On today’s episode, we’re joined by Aaron and Brendan from Filament Coffee out of Perth, Australia. We talk about the cold brew scene in Australia as well as starting a small business on the side while working a other jobs. This episode is the first in our Australian Cold Brew Series.
Highlights & Takeaways
What we mentioned on during this show
Episode 61 Transcript
Brendan Hanson: Today on Drips & Draughts, part 1 of our series about Australian Cold Brew, we’re joined by Filament Coffee.
[intro music]
Welcome to the Drips & Draughts Podcast where we help you bring your craft to draft. From soda to beer and from coffee to Kombucha, we’ll discuss making your favorite craft beverage in small or large batches and how to best serve it on draft.
[music]
All right, you’re listening to the Drips & Draughts Podcast. As always, I’m Brendan Hanson, and I’ll be your host today. I’ve got Cary in studio for this episode and we’re joined by Brendan, of all people, and Aaron from Filament Coffee. Filament is a cold brew coffee company based out of Perth in Western Australia. Our Australian cold brew series aims to talk about the landscape of cold brew in Australia, but aside from that, we talk about how Brendan and Aaron started Filament while they were working other jobs which I think is going to be a very interesting topic for a lot of people because there’s a lot of people out there who are passionate about coffee and passionate about cold brew.
This is the same way that a lot of craft breweries started up, passionate home brewers just got the edge and eventually got the funding or got the capital to start breweries, so this is a cool story, we have a little fun talking, we get introduced to a loud bird that happens to be on the balcony while we’re recording and we have quite a few laughs, so hopefully, you enjoy it as well. If you’re looking for links or show notes for this episode you can find those by going to dripsanddrafts.com/61. Let’s get into today’s episode with Filament Coffee.
[music]
Announcer: Thanks to our sponsor Cold Brew Avenue. The first stainless steel cold brew system that has reinvented how you cold brew. Easily brew up to 50 gallons using their 100% reusable stainless steel filter system. Visit them at coldbrewavenue.com to learn more.
Brendan Hanson: All right, welcome back to the Drips & Draughts Podcast. Today we’re joined by Aaron and Brendan actually, from Filament Coffee in Australia. How are you doing guys?
Brendan: Really well.
Aaron: Really well, how you guys?
Brendan Hanson: Doing good.
Cary: Doing good.
Brendan Hanson: Welcome, last time we talked it was Australia day, it was about 6:30 or 7:30 AM when we talked, and I think you guys were cracking the beers at that time-
[laughter]
Brendan Hanson: – so this time-
Aaron: That always seems Brendan.
[laughter]
Brendan Hanson: – but this time you’re having some cold brew.
Aaron: This is being recorded. Yes, we were having a beer on a Saturday. We’ve got a couple of different brews floating around the table this morning, I guess we call them test batches and we tend to do it every couple of weeks to choose our own next batch of coffee, so I’m sucking back on an El Salvador Single Origin from a place called — I haven’t been there unfortunately, Finca La Conquista, sounds very exotic.
Brendan Hanson: It sure does.
Aaron: It does. We’ve got some notes of jammy, honey, cinnamon, candied orange and vanilla, so yes, it’s very delicious, just straight over ice, it’s not nitro.
Brendan Hanson: I can hear the ice.
Cary: Yes.
Hanson: So you guys, after you finish a batch, you just go through a testing and just do something different all the time? Or do you have one staple cold brew?
Aaron: Yes, we do a lot of different bases. One of our – I guess points to the difference that we – each week down the market, we’ve got a three tap setup, so we tend to have three different coffees at each market and then we’ll rotate those fairly regularly as well. We asked our roasters just to drop off samples of coffee when they can and–
[background noise]
Aaron: Sorry, we have some birds. You hear in the background? [laughs]
[laughter]
Cary: I sure do, I was wondering what’s going on [laughs].
Aaron: That want to be part of the podcast. It is West, it’s a wild place to live, so there’s a [unintelligible 00:04:34] nature. I might go–
Cary: I thought you guys were on a coffee trike with a squeaky wheel.
Aaron: I might go and scare the birds.
[laughter]
Aaron: I think [unintelligible 00:04:45]. So anyway, we get our roasters to drop off some samples when they can then we just run a test batch in just stock on a very small scale just to get a feel for the taste and know whether we like it and whether it’s one that we want to run down at the market. My fridge is forever full of jars with black, brown liquid and there’s not a lot of room for anything else, to be honest.
[laughter]
Brendan Hanson: Right on. You guys mind giving us a quick background on each of you and how you got into coffee and why you started Filament?
Brendan: Yes, well, Aaron and I, we’ve known each other for eight years now. We work together at the same accounting firm in Perth. We’re tax accountants by day at the moment. We got to know each other, were good mates. Eventually, Aaron had a drop down to three days a week, he used to do some barista work–
Aaron: Midlife crisis-
Brendan: So–
[laughter]
Aaron: – it’s still going.
[laughter]
Brendan: It’s still going. Yes, and from there we actually had a meeting, it was actually a client meeting that Aaron and I went to. They were talking about how he has been in Melbourne. Melbourne is a pretty big coffee scene here in Australia. They were talking about cold brew coffee and we hadn’t heard of it yet so we did a bit of looking around and we put a batch on that night actually, we put our first batch-
Aaron: [laughs]
Brendan: – on that night. [unintelligible 00:06:19]. I think it was the end of 2015, and from there, bit by bit, we went down to the Farmers Market and it’s grown a lot. It’s come a long way. We’ve almost been doing that for 10, 11 months now, so it’s come a long way in that time. Time goes fast and now we’ve got three taps set up, we’re supplying a few places, so yes. In a nutshell that was it.
Brendan Hanson: All right.
Aaron: As I mentioned to you guys before, the Perth market is – it’s pretty tough. Perthians are a habitual people, so to break those habits and get them across to the bright side of cold brew has been pretty difficult. We sometimes say to each other like, “You know what. I guess our Holy Grail is for a customer to come off and just be like, ‘I’ll have a cold brew, thanks,'” as opposed to having to educate and then explain what it is and the benefits and what’s good and why we love it – to every customer. We’re making some headway on that front, so yes, we keep going.
Cary: Yes, just introducing something new and educating, I think is the biggest thing because our area, US, [crosstalk] it’s getting to the point where people ask for cold brew.
Aaron: I think we’re lucky we have — where we give people a taste is the best way to — You know, if you’re just explaining something, then people are a little bit afraid I guess, but the minute you can just hand them a taste and go, “Look, this is natural coffee, this stuff’s insane,” and they taste it-
Brendan Hanson: Right.
Aaron: – and you see that change in their eyes and their face and–
Cary: You guys obviously don’t have like Starbucks down there doing all that education for you guys, we’re blessed with that here in the States where they’re so big and they almost educate everybody for us, they’ve learned a lot quicker here probably.
Brendan: I think so. Perth is the only major city here it that doesn’t have Starbucks, it’s on the East Coast.
Aaron: Yes. We’re pretty oscillating here in Perth, very oscillating.
[laughter]
Brendan Hanson: For those of us who aren’t familiar with Australian geography, Perth is West Coast.
Brendan: It’s west.
Aaron: You got it, most isolated capital city in the world if you have it.
Cary: Far away from like Sydney per ticket.
Aaron: I feel like I’m sitting on a part Island right now like, I’ve got a lot of palm trees in my backyard and this is crazy good so I feel like we should practice suddenly at the moment talking to a handsome gentleman from the States.
[laughter]
Aaron: Mayday, mayday.
[laughter]
Brendan Hanson: When you guys are at the market serving, you said you have three taps, are those all different? Or do you have flat and nitro of the same bin?
Brendan: We’ve done that before, not on the same day generally. I remember what they’re saying, education is part of it, but now more and more we’re getting people coming up and they’re looking forward to what’s on tap this week which is really cool, so we change it weekly. We’ve obviously got a nitro tap and then we’ll have two flat cold brew taps because we do quite a few takeaways in growlers and they’ve been really popular. We obviously can’t put the nitro in those. The two flat taps will be — we try to make them a little bit different from each other, so one might have a bit more of, I guess, a fruitier taste, a lighter taste, and one would be more of a typical coffee chocolate style. People end using one way or the other. It’s quite interesting. You can almost predict once you get to know a customer, you know which one they’re going to like each week.
Brendan Hanson: Do you do a lot of sampling and taste testing between the two for a lot of new customers?
Aaron: Yes, definitely. Not just stick on it, let them go on a little discovery and then figure out what they like. I think people like a little bit of choice sometimes. It can be hard, they’re like, “I like both” or they’re not really sure. It’s a little bit like getting into one kind of territory where people don’t actually realize it – that coffee has this insane tasting notes. We often get – for example, we’ve run a couple of Ethiopians that are naturally dried so that means, I don’t know if you guys know that, dried with the fruit on and they tend to take on some of the characteristics of the actual coffee fruit.
We had this beautiful Ethiopian with a blueberry vibe and it was so distinct and our customers would say to us, “That’s fascinating, how did you get the blueberries into the keg?” that sort of thing.
Brendan Hanson: [laughs]
Aaron: Understanding that coffee has a taste is actually a bit of a new thing for people as well. I guess it’s part of our whole ethos, is trying to get people across to black coffee and really enjoy it and by opening their eyes to the unique flavors and taste is a good way to do it.
Brendan Hanson: Right on. Mind if we backtrack to you guys being accountants and starting your cold brew coffee company on the side? I think that’s something that we see a lot more people doing it here in the States and I think that’s a topic that probably a lot of people are interested in because there’s always people looking for part-time gigs, side hustles, that type of stuff. What made you guys take that step?
Aaron: For me, like I said, it was a bit of a midlife crisis. It really is searching for something else I guess. The nine-to-five daily grind can be pretty tough if you’re not necessarily doing something that you’re super passionate and in love with doing. For me, I was looking for something else and to invest in myself as well and to learn a new skill and to grow. I went and got a job as a barista because I wanted to learn how to make coffee on my days off.
If you invest in yourself as well, you’ve got another string to your ball and you can create a little competitive advantage for yourself in a field and in doing something that you love, where you lose your time. I think, for me, it was just a bit of a self-discovery thing. Brendan will tell you about his motivation as well.
Brendan: I’ve only just recently dropped down to part-time. I was still doing the five days a week.
Cary: Burning the midnight oil.
Brendan: Yes, that’s it. Aaron and I have been there for a while. Once you establish it, typically, you can have some really long days. There were times last year where it got quite tough. You’re in the office early, you’re coming home late, you’re still uploading your update stuff for the weekend, sending emails, do all the rest. Yes, you’re up burning the midnight oil. You can be done. You had to add it up pretty quickly.
It’s nice to be part-time, yes, but for me, I really liked the idea of having something that’s ours, I suppose. Something that you’ve got control of, what you put in, you get out of it and you work harder, you get more. That for me was a real draw cut. A lot of people down on the market will say, “Where’s your–?” The cafe culture is quite strong enough so “Where’s your cafe? Where are you set up normally?”
The prospect of spending quite a lot of money on a fit out — and that’s kind of scary. Swinging the doors open and then hoping people rock up wasn’t really something that we wanted to do, so we’ve kind of done it bit by bit. We put a little bit of money into it early and then kind of put it back in, to grow it organically, I suppose you’d say. Really keeping as that part-time thing at the moment.
Aaron: Everyone’s in a different situation, right? We talk to young guys, we talk to older guys, about this topic and it really just depends on where you’re at in life and what you can afford. I’ve got a mortgage, so for me, to take a plunge and just go 100% in the coffees would probably be a little bit too much of a risk at the point of life I’m at. But there’d be guys out there that will encourage — “Yes, if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing and you got time on your side and you don’t have too many commitments, yes, just go for it.”
Brendan Hanson: Why not?
Aaron: Yes, why not? exactly.
Cary: It’s awesome.
Aaron: If you’re passionate about it, you won’t mind burning the midnight oil. It’s one of those things that – you don’t really figure it out until you know how much you enjoy it until you get into it.
Brendan Hanson: Right, it’s not work if you’re passionate about it.
Aaron: Yes, that’s right. Don’t get us wrong, we’ve had Barney’s and I’ve had a lot of average days and sometimes I’m like, “What am I doing this? Branding and marketing?
[laughter]
Aaron: What the hell is that? Adobe Illustrator?”
Brendan Hanson: [laughs]
Aaron: Getting pissed off with all this stupid — Obviously, once you start a business — and you guys would know this better than anyone. The stuff you have to learn is just insane but if you don’t start and you don’t do it, then you’re not going to learn and you’re not going to grow and-
Brendan Hanson: That’s right. You got to start somewhere.
Aaron: – discover all the beautiful stuff as well [laughs].
Cary: Right. Speaking of a branding and marketing, how did you guys come up with Filament Coffee as a name and what’s that mean?
Aaron: I’ll let Brendan tell the story.
Brendan: Well, I don’t remember how we end up specifically landing that. As you guys again would know, name is a tricky one. We wanted to make sure it was something, first of all, that wasn’t really like an inside thing, something people could spell easily and say easily is really important because we’ve heard certain cases where you have this really creative name that means something really special to you and no one can work out how to spell it or get to your website.
Aaron: You can tell we’re accountants, we’re very logical thinkers.
[laughter]
Brendan: Before we landed on cold brew, we’d had a couple of other ideas in the past about things we could do. The idea of the Thomas Edison quote about “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work,” when he was coming up with the filament for the light bulb. Coffee as well really gives you that buzz. We’re drawn to the name and thought it would make for quite a nice little logo as well.
Aaron: It was like – stepping back as well, that meeting we had with a client, it was like a light bulb moment. In that meeting, we were like, “That’s Perth heart, Perth — coffee’s same as [unintelligible 00:18:09], and to hear about cold brew, we were just like, “Man, that could work.” It was sort of that as well. I don’t know if you’ve seen our logo on our Instagram or whatever but it’s it’s like a light bulb coming-
Brendan Hanson: Coming out of coffee.
Aaron: – out of a coffee cup. What’s up?
Cary: That’s cool, Brendan.
Aaron: This thing emanates out a little cup and it’s kind of confusing [chuckles] because we’re doing cold brew and not hot brew.
[laugher]
Cary: Don’t worry about that.
Brendan Hanson: That’s the aroma.
Aaron: It’s so we can branch out in future [chuckles].
Brendan Hanson: That’s right.
Aaron: No, there’s a bit of a story behind it, but yes, the Thomas Edison thing’s pretty cool. Try and try again.
Brendan: Even then, you fall on the name and then you still say it and before you know it, you’re just referring to it is that and it’s okay, that’s it, that’s the name. Let’s do it.
Brendan Hanson: Yes, it works. It’s cool, yes. I like it.
Cary: It’s a tricky one. Nice.
Aaron: What about you guys? Drips & Draughts, that’s pretty rad.
[laughter]
Brendan Hanson: We were from the opposite frame of that. We were like, “How can we confuse people? Because in America we spell drafts D-R-A-F-T-S.
Aaron: All right [chuckles].
Brendan Hanson: We were like, “Let’s just mess everybody up here.”
Cary: We got people asking us all the time, “What’s Drips & Draughts?”
Aaron: Nice how it stands for us West Australians. We have a lot of draft beers down here, spell exactly how you guys. It’s funny, though, when you see someone who doesn’t know the word. They’ll be like, “Is that drought? What’s drought?” [laughs]
Cary: Draughts?
Aaron: I want a drought beer [laughs].
Cary: [laughs]
Brendan Hanson: Yes, we’re just getting out of a five-year drought here in California.
Aaron: All right.
Brendan Hanson: No rain for the last five years. Maybe that’s how the name came to be.
Aaron: You need a few more drips, right?
Brendan Hanson: We need a few more drips.
Aaron: A bit less drought/draught [chuckles].
Brendan Hanson: [laughs] Exactly.
Aaron: I’m just pouring off another coffee for us here. We’ve got a — yes, like I was telling you guys before, I am a natural Ethiopian. We’ve been getting into our natural coffee, they’re a little bit I guess revered in the roasting — well, just because I’ve got quite — I guess the method of drying, how they dry them. The cherries on the beds can be quite inconsistent so you can get some rotting and some inconsistencies in how the beans actually come through to the Roasters.
Not everyone loves them, but they’re growing in popularity and it’s really cool coffee. This one’s got a blueberry raspberry tropical fruit and coconut vibes to it which is very consistent with the pirate island that we sit here on.
Brendan Hanson: Nice. The fruits are eventually removed I would imagine, right?
Aaron: Yes, absolutely. It’s whether the fruit’s removed before the coffee is dried or after. If it’s removed after, it’s called a natural and if it’s removed before, it’s a washed coffee so you get very different flavor profiles based on how they-
Brendan Hanson: Make sense.
Aaron: – do that.
Brendan Hanson: That makes sense.
Aaron: Delicious.
Brendan Hanson: Well, let’s get into your guys’ story about how you started with bottles and then moved into taps. You guys told me a great hand grinder story last time we talked. Would you mind sharing that?
Cary: [chuckles]
Aaron: Yes.
Brendan: Yes.
[laughter]
Brendan: That comes back a little bit to our starting out with what we needed to at the time to produce cold brew and really take it down to the market to see if people would buy it. That was really what we wanted to work out to start with.
Brendan Hanson: It’s market test.
Brendan: Yes, exactly. We obviously wanted to make sure that the quality of the product is good, so these hand grinders that we got — now they’re not small, most people would assume they’re like those tiny hand grinders you keep in your kitchen. They’re a little bit bigger than that, they are a hand grinder that they called the LIDO 3, these ones, they’re really consistent, really nice hand grinder, but they are a hand grinder. It gave us is this really nice consistency and quality when we were grinding but, yes, we can only put-
Aaron: [laughs]
Brendan: – 70 grams in this thing at a time.
[laughter]
Aaron: We call them tubes.
[laughter]
Aaron: One tube is 70 grams.
Brendan: One tube of effort.
[laughter]
Brendan: Early days it was okay because we could do — our very first market, we’re sitting up so unprepared for it. We’re all up at 3:00 AM the night before the morning of grinding. We only had to do one kilo worth to get it down there. Before we ended up switching out to this base of a grinder we have now, one afternoon, we’ve done the market, we’ve been up since 4:30, we’re on the market, come back and we’re going to put batches on and we had to grind four kilos by hand.
[laughter]
[crosstalk]
Brendan Hanson: That’s about 10 pounds.
Brendan: Yes, I mean, we had a couple of beers. I don’t even think we could drive by the time we’re finished with those four kilo for about two hours I think.
[crosstalk]
Brendan Hanson: We’re doing some math over here.
Brendan: That’s how we’ve grown it bit by bit. Time flies, but when you think back to how we’re doing that at the start, I mean, it does make for a pretty funny story but that’s just how we’re getting it done-
Aaron: [laughs]
Brendan: – without going and spending — because good coffee grinder can cost a few thousand dollars. We didn’t want to jump straight into that right rather start.
Brendan Hanson: Do your forearms hurt just thinking about that?
Brendan: Yes, you get out of them.
Cary: [laughs]
Brendan: I remember I went on a holiday last year and came back, it took me two weeks to get back into it, for the muscle memory to kick back in.
Aaron: Who is grinding all the coffee while Brendan was away? [laughs] I did a double for couple weeks. I actually get some friends and family who know that story. They were so disappointed when they found out that we weren’t hand grinding anymore, it was more like, “Are you guys selling out? What do you doing? That’s part of you, that’s part of your business.” I’m like, “Oh my God, you guys don’t understand.”
[laughter]
Brendan Hanson: I think I told you guys the last time, I said the last time we spoke that Cary and I went to our brewing beer, first time, we did a 20 gallon batch of beer, we had a hand grinder for our malt.
Cary: That’s 35 pounds of malt.
Brendan Hanson: It was brutal.
Cary: That’s was terrible
Brendan Hanson: Never again.
Aaron: Yes. It’s funny how it was a bit of a — It was a nice way to actually finish your market so we’d finished the market Saturday afternoon and put on some batches and give us a chance, especially in the early days when it was all fresh and new to bounce stuff off each other, and yes, it was just a nice meditative little session, but yes, sitting on crates in my man cave got pretty tiresome when you had a life to live as well and — [chuckles] yes, you can’t carry on that behavior forever, but it was it was good fun while it lasted.
Brendan Hanson: Sure. You guys mind sharing your cold brew process with us? Ratios you use, steeping time, all that fun stuff.
Aaron: Yes, absolutely. We brought my actual — in my man cave at my house and so there’s Aaron’s bae, I’m sure she realized that. We use a tub style of brewing so we’ve actually just invested in a larger tub system. I know we’ve been talking to you guys as well about the stainless steel which is something that we will eventually get too, but we use a – probably 15-liter insulated tubs, and we use a lot of ice in our brewing process. In terms of our recipe, at the moment where we’re running 12 to 1 ratio, so 1 kilo of coffee. I don’t know if you guys want to convert that to pounds.
Brendan Hanson: We’ll do that in the show notes.
[laughter]
Aaron: 2.2, roughly, pounds of coffee, so a kilo here in oz to 12 liters of water. That produces what we call a concentrate. That’s a concentrate that is actually a very drinkable concentrate so you don’t have to dilute it from there. A lot of people actually like our concentrates straight over ice so it’s probably lighter than the concentrate that a lot of people brew, otherwise it’s the perfect ratio to add a little bit of milk or cream too.
Brendan Hanson: Nice.
Aaron: Yes, and we do a ready to drink as well where we add, roughly, around 25% to 30% extra water on top of what we’ve already got in there and bottle that up in your 3:30 meal stubs. That’s ready to ingest straight from the bottle. It’s a pretty simple brew process, we add quite a lot of ice because we don’t have a walking freezer so we control our temp via ice. I think I mentioned to you before, Brendan, when we spoke, that coming into summer was really difficult because we didn’t have that fridge environment.
The ambient temperature here in Perth kicked up from 20 in winter to 35 consistently, so it was messing with a whole bunch of stuff like the bearings on our grinder where that expand a little bit. The heat where we were storing the vessels was increased. I had to play around over a couple of weeks there and I wasn’t happy with a couple of batches so we adjusted times and that thing, but our ratio has always stayed the same, 12 to one per oz produces a really nice–
Cary: What’s your, guys, ideal steeping temperature?
Aaron: We want the water to be ice-cold so it’s around 2-3 degrees. It’s hard to monitor in the vessels that we’ve got at the moment — sorry, yes, at degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit.
Brendan Hanson: Sure.
Aaron: We’re actually looking–
Brendan Hanson: Can we have a block of ice?
Aaron: Yes. [laughs]
[laughter]
Aaron: We’re at buying a chest fridge/freezer.
Brendan Hanson: There we go.
Aaron: Yes, now that we’ve — like Brendan said before, proved the concept and build up a little bit of a following, how we want to make sure everything’s really spot-on, just improve our processes and make them more efficient and replicable, because we’re going to need to get someone to help out at some point. I’ve got all the information’s in my head at the moment which is not an ideal place for it to be so we want to create a process that can easily that it can easily be replicated by anyone.
Pretty cold, quite as cold as possible. That’s one of what we think anyway, our competitive advantages is how cold we brew it. I know a lot of people out there will do an ambient temp brew. We just found that you get less bitterness and a smoother tasting coffee the colder you brew. Particularly, when our focus is on the flavors in the coffee, we want something that’s really super smooth so people can actually recognize them and pick out those unique tasting flavors in the coffee we’re using.
Brendan Hanson: Nice. Makes sense.
Cary: What’s what’s your typical steeping time when you guys brew?
Aaron: It was 8-10 hours in winter and we’ve moved to 7-8 hours in summer.
Brendan Hanson: Okay. Just slight adjustment?
Aaron: Yes, we found that site pretty — it’s insane how you can use that time for every coffee, it works. The only thing we really mess with is the grind size. For our fruity coffees, like Brendan was describing before, the one on our fruity tap, we tend to grind that a little bit coarser just because they tend to be more acidic and a little bit more confrontational in terms of the taste. We brew those at a coarser grind size just to get them a bit softer and really nice and palatable. We have 7-8 hours at the moment, it’s the magic number.
Brendan Hanson: Right on. All right, a couple more questions, I guess, before we finish this up. Can you talk a little bit about selling to an uneducated audience? Do you guys see that as like a hurdle or a challenge? Or is that something you guys enjoy as part of your business?
Brendan: Probably a bit of both really, being down at the Farmers Market has an advantage that people are down there to — one, they’re down there to get their fruit and veg, but there are a lot of other unique stalls there as they are all markets so people are willing to give things a try which we find is really good. While we do have to explain it and talk people through sometimes, they’re also — 9 times out of 10, they’re willing to give it a go, which has been really good.
Aaron: Once at least [laughs].
Brendan: It’s pretty fun like that.
[laughter]
Aaron: Often, I get a customer that we’ve seen walk past three, four, five times and finally get them over for a taste and they’ll taste it and they’ll really love it and stuff and now they’re buying a cup and I’m like, “Yes, we’ve got them.” I’ll do like a little dance and be like,”Brenda watch this person come back next week.”
[laughter]
Aaron: And then they’ll never come back. The next week they’ll be like-
Brendan Hanson: Drink out of a hook.
Aaron: – they flap water again and I’m just like, “Damn it.”
[laughter]
Brendan Hanson: Yes, that leads to the next question. You guys got any tricks that you can share to get your foot in the door with a new customer that’s not necessarily familiar with cold brew or that doesn’t necessarily like cold brew? Is it the Australian accent maybe or is it that dance?
Aaron: Yes, the dance. We do have an A-Frame sign and we offered free dances for a while.
[laughter]
Brendan: It got requested that once though.
Aaron: Maybe that’s our best tip.
Brendan: Seriously, I think it’s having a tap set up the way it is. We’ve got this really super small taster cups, basically, that we can give people and give them little–
Aaron: It’s like a shot.
Brendan: Almost like half shots, yes. Even when you do a nitro, it pulls up and it forms a head on it as well. People can really see in that little taster, and I think the same — [clears throat] excuse me, seeing and tasting is like Aaron said before, is so much more impactful than just describing what it is, so while they’ve got it in their hand, they’re not looking at you, they’re just staring at this nitro cascading and then you’re telling them the process. That, we’ve worked out pretty early that that’s really the key to explaining what it is and showing people how smooth it is compared to — Because they’ll go straight for iced coffee. They think if it’s cold it’s an iced coffee so that distinction can really come through when you give them those tasters.
Aaron: I think as well, using language that resonates with people, that they understand. We often compare our nitro coffee to a Guinness or Kilkenny and that really resonates with people, they’re like,”Yes. I get that,” so things that you can use — and the other thing, I was actually thinking back to an episode that you guys did a while back. I think it was a guy that was talking about high-pressure pasteurization, do you remember that episode?
Brendan Hanson: Yes.
Aaron: He spoke about like, “No customer has ever come to me, you’ve got to go out there and find your own,” so there’s a bit of just being a bull at a gate and not being afraid to call people over. I don’t know, in this day and age, we tend to be quite insular people. People, they’re always like — obviously went before, but afraid to come over and approach you. It’s just creating a really comfortable energetic vibe that people feel comfortable to come over. You might have to use some catch phrases, a little bit like wild coffee or whatever it is. Being prepared to step out of your comfort zone a little bit. Like the guy on the HPP episode said, “It’s very rare for customers to come to you so you’ve got to go get them, you got to be brave.
Brendan Hanson: Sure. Are you guys doing the Farmers Market just — is it once a week? Or is it multiple times during the week?
Aaron: It’s just once a week, we do that and we double in other events as well when they’re going. We’ll do a Sunday market occasionally. For a while there, they had this really cool — it was like a beach market, and that for us was like — when we think about our dream of where we want to sell our coffee, that was the spot right on the grass down by this beautiful beach here in Perth and you just had a captive audience because of the location and it was obviously hot in the middle of summer.
Yes, we mix it up when we can. I did a yoga event last week down at our local university, they were running a free yoga session as part of an International Arts Festival that’s here at the moment so I went and did that. Stuff just pops up from time to time, it’s always nice.
Brendan Hanson: Cool.
Aaron: I said to Brendan, like, “No time is ever wasted, you might not make it quid but the branding and the exposure that you get from just on being places is really cool, especially when people start recognizing you and one of your mates says, “Yes, I talked to some random person I know and I mentioned Filament Coffee,” it’s like, “That’s so cool.”
Brendan Hanson: All right, guys, before we finish this up, mind if I ask you a couple just quick fire questions?
Brendan Go.
Aaron: Yes.
Brendan Hanson: How much coffee do each of you drink per day?
Brendan: Not as much as you’ probably think.
Aaron: Short questions you need to get long answer.
Brendan: Yes.
[laughter]
Aaron: I found average would be, for me, four to three cups of coffee whether it’s cold brew or other.
Brendan Hanson: How big is your cup?
[laughter]
Aaron: It’s like one liter. I’m unbeatable so I’ll have like five or six one day, and blow myself up. The next day, I’ll have zero.
[laughter]
[crosstalk]
Brendan Hanson: That’s a lot of averages. All right, if there were no coffee what would you be doing right now? And you can’t say accounting.
Brendan: We lost you a little bit there, could you ask that one again?
Brendan Hanson: Yes. if there were no coffee, what would you be doing for a job right now? And you can’t say accounting.
Brendan: Maybe brewing beer, it’s pretty fun.
Brendan Hanson: There you go.
Brendan: It’s actually really popular here in Perth as well, but yes, that won’t be a bit hard to crack into I think, it’s quite established here. I think that would be a lot of fun.
Aaron: Well, actually, what we really want to do is get a mobile candy machine and go around — actually, I shouldn’t put this on air, God damn it. No, I’ll say it.
[laughter]
Aaron: No, we want to get a mobile candy machine and go and help our home brewers do both like coffee and candy.
Brendan Hanson: Nice.
Aaron: That’s actually something I got to look into.
Brendan Hanson: I think that’s taken a foothold down in San Diego and other areas around here where there’s a lot of breweries.
Aaron: How sick would that be like? The people that you would meet through that process and the beers that you get to taste and the coffee you get to taste. Imagine the smile on someone’s face, like, say you meet this guy Dave and you give him a white candy and it’s got just Dave written on it. Dave has got — Dave’s [unintelligible 00:38:30].
[laughter]
[cross talk]
Aaron: I think that’s something.
Brendan: All the Daves there?
Aaron: Yes.
[laughter]
Cary: I like it.
Aaron: I don’t know, did we answer the question?
[laughter]
Brendan Hanson: Yes, I think that’s it.
Cary: I like it.
Brendan Hanson: Well, cool. Guys, if people want to find you where can they find you either at the farmers market and/or online?
Aaron: Yes, absolutely. We’re down at Mount Claremont, for any Australian such Perth listeners, Mt Claremont Farmers’ Market in WA. Our Instagram handle is filament.coffee, that’s F-I-L-A-M-E-N-T.coffee. There is another Filament Coffee which is in Scotland so don’t get confused. Our logo is a little cheeky light bulb shape and then our website as well is filament.coffee, so anyone out there, check out what we’re up to. I think, Brendan G, here, is working on the website at the moment so it’s going through a little bit of a-
Brendan: Facelift.
Aaron: – facelift and update. That will be up and running in time. If anyone wants to reach out and chat about how we do our coffee, like the different beans we use and why we use a lot of different roasts, like light filter roast through to our darker espresso roast, absolutely happy to talk to everyone and anyone.
Aaron: Thank you to you guys for your time today.
Cary: Yes, yes. Thanks for coming out.
Brendan Hanson: Thanks for joining us. Thanks for waking up early.
Aaron: Yes. The pirate island is on and the sun is starting to rise.
[laughter]
Aaron: All the batties there are — they’ve fled away to the trees, all those scary animals.
Brendan Hanson: I’m glad you guys got a handle on your birds there.
Aaron: Yes, yes.
[laughter]
Aaron: It’s getting late on [crosstalk]-
Cary: What kind of birds are those?
Aaron: – practically.
[laughter]
Aaron: What’s that?
Brendan Hanson: Send us a video of that.
Cary: What kind of birds are they? We want to see these to put on the show notes.
Aaron: The loud ones-
[laughter]
Aaron: I don’t know. My cat could probably tell you [laughs]. She sits inside and just stares at them all day. I’m sure she’s got a good handle on the fauna in these parts. They’re probably ibis. No, they’re not actually ibis [laughs]. There was this really funny — These Aussie guys made a video about the ibis. I-B-I-S, it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen about how much they hate the ibis and how it used to sing and stuff [laughs].
Brendan Hanson: Well, send us a link. Send us a link to that. We’ll put it in the show notes.
Aaron: I will, I’ll send you the link, yes, it’s pretty cool [laughs].
Brendan Hanson: All right, guys.
[music]
Brendan Hanson: I think that will do it. Thanks again and talk to you.
Aaron: All right. Thanks to you guys.
[music]
Announcer: If you’re looking to learn more about cold brew or draft coffee, make sure you check out Keg Outlet’s Ultimate Guide to Cold Brewed Coffee and Serving Coffee on Draft. Hey, don’t just take my word for it. Here’s Daniel Browning from the Browning Beverage Company in Marfa, Texas.
Daniel Browning: I got on the internet and I started looking around and I found Keg Outlet’s Ultimate Guide to Cold Brew Coffee and read it a couple more times than I’ve read anything in my life. That was pretty much all the research I needed.
Announcer: If you’re looking to start your journey with cold brew or draft coffee, check out the Ultimate Guide to Cold Brew Coffee and Serving Coffee on Draft, a free 34-page ebook offered at kegoutlet.com. You can get there through the Drips & Draughts website by going to dripsanddraughts.com/ultimateguide.
[music]
Brendan Hanson: All right. Thanks for listening today. Thanks to Aaron and Brendan for joining us today. What a great name that guy has. We chatted about it a bit in today’s episode but I think one of the common themes that you’ll notice throughout our Australian cold brew series is that all of these companies are selling to a more or less uneducated cold brew audience. It’s still relatively new in Australia. It’s cool to hear how they’re going through the steps of educating their audience.
While talking about educating an audience, apparently, our podcast has helped out quite a few people. This is the time where I’m going to ask you to hop on to iTunes and leave a review like this one here. It’s a five-star review titled New to Cold Brew from Brown Dog Coffee, simple, short review that says, “Getting ready to start cold brew in our shops. These podcasts are invaluable to our startup. Thanks, guys, You are the best.”
Thank you, Brown Dog Coffee. You are the best. We appreciate the review and we really appreciate the fact that it was five stars. Thanks for taking the time to hop on to iTunes and leave this show a review. If you haven’t left us a review already and you get some value from this show, do what Brown Dog Coffee did. Hop onto iTunes and leave us a review. All right, that’s going to be about it for today but there is going to be a little bonus after the outro music.
Brendan and Aaron brought along a nice little visitor to the podcast, that loud bird that was out on their balcony. They also sent me a link to the bird song about the ibis which is, I guess, pretty prevalent in Australia. We’re going to throw that song at the end of this. We’ll also put a link to the show notes which you can find at dripsanddraughts.com/61. One final thanks to Cary for being in studio, to Brendan and Aaron for joining us today. Go check out filament.coffee.
[outro music]
We’ll see you again next week on the Drips & Draughts Podcast.
Are you looking to learn more about cold brew and draught coffee? Join us in the Cold Brew Avenue Private Community to connect with and learn from other cold brew and draught coffee professionals. Plus, get access to exclusive contents such as e-books, how-to videos, buyers guides and more. You can learn more and apply for membership at forum.coldbrewavenue.com.
Thanks to Keg Outlet for sponsoring this podcast. Thank you to everyone who has contributed questions and to you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. That does it for this week but looking forward to seeing you again for the next episode of Drips & Draughts.
[outro music]
The woodpecker bird likes pecking wood. The bluebird’s a bird that sings pretty good. Sparrows are a bird that are pretty cool ay. But the ibis is a bird that drinks bin juice all day.
A crow is a bird with a heaps mad squawk. A cockatoo’s a bird with a sick mohawk. Chicken is a bird that tastes good and lays eggs. And ibises are bin juice drinking dregs.
A goose is a bird that’s chilled like a duck. An ibis is a bird that’s a picnic-wrecking [blips]. Doves are birds that represent purity. And ibises wreck picnics and disrupt the community.
Penguins are birds that fall in love and mate for life. But ibises love nothing because they’re dead inside. A swan is a bird that’s graceful and that. And ibis’s aren’t birds, they’re feathered bin rats. Ibis, bin juice drinking gronk. Yes the ibis, their beaks are gross and long. It’s the ibis, picnic-wrecking jerks. Yes the ibis, they’re the worst birds. The condor is an awesome bird-of-prey. A hawk’s a bird that’s a cool bird ay. The eagle bird soars through the sky as it hunts.
But ibises are bin juice-drinking [blips]. The albatross bird lives to 60, maybe older. The parrot is a bird living on a pirate shoulder. Parrots say cool [blips] like, “Polly want a cracker.” But ibises just [blips] come up and harass you. A lorikeet’s a bird with a colorful jacket. Ibises can [blips] off back to their home planet. A seagull’s a bird that scabs hot chips and there’s only one bird that’s scabbier than this. It’s the ibis, they’re picnic-wrecking irrits. It’s the ibis.
I hope they don’t come near us. Yes the ibis, they’re bin juice drinking jerks. It’s the ibis, they’re the [blips] birds. The ibis is a picnic-wrecking burden on humanity. A dumpster-diving bin chicken, disrupting the community, annoying the general public at every opportunity, disgrace the feathered creatures, bringing shame on the bird family. If there are any ibises watching this, firstly, there’s no bin juice here so you can [blips] off.
Secondly, get a job and [blips] do something with your life. Sort it out, you’re on the road to nowhere. Don’t migrate to that garbage island floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or some [blips] I don’t know. I’m not your dad. I can’t tell you how to live your life. Just stop breaking everyone’s picnics [blips]. It’s the ibis, bin-juice-drinking [blips]. Yes the ibis, that’s ruining your lunch. Yes the ibis, picnic-wrecking jerks. It’s the ibis, what a [blips] of a bird. What a [blips] of a bird. If I was an ibis I’d go kill myself.
Mentioned in this Show
Filament Coffee | Instagram | Facebook
Song About Birds: https://www.youtube.com
