On this episode, we’re joined once again by Elijah Elliott from Red Hat Coffee in San Diego California. Elijah joined us back on Episode 5 – Roasting Coffee with a Jet Engine which aired on back on May 16, 2016. Since then, Elijah and Red Hat Coffee have taken steps to expand the business by adding both a mobile cart where customers can serve themselves and make their own concoctions and they are also on their way to canning their nitro coffee.
Highlights & Takeaways
Red Hat Coffee offering a self serve mobile cart with different milks on tap – Choose your own adventure
Canning without the huge investment for cans, widgets, etc.
Red Hat Cans launching in spring – nitro coffee without the widget
Cold Brew Check In – The bottle that we bottled on May 21, 2016 – still looking good
What we mentioned on during this show
Episode 45 Transcript
Brendan Hanson: You’re listening to the Drips & Draughts podcast. I’m Brendan Hanson and today we’re joined by Elijah Elliot from Red Hat Coffee in San Diego.
Elijah joined us way back on one of our first episodes, actually episode five titled, “Roasting coffee with a Jet engine.” That was back in May of 2016. If you’re interested in checking out that episode, you can do so by going to dripsanddraughts.com/5.
Today on the show, we’re talking with Elijah about expanding a Cold Brew Company, building out the mobile side of things, also getting into canning cold brew. Then we talked to him about the importance of cleaning and sanitizing as well as shelf life of cold brew. Speaking of shelf life, we show Elijah our in-house experiment here the cold brew that we bottled back on May 21st, 2016. Well, you’ll see by his reaction, he’s pretty impressed that it’s still looking good and we actually recorded this episode in December.
This cold brew was just about six months old at the time. Now when the episode’s airing, this cold brew as of February 10th, it’s 265 days old or a hundred days until D-day, that will be the day that we try this on air. I don’t think we have to say it but here it is just in case. We don’t recommend drinking one-year-old cold brew at home. All right.
Before we get into today’s episode, a quick plea for me to you to hop on the iTunes and leave us a quick review. Doesn’t cost you anything, it’s not hard, doesn’t take long and it helps the show out. If you enjoy listening to the Drips & Draughts podcast, hop on to iTunes and leave us a review.
All right, moving right along. If you’re looking for links or shown outs from this episode, you can find those by going to dripsanddraughts.com/45. Without further ado, let’s get into today’s episode with Elijah Elliot from Red Hat Coffee in San-Diego.
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Brendan: All right. Welcome back to the Drips & Draughts podcast. As always, I’m Brendan Hanson. Brother Cary’s in studio today.
Cary: I’m here.
Brendan: We’re joined by Elijah Elliot who is actually back on Episode Five. Elijah’s here, he’s got his two kids with him which is– I think that’s a first for this podcast.
Cary: Yes, we’re going to have some background noise.
Elijah Elliot: Yes, I apologize-
Brendan: Good. No, it’s good.
[laughter]
Elijah: – for anything they may do.
Cary: Sounds like home
Brendan: Yes, Elijah is actually here picking up some cold brew system so we said, “You’re going to have to record an episode of-
[laughter]
Brendan : – lawyer in-house. Lot to talk about, you’re obviously picking up five large cold brew systems. You’re obviously scaling up. Things have changed since we talked back in May.
Elijah: Yes, we’re jumping up, we’re looking to move to a couple different phases. We’ve got a custom trike that we designed out with a company up in Portland, that’s showing up. We have more permanent locations and have our nitro and our flat will come out of that out of the trike. Then actually, what I’m really stoked on with that bike is it’s a real simple concept so as you roll up, you get nitro and flat on one side. The other side of the bike, we’re going to have four taps with all the different milks. It’s kind of like it’s self-serve.
Brendan: Oh.
Cary: Oh.
Elijah: Yes. Okay cool, I’m not– [crosstalk]
Cary: It is cool.
Brendan: Yes, that’s definitely going be a new.
Elijah: Yes.
Brendan: I don’t think there’s a lot of people doing that.
Elijah: Yes, we don’t necessarily need to– it’s not to like cream out milk, although, that would be like a byproduct I guess. But the cool thing will be–
Cary: Is it different flavored creams or–? What exactly– or different milks?
Elijah: What we’re going have is right now, we’ve got set to go is an almond milk, a chocolate-soy milk, coconut milk and then– I don’t want to call it a sweetener, like a simple syrup type set up, right?
Cary: Yes.
Elijah: That you go through because any cold brew or any cold brew is pretty low acid and so we found in the markets is it mixes really well with these things. Not to mention these things are shelf-stable. It helps us with food code and all that stuff.
Brendan: Nice.
Elijah: But it’s going to make for this clean, we don’t have to roll up with all these creams sitting on the table and stuff, you can roll up with this box. Super-clean set up, all the barista has to do is set us a little bike chair, “Hey, here’s your milk. Here’s your coffees, whatever.” Answer questions, suggest, “Hey, if you mix it this way, if you mix it that way.” We’ve got this super clean, super simple setup for people who just want to show up and get a great cup. “I just want a great cup of coffee. I don’t need all the fancy flare, I don’t need all the crazy.” That’s us.
Cary: That is hot.
Elijah: Simple, elegant, pull this handle, beep, beep, beep, your cup.
Cary: You’re letting your customer do it themselves or their own raft or is the barista actually still going to be doing it?
Elijah: Whatever the customer wants. What I would imagine is going to happen is the first couple times or very first introducing this, we’re brand-new to whoever the person is. They’re probably going to want our guy to get out there, pull handles all that stuff.
Cary: Sure.
Elijah: It should be more of a comfortable as this becomes your regular spot, I think it enhances the relationship we have. You’re showing up and maybe you’re working back and forth of the barista on suggestions or whatever or, “I like this way.” or, “I like it that way.” but the fact that you can get in there, grab on it.
Cary: Yes.
Elijah: You’re creating.
Brendan: Right, I don’t want it 50-50, I want 75-20.
Elijah: Yes.
Cary: We have kegerators at home with home brewing. Any time people come over, they just want to grab that handle, pour themselves draught beer. Take the same thing, most people don’t get to do that unless you’re a bartender.
Elijah: It’s a cool thing.
Cary: It’s a really cool thing, like interactive business the client then you guys–
Elijah: We had a cold brew competition, it was a few months ago, it was middle summer. I was trying to get cool table setup and I had an ammo can that I had taken on deployment so we mess around with it, it’s on our Instagram. We put a nitro handle on it and we made it look cool and we turned it around, it just happened to be that it was better to turn around on the table, it fit better with our layout. But people were so stoked to come up and be able to pull the handle.
Brendan: Pour their own.
Elijah: I never thought about that, right? But like you said, we’re pulling handles all the time but when people come up to that, “Can I pull this? Is this okay?” It’s like, “It’s a handle. Go ahead.”
[laughter]
Brendan: “You can do it. Just make sure there’s a cup under.”
Elijah: Yes, I think it’s such a warm thing to kind to turn it into– it’s already such a community type act, there’s already relationship between you and your Starbucks guy or whoever guy. Now you can grab on and you can customize.
Cary: That’s cool
Elijah: I don’t need a barista who knows my stuff or whatever. I make it and I’m working with this guy [unintelligible 00:07:49].
Brendan: You mentioned you’re hoping this thing operates seven days a week, where are you guys going to be doing this? I know when we talked six months ago, you guys were doing farmer’s markets.
Elijah: Yes.
Brendan: Going to those types of events, is this going to be out on the beach like the boardwalk, farmer’s markets?
Elijah: Yes, the goal is to with this strike once, we iron out our details with the San Diego DH. Then we know how to replicate this. We stick in one spot, it’s working here, ready to move to the next one. Now what we’re going to do is copyright instruction documents.
But we’re going to start? We actually just tested out a spot this morning. I was on my drive-in over to here. It’s like Normal Heart or Normal Heights Kensington area, on the border. It’s right in front of– there’s a barbershop. We’ll put out the address when we get it. But we just tested this morning. We’re going to be basically in Kensington and starting there. We’re still in the Golden Hill Farmers market every Saturday and then we do also events. On December Third, we’ve got a big West Coaster. You know the magazine West Coaster? You’ve seen that? It’s in breweries all over San Diego.
Cary: Yes, I have seen that.
Brendan: I was going to say, “I probably have. I’ve been in plenty of breweries in San Diego. [laughs]
Elijah: It’s sitting there. They’re having an event at 32, North which is a brewery in Miramar down in San Diego. They invited us and most ready to come. It’s like coffee beard get down kind of vibe.
Brendan: Nice, cool.
Elijah: Yes, we’re going be doing big events like that. That’s actually where we’re unveiling the trike, that will be the first time it rolls out.
Brendan: Awesome.
Elijah: Squirting people’s cups and all that.
Brendan: Cool.
Elijah: Free stuff going out.
Brendan: Who’s peddling that thing? Who’s got the quads in your group?
[laughter]
Elijah: Yes, I guess–
[laughter]
Brendan: 21 gallons.
Elijah: It’s going to be a lot. Yes, I counted out with the weight of the bike and with the coffee and all that, we’re going to be looking 73 between 400 pounds at [unintelligible 00:09:38] .
Brendan: There’s some hills in San Diego. [laughs]
Elijah: There’s certainly some hills.
Cary: You don’t have all those bikes with all the electric motors on them now, it seem like uphills, no pedaling. What?
Brendan: How’s that happening?
Elijah: It’s pretty ridiculous. Yes, this bike has some electric assist but it’s going be a stout person to– I think the goal is like, “It’s a dope trike.” You do a little bit of riding, get it to space. That’s what we’re hoping for. I thinking for riding around town trying to chase customers, we might have taken a wrong turn somewhere.
[laughter]
Elijah: Yes, you’re right. 300 to 400 pounds of pushing, probably not a good–
Brendan: Yes, that’s tough, unless you need that workout. What else has changed since we last talked? You told us a little bit before the show but maybe let’s elaborate on some of the things you’re doing.
Elijah: I can’t remember if mentioned it or not. But we got a third partner in and with more partners and more on-boarding comes more ideas and also comes some of the stuff that we had spoken about doing, or events, “We want to do this, we want to do that.” can now come to [unintelligible 00:10:45]. For instance, we’re looking to this spring, release our nitro canning line. We’re going to can flat as well, what we’re looking to get out our flat coffee and can our nitro and start getting on the shelves starting of course in San Diego and try to blow up there.
Brendan: Awesome.
Cary: Wow.
Brendan: Yes. I mean we talked a bit about this but nitro canning is just a huge thing. That’s the question that Cary and I get asked probably at least once per day.
Cary: Yes, it’s massive.
Brendan: Everybody wants to go there. That’s the holy grail.
Elijah: It’s the golden goose man.
Brendan: It is.
Elijah: I think any of us– one thing we’re really, really stoked on is, nobody’s– if I want an energy drink, there’s two or three manufacturers. I’m like “That dude does. That’s the energy drink. I’m going to go and get that.” That doesn’t exist in cold brew yet. There’s, regionally, “Oh, I get this.” or “Oh, I get that.” There’s a couple of big names that have made their name early on but really nobody’s mastered it.
That’s why it’s the golden goose. We think we could be in the race. We want to grab that nitro coffee. That’s who we get. We’ve figured if we start out regionally, master San Diego, it’s a big market down there. We could really get a foothold to build in the industry.
Brendan: That’s a huge market. I think the cool thing about canned coffee like that is I look at coffee like I look at beer. I want to try them all.
Elijah: Absolutely.
Brendan: It’s one of those things where people are drinking coffee everyday, regardless. Yes man, I’m excited for you guys. That’s going to be cool to see. I know we’re trying to get some engineers on who actually make a nitro canning system. Just to get some more information, help spread that info out.
Elijah: We all need. It’s such a mysterious deal. Nobody wants that– I tried to reach out a couple of company. I think like Vault does a non-widget canning of beer out in Mesa, Colorado maybe. I don’t know. Vault had left hand of course is huge that their nitro milk stout but I can’t blame them for not wanting to “Here’s the step one through 10.”
You can run to your Science and all stuff but ultimately I think what I’m more stoked about is, with this nitro canning is just seeing how it’s done, seeing how it could be successful. Right now, unfortunately, the only way you’re going to do it, the only way you’re going to learn is just by doing it.
Cary: You got to jump it.
Brendan: You’re doing it without– everyone knows that widget in like a Guinness or [unintelligible 00:13:17] pins, you’re doing it without that.
Elijah: Without the widget. It’s been in you all’s forums. We’ve all seen it that the barrier to get into widget canning is hefty. It takes a lot of, not just a lot of money but probably more importantly because we could all find funding somewhere if we worked hard enough. It’s the space to get in with when your talking orders of 25 palettes worth of cans or you open that realm. Where do you store all those cans? Then you’ve got to fill all those cans, that sell us that’s a lot.
Brendan: That’s the minimum buy-in.
Elijah: Right around there is the minimum buy in.
Brendan: You’ve been like our, kind of a research guy-
Cary: The nitro guy.
Brendan: -the nitro guy in a sense. You’ve relayed so much information on those stuff to us. Is it ball canning line?
Elijah: Yes, so there’s two Big Daddy’s out there, no matter who your going with. There’s two guys that are going to have the widget cans and you’re going to go either thru ball or through crown. Ball is like the MacDaddy there, if you look on the bottom of- anybody who’s listening, if you look on the bottom of any can you’re drinking, it’s probably going to say ball. If it doesn’t, it’ll have a crown on it.
Ball did the widgets, used to be they just had a year align trying to dig back my email bank in my head here. They just had a year align and then it was like Q1 of 2016 they were going to release 16 ouncers or 24 ounce widget cans and then Q3 or Q4 maybe even Q1 of 2017 they’re going to drop in do the 12 ounce widget cans and all that stuff. Like Stumptown uses ball cans.
The way they use them is number one, they’ve got warehouse space but they had to order the eurolines. They had to order from Europe, shipped their order from over there that wasn’t available here, get it made in Europe and then sent over this way; a massive, massive investment.
Cary: No kidding.
Elijah: They were as to million pounds of beans a year. They’re in a different stratosphere than those of us that have just started. You could play bigger chips when you’ve got that kind of customer base and that kind of presence already set up that we’re trying to build. We look up to them. They’re giant in the industry.
Brendan: You guys are jumping into nitro canning without the widget. Would you mind sharing your volume that you’re going to have to commit to get that canned.
Elijah: It’s right around 8,000 cans, each been a run. We’re going to go with a mobile canner. There’s a couple different solutions. I can buy a canning system, which is a lot. It’s immense then you got to build out the canning system. I can–
Brendan: I got a little show going on.
[laughter]
Elijah: You guys can’t see another radio with all of them loosing as mine.
Cary: So boring, dad.
Brendan: You got a crazy daughter behind you.
[laughter]
Elijah: You could buy a canning system. You could try and find somebody that maybe they’ll let you run it, which is pretty highly unlikely or you get a mobile canner, which is very likely. They were just trying to pop-up more and more. Especially here in South Cal with the rise of breweries. We got a hundred micro and small bunch of breweries, they need to be canned.
But to do those, that’s where we’re going to be going. We’ll do mobile canning and depending on who you go with, you have to do different qualities of runs but our guys, we’re going with– it’s right around 8,000 cans probably a little over like 81.57 or whatever. But it’s at 8,000 can minimum round.
Cary: 12 ounce can?
Elijah: Yes. It’ll be a 12 ounce can. The beauty is, if we’re a little bit of competitive edge, since we don’t have a widget, we’re not dumping, I think it’s like 0.9 ounces of volume you’d have to have. We’re going to be a true 12 ounce can. That’ll be pretty dope.
Cary: Yes, no kidding. I can’t wait to see them and see how that turns out.
Elijah: You need both. I’m really, really excited about getting out there.
Brendan: How many–? 8,000 12 ounce cans. How many gallons is that that you’re producing? Just to put this into–
Elijah: 700 is what we will– it’s like 700-750.
Cary: Dream into a produce for that first run.
Elijah: Underselling myself here.
Brendan: Then you guys, is there a– you’re still doing just the one single cold brew. The cold gold, if I recall.
Elijah: Yes, it’s called cold gold.
Cary: The California cold gold, yes.
Elijah: I thought that was a dope name.
Brendan: That’s cool.
Elijah: We got a California beer in a bottle the whole night, we’re selling out hard. We area California company. That’s what we want to stand off. Sure it’s expensive to be here. It takes a lot but it’s where we’re from. I went to high school in San Diego. I joined the Military in San Diego. I went to college in San Diego. Now, I’m an engineer in San Diego. This is and that’s the same with the rest of my partner. We’re all San Diego guys. We’re all California kids. We’re really proud of it. We really want to stand on it.
Brendan: Nice, that’s great.
Elijah: Yes, we’re pretty stoked on it. Hopefully that branding Carys over to the cans and people like it.
[laughter]
Brendan: Have you expanded? I know when we first talked you were selling online. You we’re doing the farmers market. Tell us how that’s changed in the past, five or six months.
Elijah: It’s gone up and down. It has different swings. This whole first year, we thought we were running a business. We thought “Okay, you get into it. You start making money. Eventually, you make your money back, think you’re profitable.” It is, I guess, how it goes with different time scales. But really what this whole first year was more importantly was, we did it.
We are profitable. We don’t have credit on the company. We’re in a great spot but the first year was a lot of learning. We’d get into this store “Oh, that’s not really right.” Or we do it like the door-to-door or getting ourselves out. We had bottles shipped as far as Maine, Rhode Island, stuff like that. That was really cool. We didn’t have a system set up yet. That was good enough to grow with us.
We’re still doing all this things but we’re working on how to make it scale up with us as we do the canning as we come more of a presence and should our focus be these national sales when we haven’t been even mastered our regional market. We’re in, I want to say it’s five or six stores down in San Diego, wherein one market, every Saturday we weren’t to but the second market just the winter time.
It’s a tourist market, so in the winter time. The tourist go away. We moved from that market to advanced, shifting our focus but we’re in talks and in negotiations with a solid chain, with a big chain of grocery store. If that turns on, watch out here in the next probably month. It’ll either work or it won’t, right? We’re either going to land a big deal or we’re going to be crying quite a bit.
[laughter]
Elijah: I think the whole first year, there was some expansion but more importantly there was a lot of learning. We’re all amateurs in owning a business or at least we’re only started this. A lot of this first year was, how do we be good businessmen and how do we focus and take it from a thousand ideas to the one idea that makes sense. That one focus that makes sense.
Brendan: Yes, we get that. We iterated a couple of times. We get a lot of feedback from customers. As long as you’re listening to what the people are telling you, you’ll go in the right direction.
Elijah: Yes, that’s what it comes down to. You got to just listen to and that’s a hard thing to learn too. It’s not like I have customers come up by the hundreds and say, “This is A to Z how it needs to go down. This is what I hate about your can and those 35 people–” That’s not the way it works.
Brendan: Right.
Elijah: That was a concept that made sense I remember before we got in. Yes, let’s see your customers but I just couldn’t wrap my head around how do I listen to my customers. Even if I send out a survey, how many of them– maybe 10%, 5% are going to respond. That was a lot of learning.
Brendan: A lot of puzzle pieces you got to put together.
Elijah: Yes, we’re trying to figure it out. We’re trying to be better every day and ultimately as long as we do that, that will make us successful. That shows in the new partner that we picked up, he would have never been interested in our company if we weren’t those kind of people. If we weren’t looking to grow, if we weren’t taking the steps, if we weren’t cutting out the stuff that didn’t work and expanding on the stuff that did.
Ultimately, it seems we’re going in the right direction. We’ve made some movement. On paper our company looks it’s better and makes more money and all that stuff which is– it’s cool. We’re in business to make money but what I’m more stoked on is that our ideas are starting to narrow and we know how to design properly for the industry that we’re in.
Brendan: That focus, that will take you to the next level I’m sure.
Elijah: Fingers crossed.
[laughter]
Cary: When’s the canning starting? Is that going to be in the next month?
Elijah: No, it won’t be on the next month. The trike just shipped Tuesday or Wednesday, I got a picture and they’re like, “It’s on its way.”
Brendan: Awesome.
Elijah: That will be in this coming week and we will spend all of December getting that going.
Brendan: Just dialed in.
Elijah: Yes, so we’ll have employee onboarding. We’re probably going to get two or three people depending on the scheduling. Working with that trike to figure out, “How does this system actually work? How do we make it seven days a week kind of vibe? How do we move it? All that kind of stuff.” Then that phase, we have evaluation period for that phase I want to say in the January, so mid-January into February, we’ll sit down and say, “Were we good? Were we bad? Is this a great idea? Is this not?”
Then February is our goal for canning. The other part of it having to push out is as is also all over the forms, cold brew has an expiration date. There’s ways to work around it, retorting process and stuff like that. The way we do our cold brew, it has an eight-week expiration date which means we need to spend these next month and a half two months lining up customers. If we can on Monday night, Tuesday morning it shipping to their door, we’re not burning a week trying to pick up the last thousand cans. You know what I mean.
Brendan: Sure. How’s that work in the expiration date in California? Do you have to put a date stamp on the bottle?
Elijah: Yes, I mean the formatting is up to you. It’s not with the labeling you have to have three inches high. The formatting on your dates is on you but there has to be some date on whatever we put out. If it’s getting on store shelves. At a farmer’s market something like that, much less stringed. If we’re going to be commercially selling a product, it’s going to a gas station shelf, on a grocery store, it must have an expiration date on there. I believe that mandate was put in I want to say as World War Two or something, has something to do with the military.
Brendan: That’s national?
Elijah: Yes.
Brendan: It’s not just California.
Elijah: It’s a big deal. They will shut us down tonight if we don’t do that.
Brendan: That’s something I’m wondering because we get questions crazy. We get all sorts of questions, that’s not an area that we work in. We’re not producing the final product, we’re producing the equipment to help make the product. When people are asking them, I don’t quite know on that.
Elijah: Here’s the crazy thing about our expiration. I don’t even know if– whatever. We’re having our inspection with the State Department of Environmental Health, their rep come out. She’s asking me. This is at the very beginning like I had just put the permitting up on, “GoFundMe” to get our money in and I was trying to get funding December of 2015. She come in and going to the kids, “Lalalala, looks good, looks nice.” She goes, “How long until the stuff goes bad?” I go, “I don’t know, I’ve just started this, I have no idea.” She goes, “No, you have to give me an expiration date.” I said, “I just told you, we haven’t been in business long enough for me to see it go bad.”
There’s some studies out there I start ripping into the science I know. I don’t know how to talk to the DH. She goes, “You need to give me a date right now I have to put it down on the paperwork, you need to give me an expiration date.” The only thing I knew was a study that went down in Korea that I’ve talked about several times on the forum. They said, “Eight weeks” and I was, “Eight weeks.” and she’s like, “Okay, that’s it.” wrote it down. There’s studies out there I don’t know how many studies there are on cold brew in the US. There is one definitely in Korea on the Dutch.
Brendan: We can pause for a minute if you want.
Elijah: It’s on you guys.
Cary: No, let him rage.
Brendan: It adds some character.
Elijah: Is that what it is?
Cary: They need to record the outro of this episode.
Elijah: That will be really cool, that actually really make my day and maybe my wife will be a little less angry at me.
Cary: Maybe grandma too.
Elijah: She’d probably be stoked. Yes but the expiration date. There’s not a ton of studies tied to it in America, it’s driven by industry. Once you write down the expiration date that’s the expiration date, period. That’s where we’re registered at.
Cary: Speaking of expiration date, where’s your scientific project?
Brendan: Let me grab that.
Elijah: Science project?
Cary: One of our early batches, Bren. He didn’t even fill a bottle up all the way. He wanted to leave room so that we could see if there was ever any mold growing in there, this is one of our first batches.
Elijah: What? Do you have a date on it?
Brendan: Bottled May, 21st. We’ve actually done dirty batch where we brewed it outside, fill the keg.
Elijah: You guys are frontier scientists.
[laughter]
Cary: Not until he opens that and tastes it.
Elijah: I wanted to say it but that’s going to ruin the chemical integrity at the inside bottle.
Cary: We’re just letting it sit.
Brendan: We poured this water bottle in. We open it pour the water into the cold brew the day before it was made, capped and then poured some in the next day after we brewed it and it’s been sitting there since May 21st.
Elijah: The bottle didn’t start out like that, right?
Brendan: No, it was crushed, we crushed it.
Cary: Dump in water.
Brendan: This was what, 15 days after your show aired.
Elijah: Can I see it?
Brendan: Yes, absolutely. Becaus we I was saying we had done a batch in Cary’s backyard. We were totally just throwing cock in the wind.
Cary: Outdoors.
Brendan: Got some sediment down theirs?
Elijah: Sediment hanging out. This is what my wife calls, she says it’s mold, it’s not mold. But she tells me it’s mold, this is coffee sediment hanging.
Brendan: The mold would be on top.
Elijah: Yes.
Cary: We’ve seen that in kegs, we’ve talked to a lot of people about bad process and I mean we take, we’re pretty cautious when we’re brewing. I mean granted we’re outside there, the thing is going to blow in when we did this batch at least.
Elijah: This is a testament to the fact that if this were any natural product whatsoever that had the low levels that acidity this has, this is a testament to fact that cold brew just doesn’t have it. There’s nothing in it to you can’t grow bacteria with. You can on a very small level. It’s something the study that was done in Korea, they did a very similar thing to this what they did is, they put it in. They start at 20 degree Celsius and four degrees Celsius to see where the difference was. We’re talking the minimal of minimal, something like .00005.
Cary: Didn’t make, didn’t matter.
Elijah: It was a hundred times under the legal limit of whatever bacteria grows in to do whatever. Milk, the other day, I opened almond milk last week and I left it in my fridge when it hit nine or 10 days, the cardboard was expanding. I was like, “Oh, that’s what they were talking about.”
[crosstalk]
Elijah: I was like, “This is food safety right here. I got to throw that away.” Cold brew will never–, it won’t do that. That is so great. It’s so frustrating I sent those studies in, I could show them the same thing. I can show the DH the same thing, they’re like, “No this isn’t a full study and it’s not a study on your product.” I was like, “It’s just a method.” We can spend days on the frustration.
Brendan: Yes, it all comes down to the processes and how clean the equipment is just the care that’s been taken throughout the whole stage of creating a cold brew. Like I was saying earlier, Cary and I did a batch in his backyard, we were totally uncareful, nonchalant with everything. Threw it in a keg. A week later, he took a sip off his kegerator and said, “This tastes funny.” Opens it up.
Elijah: Gnarly.
Brendan: Had some growth on the top.
Cary: Top was just floating. Gross.
Brendan: We were almost trying to see if something would happen by leaving the lids off just doing it outside.
Cary: I think what happened with that was I emptied a keg of coffee that I hadn’t finished and then refilled that keg without washing it and sanitized it again. It was this is already had sanitized coffee in it just dumped it refilled it. A couple of weeks later–
Brendan: Shouldn’t do that.
Elijah: No. I don’t know but it was just one of those things that we wanted to see about what would happen.
Brendan: Yes, D, that’s really cool. You should be publishing those results.
Cary: We try, man.
[laughter]
Elijah: We’ve deem this with coffee moto zombie skin because it’s always floating on top of it.
Brendan: It’s gross it’s like an oil–
Elijah: Gross like–
[laughter]
Elijah: We did a podcast episode on it.
Cary: It’s pretty filthy.
Elijah: It is.
Brendan: Can we take a pause real quick because, he has got to go the bathroom.
Elijah: Absolutely.
Cary: I don’t want him to pee on your carpet.
[laughter]
Brendan: All right. We’re back from our first– I think that was the first ever show bathroom break for the kids.
[laughter]
Brendan: But yes, I think we’re about done here. We’re just over the 30-minute mark. Anything you want to hit on before we finish?
Elijah: Yes, I just want to reiterate. We’re having somewhat of a relaunch, pairing with Westcoaster at 32 North Brewing in Miramar down in San Diego area. That’ll be December 3rd, so come on out. Anybody who wants to come down there and see the first time the track rolls out and we’re just ready to serve as much coffee as we can and show you guys our night during our flat and what we can do.
Brendan: Awesome. Anything you want to add? Questions.
Cary: No, man. This is great episode. Lots of good information.
Elijah: Awesome. I’m so happy to be here.
Brendan: Cool, well, where can people go to find you guys if somebody’s looking for you?
Elijah: You could go on redhatcoffee.com. We also have an Instagram and a Facebook. That’s all Red Hat Coffee. You could email me at elijah@redhatcoffee.com with any kind of inquiries or questions. Please feel free to reach out to me with anything, advice, questions, inquiries, all of it. We’re looking for everything we can get.
Brendan: Awesome. Well, hey, thank you so much for coming up and joining us. I know there is a dual purpose for this trip. Great to meet you in person. Thanks for joining us in studio.
[laughter]
Elijah: Yes it is really great. Thanks for having me.
Brendan: All right. Thanks, Cary. Thanks, Elijah. I’m Brendan Hanson. [background music] We’ll see you again next Friday on the Drips & Draughts Podcast.
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Brendan: All right. Thanks again to Elijah Elliot for joining us today. Be sure to go checkout his website redhatcoffee.com. They do online orders as well so maybe pick up a bottle of their signature coffee, the cold gold. Keep an eye off for their cans as well. When we recorded this back in December, he mentioned they were planning on rolling out their nitro canning in spring time. Watch out for that.
If you’re curious about canning nitro coffee, check out our previous episode, episode number 44, where we talked with Tyler and Judson from Chart Industries about their nitrogen dosing equipment, which is used for coffee, beer, water. It’s used in all sorts of industries but it can particularly be used in cold brew and nitro coffee canning.
If you’re interested in checking that out, you can find that episode at dripsanddraughts.com/44. If you’re looking for links or show notes from today’s episode, those can be found at dripsanddraughts.com/45.
All right, I think that’s about going to do it for today. Another thanks to Elijah for joining, Cary and I in studio. We’ll see you again next Friday, on the Drips and Draughts Podcast.
