Reblogged from Wheelie Good Coffee:
https://wp.me/p9wJER-2N
Beanless coffee?
So, this is now a real product, being developed on Kickstarter:
Coffee… extract? I suppose. They seem to have extracted the molecules from coffee that produce the nice flavours and aromas, and then mixed them in with some sort of unidentified brown powder. You brew the result like real coffee, and it tastes… like the good bits of coffee but not the bitter notes?
I am totally for getting people not to alter their coffee with cream and sugar, and it is the bitter notes in coffee that people object to most.
But this raises sooo many questions:
What is the brown powder????
Why do we need the brown powder to brew it with? Why not make it soluble? (Answer: because brewing the coffee is part of the experience, apparently… sigh…)
What about the oils? Good espresso – well, any style of coffee really, needs the oils in the bean to produce that amazing body and mouthfeel, as well as containing most of the fragrance and freshness. How does this recreate that component?
Is it caffeinated?
Is it actually coffee???
Just…. WHY?
I am half-tempted to back the Kickstarter just to try some of this stuff.
The small matter of integrity
Recently I was approached by a guy I met briefly several years ago when we were setting up Dr. Coffee’s Café – he (or at least, someone on his team) actually designed our logo and signage for us. I remembered him because he was very personable, seemed like the type who ought to be the patron of some amateur theatre troupe. And also because we had a meeting in Robin’s, where the coffee was so bad I threw up in the bathroom (mainly due to pregnancy, I should add). Anyway, that was early 2015. I am amazed he remembered me!
He is no longer making signs. Instead, he wanted to talk to me about an amazing business opportunity. Alarm bells rang. I am wary about that sort of sales pitch. However, he told me it was coffee related, so always worth checking out, I reckon.
Coffee in the very loosest sense, apparently. The poor guy has got himself mixed up with Valentus. It’s one of those MLM schemes and he was trying to recruit me into the bottom of a strangely triangular type of business model, if you get my drift. The product that allows you “an opportunity for an extraordinary life” and a global business that you can run from home, with the chance to make 6-figure monthly incomes, is called Slim-Roast. This magical substance is part energy-drink, part weight-loss supplement and part soluble coffee.
Not one part of that last sentence enamors me to the product.
According to Valentus’ website, this drink powder is
Great for:
- Controls appetite
- Regulates sugar absorption
- Regulates fat absorption
- Promotes brain health and focus
- Elevates mood
- Antioxidant
Aside from the obvious grammar error, black coffee manages all of that on its own with neither the bizarre additives nor the hefty price tag. Apparently though, this is coffee mixed with green tea extract, l-theanine (also a green tea extract) and cacoa (raw chocolate) AND added caffeine. This all produces a substance with 127mg of caffeine for every 8oz fluid ounces, which is roughly double the strength of a can of Red Bull, but without the sugar.
As I have said before, caffeine itself doesn’t actually give you an energy boost (you get that from the sugar in most energy drinks). Instead, you feel more alert after a caffeine boost because caffeine molecules inhibit adenosine receptors in the brain, which are the bit that makes you feel tired. You’re not actually any less tired if you drink coffee, you just don’t feel it until your body metabolises the caffeine. Caffiene already does all the other stuff to some extent: it’s a minor appetitie supressent, it boosts your mood and helps you focus, keeps your brain healthy and can boost your metabolism. But in excess it leads to anxiety, insomnia and hypertension. There is no good reason to add more caffeine to an already beneficial caffeinated drink.
The green tea, the cacao and then ‘green coffee bean extract’ AND extra chlorogenic acid (again with the overkill) are all supposed to increase your anti-oxident intake. It’s also, somehow, made soluable. I wrote about why this is bollocks here.
There is also ‘Garcinia Cambogia’ (tamarind, in other words) which is touted as another appetite suppressant, and Phaseolamin (derived from cannelli beans) that apparently stops your guts from digesting some starches so they pass through you without you taking in so many calories. The key bit there is ‘passing through you’. What is another thing coffee is well known for? Making you poop. The coffee and the raw coffee extract, the tamarind, the phaseolamin and the other superfluous additives come together to form one big … laxative. I guess that would help you lose weight then.
YUCK.
Inevitably though, the product is NOT the main focus of this enterprise. No, this guy was not looking to sell Slim Roast to me, he wanted to recruit me to sell it to other people. I’d have to agree to buy a certain amount from Valentus, and I’d only start getting commission on it if I sell a specific amount every month. The real money only starts when you recruit four people, as you then get commission off their sales too. Ignoring the way the products play in to the cult of being busy, fetishizing stress and the need for constant energy and alertness, or preying on people’s body insecurities (yeah, I really don’t like this stuff!) – someone, somewhere is going to get ripped off. The whole thing relies on people feeding money upwards, and not everyone is going to succeed.
As this guy correctly points out, coffee, weight loss products and energy drinks are all massive global industries right now. I am sure there is a huge market out there for this stuff, somewhere. But it’s not a market I want to step foot into. I am a coffee geek, that’s my passion. I don’t think I am capable of selling anything I don’t believe in, and putting my name to any sort of psuedoscience-hyped coffee derivitive would be the ultimate sell-out. I’ve accepted the fact that my business passion projects are never going to make me rich, and that is fine. I’d much rather be poor and drink real coffee!!
Reevaluating Dr. Coffee.
I didn’t manage five blog posts last year.
2018 has arrived, and with it, the usual obligations to mark the arbitrary anniversary of the previous orbit by making fresh starts, resolutely state your goals for the next trip round the sun and reflecting on the time past since last time we did all this. Since I’m starting off on a cynical note (no change there, then), I should also add that 2018 brings us one year closer to the Extinction of Arabica Coffee, and thus, the end of the world as we know it. Scientists predict that coffee crops will fall victim to global warming as soon as 2080. I would be 97, but I would still be devastated if that’s true.
My new year’s resolutions probably won’t be to post more on this blog. I feel it may already be in its dying days. I do aim to write more and practice writing, but I might not be comfortable with posting the results of that practice.
What is with all this negativity you ask? It’s not really negative, I am just reevaluating my role in the world of coffee. For years (and years and years, as is evident from the decade of previous blog posts), coffee has been my mission in life. I studied it intensely all over the world and in all sections of the industry. I’ve started four coffee businesses: online, mobile and physical. I learnt my barista skills from the best and then taught others the same, I’ve taught myself to roast beans, I’ve campaigned for direct and ethical coffee trading and annoyed the Fair Trade movement. I learnt how to do minor repairs to espresso machines. I’ve been on an advisory panel for that rather large coffee company with the green aprons. I have coffee beans permanently edged into my skin. I quite literally wrote the book on coffee.
However, I just couldn’t get my coffee shop business to work: be that down to lack of capital, failures in marketing, unsuitable location, too many other commitments to juggle or, most likely, a combination of all of those – the unfortunate fact remains that I have to make a living somehow. I couldn’t do it from my own ventures, and I can’t do it from working at other people’s coffee ventures either, even if I wanted to. I am exceedingly lucky in that some of the ‘soft’ skills I learnt from years in coffee shop customer service and through business planning, as well as some of the most vocational research skills from the PhD., lent themselves well to my current role at the Science Centre, and I thoroughly enjoy it.
As always though, the dramatic change of becoming an employee again has been a wrench, even though my experiences so far have been completely positive. But it’s not coffee. Even after all the stress, heartbreak and financial disasters of business ownership, even with a great job to go to, even now, I still catch myself assessing the location potential of every ‘For Lease’ sign I see. I frantically scour social media to keep up with how other coffee businesses are doing and get unattractively jealous when new places open up.
Old habits die hard, and caffeine is very habit-forming.
The wonderful thing about education is that you can never lose it, and no one can take it away from you. In that sense alone, I will always be Dr. Coffee.
I’ve still got Wheelie Good Coffee as well. No more market stalls until March at the earliest, but I’m roasting away and you can buy my beans online or at various places around Regina.
My next book is coming out this year as well. That became a home for these last ten years of coffee adventures: all the business trials and tribulations, and all the fascinating coffee fieldwork expeditions eventually resulted in my first proper publishing deal! Which I think is fantastic thing to come out of it all. The next six months or so are going to be business with Official Book Promotion, and I can’t wait!
‘The Science of Coffee’ may be feature as a topic in some of the future programming at work too! But until then, maybe it’s time to retire Dr. Coffee at least partially. I’ve got other plans to brew.
Stay caffeinated folks!
love,
Coffee. Just Coffee. Not a pumpkin in sight.
It’s Fall! The most beautiful time of year, and I am embracing it as best I can.
This does NOT mean Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Really, just.. No. A colleague started singing the praises of the infamous PSL as early as August. To me, that is akin to playing Christmas music right after Labour day. The local Charbucks has pumpkin spice everything (in fact, they opened a new branch downtown, more’s the pity, just in time for pumpkin spice season). Even Bed Bath and Beyond has jumped on the bandwagon and is selling pumpkin spice candles and soaps and so on. You can drink your pumpkin and smell like one too! Amazeballs!
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against pumpkins themselves – in fact, I am a huge fan of Halloween and have multiple Jack O’Lanterns in front of the house right now. I made pumpkin pie and pumpkin soup for Thanksgiving recently. But I just can’t fathom the joy of adding pumpkin to your coffee. You are adding orange squash puree to your drink. And a huge amount of sugar. Just… why?
Of course, there is a lot of money to be made from the PSL crowd, and coffee shop owners would be mad not to get in on it. I reluctantly bought the syrup for Dr. Coffee’s Cafe and for Noni’s, and it was insanely popular. Around this time last year, I made my own pumpkin-spice creamer for Wheelie Good Coffee on the markets and the whole lot disappeared on the first day. 
Speaking of which, the big news is that Wheelie is back on the market, ahem! I have a new helper/employee in the form of our friend James, who I met many years ago as a regular customer at the market. I still can’t be at the market on a regular basis, so James will be our new barista and can serve up our signature pour overs every Saturday at the Winter Markets, indoors at the Shriners Centre.
Next week I may make up some more Pumpkin Spice creamer for him to offer. Until then, I shall return to my favourite form of Halloween coffee – black and bitter. Like my soul.
Recipe for PS Creamer:
Can of pumpkin puree
Large can of sweetened condensed milk
pinches of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger (or, sachets of pumpkin spice mix)
Soft brown sugar to taste.
Mix the lot in a saucepan and simmer for ten minutes to infuse. Stir constantly. Strain the squash out, and voila! Autumnal crack!
A Thank You from Wheelie
It’s an understatement to say things have been a little hectic recently….
We’ve had a great summer with the Wheelie Good Coffee cart so far! We started the outdoor season (almost) on time in May – the delays are always with renewing our food safety license, but this year it was a relatively painless process. With Mr. Coffee being home, we were also able to do ‘Wheelie Wednesdays’ – twice as many markets! Woohoo!
I also saw the full range of Saskatchewan weather over the last few months, so extreme and so often targetted on Wednesday mornings that I was beginning to take it personally. Once it was so windy I physically couldn’t ride the bike at all. Another day, the head wind was so strong the mile-long ride downtown took me nearly half an hour and I felt I was cycling with the brakes jammed on! Then, I got drenched, twice in heavy rain storms. Heartfelt gratitude goes to Black Fox distillery and Pile of Bones brewing for sheltering me and the cart on those days. (Why am I always rescued by alcohol I wonder?). I have also got severely sunburnt and had to don my silly sun hat, and I started serving cold brew coffee to cope with the 30+ degree days.
Unfortunately, these market adventures can’t last the whole season this year. A bit of background: my husband lost his job back in March, and it hit us really badly as I have only been doing Wheelie Good Coffee and staying home with our kids since we closed Dr. Coffee’s Cafe. Money has been exceptionally tight!
Finally, Mr. Coffee has been offered a new job. It’s all very exciting and a great opportunity, BUT… it’s in Prince Albert. For a lot of reasons, we are not all going to move up there with him, but he is going to stay during the week and just come home on weekends. This means in turn that Mini and Baby Coffee will be home just with me, and I wouldn’t be able to do the markets with both of them in tow! So, I shall endevour to get to as many Saturday markets as his schedule will allow, but tomorrow (19th) will be my last WheelieWednesday this year.
I want to say a massive
THANK YOU!!
to all our Wheelie Good Coffee customers.
Your support this summer has been amazing and we would have been in a much, much worse position without you. With no other source of income, we have literally been using the takings from my 8 hours a week on the market to buy food for all four of us. I honestly don’t know what we would have done without it.
When you shop locally, and support small businesses like mine, it really does make a colossal difference to the lives of your neighbours. You may not realise how much people depend on it when you buy coffee from the market rather than from, um, that place with the green aprons, but we do, and we appreciate every single cup you buy!
***
Going forward, I am going to up my roasting game! You can buy my coffee beans online at http://www.wheeliegoodcoffee.biz. Better yet, the amazing ladies at The Junction (2347 McIntyre St) will be carrying a few bags of coffee in their salon and also serving up Wheelie Good Coffee to all their hair clients, which is awesome. I am doing a pop up coffee shop in there soon too.
I am also currently hunting for other local stockists (any suggestions would be very welcome!). Watch this space or sign up to my mailing list to stay up to date with all the news and coffee conversation!
SIGN UP FOR THE WHEELIE MAILING LIST HERE
It seemed like a good idea at the time
So, I have written a book. An actual, 55,000 word, drafted, rewritten, revised and now finished book that I’ve even had edited properly. I feel like celebrating!
But what is it actually about? I hear you cry.
It’s about coffee and about life, but most of all it’s about the often grim realities of entrepreneurship. There are many, many less-than-glamorous aspects of starting your own business that few people ever tell you about.
Business biographies are written about successful companies and by inspirational leaders. But have you ever wondered what becomes of those that don’t make it? This memoir is about what happens when you take the leap, seize the day and follow your dreams, and then discover it really isn’t as easy as all that, you haven’t got any money, your landlord is an idiot, you haven’t slept in several years and you still have to clean toilets.
Right now, I am undecided whether to continue hunting for a traditional publisher, or whether to take another leap into the unknown and self-publish it. If this piques your interest and you’d like to be a ‘beta-reader’ for me, please get in touch!
(And for any publishers reading this, nudge-nudge, wink wink…)
More details are on my website.
It’s Wheelie’s Birthday!
February 5th 2014 was the day I officially registered Wheelie Good Coffee as a business. We are three years old!
The months that followed that simple registration were a mad scramble to build the coffee cart in time for the first outdoor markets in May. I was planning and designing on post-it notes from my desk at the office job! We learned a lot about plumbing that we never thought we’d need to know, and it was a very steep learning curve. We eventually managed to launch the business properly by making our first pour over coffees at the (rain soaked, cold) opening day of the Cathedral Village Arts Festival that year.
It’s been a fantastic journey – so far. The cart has evolved quite a bit since then; we have gone through different bikes to pull it, we expanded the range of drinks we can make and the overall design has been improved on several times to make it easier to tow. We also started roasting our own coffee, and we even managed to set up cosy winter digs at the Shriners’ centre.
The future of Wheelie is looking very bright, and we have lots of exciting new projects to come.
The Spring markets restart in March, so we hope to see you all there. We can’t wait to get started on the new season!
Stay caffeinated folks!
This was originally posted on The Brew Blog over at www.wheeliegoodcoffee.biz/blog
Go check it out!
What, and what not to get a coffee lover for Christmas!
Tis the season for spending loads of money on treats and exotic gadgets and shiny things… for people you love, of course. If one of those people happens to be a coffee fanatic, then this list might just be for you.
This is not actually my Christmas wish list – they are genuine recommendations based on things I already own or have tried. I’m not trying to plug Amazon at all, but all the links are to there for ease of reading!
So, without further ado, here are my top 5 coffee must-haves:
This stuff is INCREDIBLY strong in caffeine, (deliberately so) but it actually tastes really good too. It takes dedication to roast beans well enough that you can still get the subtlety of flavour without the overpowering bitterness of so much caffeine. This company also started the ‘Death Before Decaf’ campaign which I wholeheartedly endorse.
It looks completely over-the-top, but it’s shiny and brass and makes really smooth coffee, AND you get to spend 7 minutes of your day lighting an actual flame and watching water evaporate and condense again as coffee *while feeling like a mad scientist*. This isn’t actually the most convoluted way of making coffee that I’ve come across, but it’s a great start for the serious geek.
I’ve made a big thing about my love for pour over coffee on this blog already, and this is the perfect starter set. The built-in filter is reusable so you aren’t constantly buying paper filters, and the server pot means you can be friendly and make more than one cup at a time. Plus, there’s a purple one! What could be better?
Former World Barista Champion James Hoffmann wrote a book last year, and I like it a lot as it covers everything from coffee origins and how it is grown around the world, to brew methods and barista techniques but links it all together to show what varieties suit which brew method and how to get the best out of the beans.
Bonus:
Don’t like hardback books, or want a cheaper alternative? Try mine! 😛
A little stocking filler. Isn’t it pretty? (OK so I don’t own this one. This is a subtle hint. HUSBAND!)
And if you have money to burn:
As soon as you see the price, you will understand why I don’t own this and am never likely to. However, it is this year’s hot gadget in the coffee world, and my instagram is full of it. It appears to combine an inverted aeropress with a pour over system, only its electronic. Very snazzy I’m sure, but if you like impossible gadgets, the vacuum syphon still wins in my book!
What NOT to buy:
There’s even a red Christmassy one now!! Darling husband went dumpster diving recently and I am ashamed to say there is now a fixed Keurig monstrosity in my kitchen. Not only are they overpriced (over $100 for what is essentially a very fast kettle, plus the pods work out to around 70 cents a cup on top of that) – the pods are incredibly wasteful: non-biodegradable, non-recyclable and now DRM programmed so you can’t even use non-branded alternatives. And, in my experience, the pods only come with stale, tasteless coffee in them, and if you do hack it and use your own coffee, it scorches it and ruins it anyway. I ranted about Keurig here. Ours was thrown out by our neighbour because it broke. Turns out, you can fix them by turning it upside down and smacking it hard on the bottom. I’m sure there’s a metaphor in that somewhere.
This is the Civet coffee, with beans collected from the poo of wild animals. At least, that’s the best you can hope for. This gimmicky coffee got so popular that producers have started caging the civets and force feeding them coffee beans. Of course, not all companies do this, but you can’t ever be sure of it’s origins. Even if you get the ‘wild’ stuff, it comes with a hefty price tag. The coffee itself is very mild, smooth and a little sweet. It’s good but not so good it justifies that price tag, and never the cruelty!
There you go folks! Have a very merry Christmas and may visions of coffee beans dance in your head!
Spilling the Beans (Research Journal) 