffee, it doesn’t have to be our tea. We can even work with some other brands. I would say probably about 30% of our business is actually working with other brands.

Spencer: We really enjoy that because coffee roasters tend to work in a bubble and you go to maybe one or two conventions a year and see what’s up in the industry. This is really broad. We’ve had lines of the industry come visit us and we’re collaborating with 7500-year-old companies that are looking for their scaling solution for cold brew. It’s been really fun, it’s fun to meet these people.

John: This is something that I know because my son is a [unintelligible 00:27:07] and what I notice about beer people is, they’re very collaborative and they’re very– it’s like, “Oh, yes, your product is great. We love it.” In the coffee world, it’s not that way. It tends to be pretty much everybody they have their best coffee.

Spencer: We’re all buying from the same washing station.

[laughter]

John: Spencer and I, early on, that’s never really turned us on. We like the collaboration idea obviously we have some proprietary technology we can’t talk about and don’t share because it’s the backbone of our business. But it’s fun to work with other coffee people. When they can drop their gun and say, “Hey, you know what? I like what your process is, I like how it makes my coffee taste. I don’t have to worry about you try to take my customers away.” That’s why we cast it. That’s fun because we get to, like he said, meet some cool people and do some fun stuff.

Spencer: It’s fun to know that we send them 80 kegs and it all gets poured and it all taste exactly like they wanted to taste.

Brendan: Yes. Right, now you mentioned you’ve send out a kegerator, four kegs, four taps. Are there any places that are pouring that maybe just get a keg and put it on their existing draft system or is that not an option?

John: Yes, in fact, one of our brand partners– I just signed on a large chain of the bigger beer tap rooms in the country. We’ll be doing their coffee with– I can’t say the name of the company but we’ll be doing their coffee in our keg and helping them with the distribution aspect. It’ll just be one handle with 16 beers next to it. We do have some of that.

Brendan: Yes, we’ve talked about that before having coffee on tap at a beer tap room or even at a brewery. I think it’s a great idea.

Spencer: It’s something for the designated driver.

Brendan: Yes, not everybody is a beer drinker.

John: The fact is like on a Saturday afternoon if you’re drinking beer to beer pub it’s like you’re going to take a break. You actually going to extend your stay if you have a glass draft copy somewhere in the middle.

Cary: Smile for the pub owner.

John: Yes, exactly. It keeps everybody engaged. We have several in San Diego that are pouring. Of course, a pub crawl down there is going to take a couple weeks.

Brendan: You need to block out a year for that now. So many brewers. What–?

Cary: 260 something?

Brendan: 260, amazing. Well, cool. Gosh, anything else you guys want to bring up?

John: No. It’s really fun to be part of an emerging– I think it’s becoming more and more of a niche. Cold coffee is the fastest growing segment of the $46 billion retail coffee industry in the United States. It’s fun to be involved. I say we’re on the cutting edge. All these guys that are buying your brew could be there on the cutting edge because this stuff is turning into- its revolutionizing coffee. I thought we did that in 1990. It just shows you how deep coffee can keep going and it just keeps growing. It’s super exciting for us to be part of it.

Brendan: Mind if I hit you guys with a couple of quick fire questions that we ask most people. Try to define cold brew? Is that’s a label that’s getting put on everything nowadays?

John: Well, I’ll speak then Spencer by his own view. To me, cold brew is cold coffee because there’s cold brewed coffee and then there’s cold brew– anything coffee that’s cold can be a cold brew.

Again, because coffee people are so up in their own style, you going to get– I’m sure there is people out there, “That’s not true.” But it is. The fact is that, when I first started in the business 30 years ago, cold coffee is out of that glass pot at the end of the day, in your refrigerator over ice cubes or whatever, and with sugar melt, who cared. Then bigger companies brew that up. To maybe the generation for the mid 90’s it was ice-blended with a blender and ice cubes.That’s all cold coffee.

I know that die hard cold brew people think that it’s 16-20 hours in cold water or ambient water. You’re seeing when you look at what’s happening in the industry is lots of entrepreneurship going on. There’s lots of some really sharp minded scientists building brewers. There’s several patents in the brewing category right now and we’re pending, I see them.

I think it’s all cold brew and there’s nothing wrong with any of it. It’s all kind of niche. We say they were correct. A part that’s marketing, but that’s my thing. I really believe that we’ve figured out the best way to make cold coffee. But that’s just my opinion.

Brendan: Sure.

Spencer: Okay. What was the question, what is cold brew or cold coffee?

Brendan: Define cold brew. That’s the label you see on every bottle now.

Spencer: I’m very interested in that definition cause I’m the marketing guy. My experience with cold brew is– my first impression was it’s strictly defined there is no hot water contact, cold soaking methodology. But then when I went to a couple of trade shows and started to really educate myself in coffee. John sent me to some classes that were little deeper than just my coffee nerd experience.

Then I went to coffee fest and coffee con and all these coffee centric gatherings. I think cold brew now really just means served at 45 degrees. Because there’s so many methodologies. It started out being a couple recipes, and now there is– we went to the best American cold brew competition and there’s probably eight different methodologies being used. For me, initially because I’m a word smith, I trade, I was really looking at that, like, “What is that?” Then I called the judges, I’m like “What does this mean? What kind of methodology? What qualifies?” Because we have our proprietary method and I want to figure out what they’re talking about. It’s like if it’s served at 45 degrees, it’s cold brew.

Brendan: Okay.

John: I think it’s good to look at what’s home brew. Look at what’s brew? Look at how they’re making beer. My son, I watched some of stuff that he has done. He started out making beer, like they did when they first started making beer. It was really important to him that he started making tiny wine at first. And he just followed the steps of evolution for his own general education about beer.

It’s been fun for me to watch what’s beer. It’s like, “Wow.” It’s not what beer was in the 60s or in the 1800s. It’s still beer. So, cold brew, yes, it’s a much wider definition than some people think.

Brendan: This one should be a little quicker. How many cups of coffee do you guys drink each day?

Spencer: I’ll answer first. I immediately drink two cups back to back.

[laughter]

[crosstalk]

John has the different method in the morning. But I get up in the morning and I have stove-top espresso machine and I make one cup very quickly, and I go sit outside and watch the sunrise. As soon as that one is done I go back and brew another one and I wake up my daughter.

John: I probably have collectively two a day. My first cup is the most precious moment in the morning to me, after my wife. So, I get up, and usually the first one up, and I make a cup of really well-prepared pour over and in coffee.

Spencer: And I’ve seen his kitchen, he’s got 15 coffees to choose from.

John: I take mine. I go outside and I meditate for about eight or nine minutes. I’m fortunate to have a nice view, and I enjoy that and inhale the day. That’s a very special moment for me, that first cup. I may not even finish that cup, but usually I do. Then during the course of the day, I will literally have maybe two ounces here and there of whatever it is that’s on top.

We also have a hot tap on our office which is- basically it’s a machine that heats up the coffee that’s coming out of our keg instantly. That’s a product that’s in development. So, I’m always filling with that. It depends. I’ll have some cold and some hot. Then once in a while I just go back and make myself a shot of espresso. But generally it’s [unintelligible 00:35:52] which is two a day.

Brendan: Okay. So about two each, huh? Kind of following that. What’s your favorite way to drink coffee? Pour over? Nitro?

John: They’re all great. It just depends on the mood. Sometimes I’ll get– I have this old Spanish- it’s technically Italian but I bought in Spain, it’s one of this stove top espresso machines. Just makes this bitter, nasty stuff. I’ll take that and maybe a shot of sweet condensed milk, just because I’m dying to do something different. Sometimes I’ll do Turkish coffee. It just depends. I don’t think there is any wrong ways, whatever. My wife is from the Czech Republic and her mom makes coffee, what I call cowboy coffee. It’s a ground stirred into the cup and that’s kind of cool too.

Spencer: Yes. I have a completely different answer which is, my favorite way to drink coffee is with friends.

Brendan: Oh, here we go.

John: Marketing.

Brendan: No, particular styles. If there were no coffee, what would you guys be doing right now?

Spencer: We’d be asleep. It’s four o’clock, we’d be asleep by now.

John: It’s a really good answer. No, I’d be flying airplanes probably.

Brendan: Flying airplanes?

John: Yes.

Brendan: Are you a pilot?

John: Yes.

Brendan: Oh, nice.

Spencer: Gosh, I hadn’t even really ever thought of that. I have no idea.

Brendan: You’ll have to send it and we’ll add it in the show notes.

Cary: Could be a tea freak.

Brendan: I think I know the answer to this one but, if you could pick up your business right now and move it to anywhere in the world, and you guys are in San Barbara so not a very bad place to be, where would you take it? If there were no cost to you and you could go anywhere.

John: Everywhere.

Brendan: Everywhere. Let’s do it everywhere.

John: Actually, that’s my goal. Spencer and I both agree on this, we want to be a global nomads. We want to be able to work our business from any spot on the planet.

Brendan: Nice.

Spencer: Yes. The disruptive innovation part is we have a technology that makes a 90-day plus stable kegs. We want to take that everywhere and know that when we pop into a cafe in Costa Rica that they are pouring Bona Fide, and here’s no waste.

Brendan: Cool. If people want to go and learn about you guys or your company, where can they go to do that?

John: The internet.

Brendan: The internet.

Spencer: It’s the magic place. bonafidecraftdraft.com

Brendan: Okay. We’ll put links to that in the show notes.

John: Then we just launched our Facebook store. So we have a PET kegs there and very soon we’ll have our products on Amazon.

Brendan: Awesome. We’ll make sure we’ll link all that up. Awesome guys. It’s been great meeting both of you. Appreciate you coming down and being on the show.

Cary: Thanks for coming. Thanks for bringing the coffee.

Spencer: Yes, we love the show.

John: Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity to be here. You guys do great things. Thank you.

Brendan: Another big THANK YOU John and Spencer for coming down and joining us in our “studio” today. Not only joining us in person but for bringing us tons of coffee. I think Cary and I we’re ramped up for the following week with all the coffee they left us here in our kegerator. Go follow them on Instagram, @bonafidebrewingco and if you scroll back far enough into their pictures you could find a picture of Cary and I holding up a couple of their growlers.

These guys are doing big things and they are changing the way people are looking at coffee. If you want to learn more about them go check them out at bonafidecraftdraft.com. We’ll also put a link in the show notes which you can find at dripsanddraughts.com/47. That’s going to be about it for today. Reach out and let us know what you want to hear on our one year anniversary episode which is coming up in five short weeks. One final thank you to John and Spencer for joining us here today, to Cary for being in studio.

[00:40:12] [END OF AUDIO]