[0:00] This episode is brought to you by Jule, the emerging circulator for Sous vide by Chef Steps. Order now at chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. I'm Damon Bolty, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:27] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking, and she's coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network for Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[0:38] Brooklyn, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Actually, we're really on time this today, right? Yeah. Crazy. We got a lot to go through, some good, some great, some terrible. If you have questions. Call into questions, 2718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. On the show we have, as usual, Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez. good. Good. We have Dave slash David in the booth. How you doing? We have a special recurring guest and a secondary tasting

[1:14] panel because for those of you that listen to the podcast regularly, Nastasia, literally doesn't care about coffee, merely because I do care. Really. definitely not true. It's the only it's the only real reason. So we brought lover of all things taste related. and coffee as well. And also an expert in coffee techniques that I am not. We got Paul from Popular Science. How you doing? I've had a lot of coffee. Yeah. So, you know, and you can tweet him out at at pot.pot. No, it's at pot. At Popseye Eats. Oh, Pops, I eat. Twitter. Or you can email me at my secret private. Oh, never mind. Just gave out. Ah, yeah. Strength. And we have, now, I'm not sure his title, but we

[2:00] have Kali, Kali.

[2:03] Kale, Kale, from Sudden Coffee, correct? Correct. And what's your title over there? Definitely not chief coffee officer, but yeah. I has all the coffee. co-founder. Are you on the engineering side, are you on the production side, the tasting side, the money side, the

[2:21] bro side? There's 2 of us, and I have a numbers guy, Josh. who's very much numbers guy, and then I handle the rest. So you're more production engineering. All right. So, uh, he's on the show today because I think you're probably here for the coffee festival we had in New York this weekend,

[2:37] right? Yeah, which I went to. We could talk more about that later. But we had a number of people actually tweeting on, and I think asking even whether we had tried this sudden coffee, and so we're

[2:49] going to try it in a minute. You want to go over what the, you've had this like, how do you start? were you a Kickstarter situation? What were you? We, well, I started working on about a year ago. So setting coffee is instant coffee. tastes really good. Right. That's it. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, what it is, is, is instant coffee that's supposed to actually be, now, is it tastes like coffee or it's just good in its own ripe, but isn't the same thing as coffee? Well, we think it's pretty good as coffee. what we aim for. Okay. So it's not a 3rd product. Not really. I think we're, what we want to be doing is creating another way, like alternative way of drinking good coffee. It's not meant to replace brewing coffee ourselves or going out to a coffee shop, but rather just help you drink good coffee when you wouldn't be able to otherwise. Yeah. Yep. So, uh, now your main competitor then is Starbucks still selling that via thing? What's it called Via Condios? What the hell is that called? Yeah, yeah, via. Whatever. Why would you choose something that has alternate English pronunciations? Good question. via via, if you can, you can hire a very expensive brown agency who will tell you that, that it sounds sophisticated, I guess. Do you think it sounds sophisticated? I don't think so Starbucks is also the company that has special names for sizes of coffee. Do you know that back in the day I used to get into arguments? I think they become much more flexible now? We might have talked about this years and years ago, noastasia, but you would actually appreciate this because this is the kind of thing Nastasio would do. I would walk in, I would like, I would like a double espresso. and they're like, dopio, and I would say double. And they would say, yeah, they would say dopio. I was like, no, I would like a double. Like it would just, I would see how long I could keep it going. And it used to be basically forever. They would, they would just, they would go like, W.O. and then go, maybe... Hand it to me, and I was like, and, you know,

[4:35] and, and there's no need to go into like what the hell tall means because it has no meaning. But, um, yeah, I don't think I don't like things that sound like specific via sounds like viaduct. Yeah. And duct work doesn't sound like something I want to drink out of. Or V Agra. Oh, that, well, that probably, that's, that's a good, you know, uh, I also said this in the air before, but my son Booker, who's now 14, so it would be incredibly inappropriate for me to say this, but when he was a little kid, he used to say, I'm

[5:03] gonna put batteries in my penis. When he's a little kid, before he knew what it meant. And I thought that would be the best Viagra slogan, it would beat the hell out of like all these like Cialis and Viagra things. If a dude just walked up and was like, yo, put batteries in your penis, Viagra. Boom. And then walked away. How many would that sell? Because batteries, you know, has their, their kind of, you know, you put some batteries in, it becomes like a mag light. You know what I mean? It's very strong. Very strong. Yeah. It could shape the pills to look like little better. Like little batteries? Yeah. Is that what it works? It's got the energizer. It's got the energizer reference. Anyway, I think it's genius. My son, Booker, has a promising future as an ad exec, I think. Anyway. So back to, um, back to sudden coffee. before we taste it, I have other stuff to go through, but so explain the process. What makes this different from viaduct coffee? Or Folgers, which, as Nastasia believes, is the best part of waking up. That is definitely not true. Before I go there, I think a little bit of context is sort of important. I would be extremely skeptical if somebody came on our air and said that this

[6:11] isn't coffee, that doesn't suck. my background. I be working in coffee as a barista for like 10 years, when the finish versus championships twice, and I was ranked ninth in the world last year. Ran a couple coffee shops and all sinky, um, also ninth best coffee taster, I think. And basically what I, to me, coffee is a really concrete, great way of making somebody stay better. And I want to make great coffee as easy and fun and accessible as possible. And I was really frustrated by how unscalable doing a coffee shop is. So decided to close that about a year and a half ago and started figuring out what would be a more, like a better way to make good coffee

[6:45] happen. And I studied food science at University of Helsinki. So had a pretty good idea of instant coffee and why it sucks. And 1st of all, for those of you that don't know, fins have one of the highest per capita coffee consumptions in the world. True. But you also, like traditionally drink it, some people and drink it with grounds. So you also have like strange health anomalies due to high consumption of grounds. Is that not true? Yeah, and especially sort of... There's a lot of theories about busy the cholesterol,

[7:11] well, like cholesterol increasing effects of drinking also unfiltered coffee. But that's majority is like drip coffee. Yeah. But you're like, you're that much kind of people that you're like, I just drink the grounds. I just, that's it. We need a filter? Totally. Yeah. You know, uh, Nils Nora, my friend, uh, Utah. What? He's Swedish, but he has Finnish jokes where, like, you're drinking with

[7:36] a, you're drinking with a fin, and the Swede says to the fin, skull, and the fin says, are we here to drink or to talk? So you talk more than most fins, I would expect. I know, that's why they kick me out. And I thought, oh, is a benefit, benefit in the US. Yeah, nice. All right, go ahead. So, like, you've said more than the entire country of Finland. Pretty much. All right, nice. Okay, good. All right. So go ahead. So basically what you're saying is you have credentials. Now what? Yeah, so you think coffee is liquid coffee that's dehydrated. And usually the big companies that I'll be making now have the intention of making as much of it for as little money as possible without really caring how it tastes like.

[8:10] Although it is technologically sophisticated process, right? It is extremely. Like evaporation recapturing, rejoining the solids with the theoretically with the aromas, yeah. Yeah, theoretically, but, I mean, if you, like, if you taste it, it doesn't taste great for what's been out on the market so far. And that's because they essentially start with, like, really cheap

[8:30] froppy coffee that nobody else wants to drink, um, take that, roast it, and they extract it twice, which, like, blew my mind when I 1st heard about it. I mean, they actually, like, steep it twice to make 2 beverages, like a, like a, like a small beer and a lot, like, like,

[8:44] like rewashing. Yeah, but even more. So they extracted a like normal temperature. It was called the aroma extraction, so about like 100 degrees Celsius for whatever time. And normally out of coffee, you can extract about 30% of the mass. So that's like water soluble part and rest is cellulose. It's a crown you dump. But what they do is that they, so they breed wine once and then they brew it twice, 2nd time at like 15 bars pressure, 180 degrees Celsius for

[9:10] hours. And what happens, that pressure is the hemicelilose changes and becomes water soluble. And you can go from like 20% extraction needle, which is the stuff you extract, which is what you normally want to

[9:22] do to up to 60%, which makes a lot of sense if you want to get as much stuff out of there out of the bean for as little money as possible.

[9:29] Well, does that also, do they need the increase in, in other words, like, would an alternate technique

[9:34] if they weren't looking for pure number of extraction, does the hemicellulose help in bulking later? Is that another reason why they do it? Could they add another solid bulking agent or is that? It's partly for that. So they, well, they do, for that, is they basically combine them and

[9:49] then essentially boil it down. Vacuum dates desolation, right? Yeah, yeah. And then Same like for orange juice. Right. And most of it is spray dried. So they actually use that sort of the added solids, it helps into spray drying. Right, they don't have to add malto. They don't have to add multidextrin. Now, but from my impression, there is a vacuum distillation run, then a spray dry, right, then a recom combining, and then an air drying, or something

[10:16] like. There many steps. It takes a lot of steps to make even crappy instant coffee, right? And I don't even know, like, what else, like, all the stuff that goes into a factory. They haven't turned me one. but there's a bunch of stuff going and then it's like spray dried, so dried with hot air. Um, and it's not definitely a great way to preserve any flavors that might be in there or arumas. But they've already deromatized it at that point for the most part, yeah. Most part, yeah. So they actually, once you have the dry coffee, they spray some of the coffee aroma and oil into that ground to make it smell and taste fresher. But, I mean, to me, there's like whole thing doesn't make any sense. We were thinking that what if we what if we just started with the best possible coffee you can

[10:52] find. Extract it really nicely and dehydrated in a way that really preserves all the flavors in

[11:00] there or as much as we can. By the way, I've never tasted instant coffee. What? Really? What's wrong with you? Why would I do that? Well, I mean, that's the thing. I don't blame you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, have you tasted a test? I mean, yeah, obviously. What about you, Paul? I believe I've tasted it. It doesn't really. I think I've developed any positive. We used to have it in my house when I was growing up because my mom would use it in cake recipes.

[11:22] Yeah, well, should we try some now? Yeah, okay, so before, like, what's your technique? Can I get milk and sugar? Whoa. You can, but I will stare at you strangely with me, busted up eye. Yeah, actually, David, can we get some? Because otherwise Nastasi's gonna hem and haw the rest of the day and say that I'm a bad person more than normal. Yeah, we'll humor her. Yeah, yeah. All right. So what's your tech? Are you using straight freeze drying or what are you doing? Kind of. So we, like, we started as a, like, where a San Francisco-based startup now. So we started as this famous starup guy called Paul Graham, who says that do things that don't scale. Like 1st get a product done. See if you can make something you like. Yeah, right. And if somebody wants to pay you that before you figure out how you scale that. So we started by having myself in a garage in Soma neighborhood with a single group of espresso machine pulling a lot of espresso shots that we then kind of filter and took through our process and essentially free stride.

[12:20] Now, one of the problems with espresso in general, I'm sure you're familiar is that, um, it's, uh, it's, uh, like,

[12:29] like, changing constantly on a chemical basis the minute it's pulled. So like a cold espresso, even as carefully rewarmed as possible in a completely static environment with no anything, just changes over

[12:41] time, or espresso keeping, keep kept at a constant temperature will change drastically over time, even if it's

[12:49] sealed. So it's not just simply a volatile loss. Like it's actually changing as it's sitting there. More so than drip. Right? I mean, drip is also changing, but that's like on the order of couple of hours, it's kept properly, right? I mean, radically changing versus espresso, which is like changing radically quickly, no? Yeah, yeah. I mean, in drip coffee, you have the biggest change is the stuff called chlorogenic acids that start breaking down and constitutes

[13:13] that, like, bitter, nasty sour taste, you let's, like, your AirPods taste. Yeah, that's what Nastasia likes the most. So if you don't have that, she's not going to like it. I'm sorry. We, like, I can deliver a little bit of oxygen, like, oxidation, but that's about it. Yeah. So, yeah, Anastasia like prefer. Actually, that's weird. She likes really good wine. I was about to make a jug wine joke, but she actually likes really good wine. With milk and sugar? With milk and sugar. And remember, she, her 1st food job, I think, real food job was with Cesare Casella, who will, who would put ice cubes in Dom

[13:44] Peringo, given the choice. And by the way, he can do whatever he wants because he's Cesare Casella. You know what I'm saying? Some people have earned the right with their palate over time to do whatever in the hell they want. You know what I mean? Okay, so you're essentially freeze drying, right? Yeah, but we do a bunch of other stuff to it, which is there some sort of patent involved here or is it a trade secret situation or what? It's more like a trade secret situation. Uh, I will mention this, uh, not knowing a coffee is notoriously difficult to capture as

[14:13] a distillate. I don't know whether anyone out there listening knows that, but the aroma of coffee very hard to capture and keep in, especially in a non-alcoholic

[14:22] situation, virtually impossible, to get a decent thing. And I think it's because so much of um, so much of the coffee character is in the, is in a larger molecular weight crap that's left behind in the cups. So would you agree with that? Yeah, we've actually been, like, one of the interesting parts of this working on this is that I get to geek out about stuff like

[14:45] this. And you can suddenly capture some of the aroma,

[14:49] but it does not, so yeah, it's true. Like a big part of it is sort of a heavier molecular waste that you just kind of,

[14:57] they're heavy enough that you cannot extract them, like distill them out of there, which is really interesting. And sort of all the, like, the diminishions you get in the flavor. All right, so actually, this is what we'll do. Why don't we taste this coffee and then we'll we'll talk about the coffee thing and then after the break, we'll come back as though

[15:15] it was the beginning of the show and I'll talk about the other stuff out of touch. Does that make sense? We'll stay with coffee. We're going to stay with coffee. Stay with coffee. No, no. I have stuff I have to do. I have questions I have to get to and I have also, you'll stay around and we'll talk about, okay, so let's taste it. How long is it? How instant is instant? It's sudden. It's very sudden. Oh, yeah, now, now, what's it? Sudden, by the way, whatever... You're really working with SpaceX? No. That was our April Fools joke. These cups aren't warm. Uh, enemies of quality all around us. Feel that, Stas. Feel that. No, I see it. Nastasia is frightened of cups that have like grit on the outside. Dirt grit. No, I think it's the dishwasher. You want me to lick it and find out? No. See whether it tastes like this. Why did you decide to start with espresso rather than drip coffee? Oh, what's up, good questions.com? It's a good question. I mean, it's literally only the concentration, really. Like, there's nothing intrinsically great about espresso. Just the fact that. There is nothing intrinsically great about espresso. What? I was kidding. I mean, well, I mean, so drip coffee would have a concentration of about one. 5%, like one. 5 to two. So it has 98% water, whereas espresso has roughly like 10% coffee solids and 90% water. So when you when you can only like basically dehydrate, some amount of stuff makes a lot more sense to

[16:37] dehydrospers. Do you do you sell it in these tubes? Yes. How do they how many, how many, when you buy? You can choose it's like between 8 and 24 cups. Now, have you caught up with production? Because apparently you can't buy this stuff, right? Yeah, we're, like, the biggest issue has been producing enough. So we're now we're now really working on scaling up the pressure. Is that hot enough, that water? That should be good. It's not like boiling, you don't want to have a boiling. I'm hanging you this and then I will get this. So will the scale of, like, caught up in production and by end of October latest, I think. I think Nastasia likes dumping the coffee out. Let me take a look at it. My eyes are really bad for reasons I'll discuss later. Dave, do you want to take calls on this part of the show or wait till later? Yeah, let's take call, especially if they're related to... Wow, that was sudden. Can I use the sudden thing as a stirring device? Oh, Nastasia, why don't you make yours 1st instead of handing one to Paul? Oh, you did. What? How you doing? So what I'm doing now, I just have a brown powder in the bottom of a cup and pouring water and you get a cup of coffee. Which smells like coffee. Do we have a collar related to coffee or anything else? We have a collar. I dont know if it's related to coffee. Let's take it while we're... call her, you're on the air. Ask me any question about coffee along with whatever other question you were gonna ask. Okay, I have no questions about coffee. I'm sorry Don't drink coffee. Really? Wow. I like it in ice cream though. You're the opposite. I know you're the form about that, Dave. Yeah, you're the opposite of me. You know, exciting coffee is really awesome with ice cream. You just mix it and become super, super awesome. Do you work for the company or something? Anyway, so what's it called? Go ahead with your question while we're making the last cup of sudden coffee or last 2 cups. That's it. Sir. All right, yes. You guys are a little blurry there, but I'm going to give you my question here, which has to do with ice cream. By the way, this is Brian in New York. And, uh, my, my question has to do with making basil or any kind of herb ice cream because I've seen a bunch of different

[18:34] recipes. I've tried a few. I can't figure out which is best. Um, some say heat up the base, uh, and then blend in your, uh, your

[18:44] earth, others say just do a cold infusion with the base. Some say you a cold infusion and milk. Um, I'm wondering kind of what what the best uh best way to get the best flavor is. Um, without uh, getting any of those those off notes. Yeah, that's a good question. I can't remember if I've ever, like, how soon do you have to, how soon do you have to wait before you turn it and what's your

[19:11] churning? What are you using to churn it? I mean, I don't I don't have any of the herbs on me right now. No, I mean, I don't mean that, but like, what kind of machine are you using? I tried it, but are you doing Paco? Is that what you're asking me how soon? No, no, no. What kind of machine are you using? Oh, what kind of, yeah, just one of those freeze in the bowl. uh kind of machines. Right. Okay. So here are the issues, right? If you wanted to not go nasty. Once it's frozen, it, the sad part is it probably will continue to go nasty because you're going to be

[19:45] hypercontrated, hyperconcentrating the enzymes and whatever's left of the liquid phase, but it'll also happen. I don't know what'll win, whether the concentration will win or whether the reduced temperature is going to win in terms of making

[19:57] it stay nice. I think that the correct answer is not going to be, um, is not going to be blanching

[20:06] it because then you're not going to get any of the kind of fresh flavors that you want. If you were going to use something like a paco jet, I would just freeze the leaves whole and then paco jet it down, but you're not going to do that. Um, you could, uh, you could blend the herbs in, like, a, um, a little bit of, like, high proof ethanol and then use the high proof ethanol blended herbs in with the base, and that will, it will mess with your freezing point depression slightly, but the, the, um, I believe that the, um, alcohol should help, uh, you know,

[20:44] denature of the polyphenol oxidase enzymes and a little bit of ascorbic acid, not enough to mess with your, uh, not enough to mess with your, um, milk would

[20:54] be would be helpful in that as well. But I wish I had more personal experience working on it because basil ice cream is

[21:00] the thing you see, so people must know how to do it. If anyone in the chat room, David, did I give me anything? Uh, one second. let me check. I'll see if anyone in the chat room chimes in with anything. Obviously, for just punch color without going brown, but it won't have fresh flavors, dried herbs,

[21:14] might not like dried mint will stay green because the drying process gets rid of the

[21:18] polyphenyl oxidase enzymes. Nothing in child, they're just talking about Starbucks instant coffee. Well, tell them to get on it and go to the chat room. And I'll think about it. I sure someone will call in or tweet me and tell me what the correct answer is and we'll read it out on the air next time if we can. Okay, great. So definitely not blanching. You're anti-blanch. I'm not anti-blanch unless I'm anti-blanch if you want the flavor of fresh basil. For that, you should read Harold McGee's section on pesto in the curious

[21:46] cook, wherein he tries various different techniques for keeping pesto nice and green, one of which is blanching, which is

[21:53] deemed poor. In terms of fear. I don't care about collar. I care about flavor. Well, um, yeah. But the problem is color and flavor are linked. The brown notes, the brown color is linked with oxidized flavor in those situations. Brown notes, yeah. Yeah, the, uh, which is where we were going with coffee. Anyway, I'm sure someone will tweet me the answer and we'll figure it out. Speaking of singing Broadway musicals, we'll get you the

[22:27] answer, not this week, but we'll get you the answer. So, like, Broadway musical is the entire morning, this morning as I was getting ready with sun coffee. I was singing suddenly Seymour to myself. I don't know that Dave. Suddenly Seymour. You know that song? Paul, do you know that he loves musicals? You know that he's like a musical or I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's great. I forget her name. Little Shab of Horrors, Rick Moran is. Disappointing he wasn't in the in the recent Ghostbusters

[22:56] reboot. Were you one of those anti Ghostbusters reboot people, Paul? You strike me as could either be one or not? I was not one. I was not anti. Not anti? Why would people so anti? I think it destroyed their childhoods? Women were anti? No, I think because women were playing the rules. Yes, the new Ghostbusters or all women, which destroys the childhoods of people who saw it growing up in which the original Ghostbusters were not

[23:23] women in some way. Is that is that actual truth? Yes, that's what I've heard. Yes, Dave. Thank God Paul's here because you'd be like, I don't believe you. I didn't say that. I just didn't know I didn't know the answer. Well, every single living Ghostbuster was in that movie with the exception of Rick Moranis, who was like... No misogynist. Rick Moranis? For reals? Was he not in the movie because of the women in the movie? Oh, that's why I thought you had some actual information about Rick Moranis. You're like, he wasn't in the movie. Therefore, you hates women. That's the problem people working with Nastasi. You never know whether she is just like saying something that is actually backed up with information or whether she's just blowing smoke up

[24:06] your... You never know. Never know. All right, so let's talk about this. What do you think, coffee man? Well, Nastasia likes it, but that is not a vote of confidence, my friend. It's got a lot more body than I would expect from an instant coffee.

[24:21] Why is that I think it's a it's a variety of things. The, I think ideal flavor villains we find is a little higher concentration than for a regular filter coffee.

[24:33] So instead of like one. from one. 5 it's closer to two, which just gives you a little more solids. But I think it's also, so originally I thought that it would be just like the same coffee that we use, but not so interesting version of it. And now I think it's more of a just a different kind of a representation or a different brewing method in a way. So you lose some of the acidity through the purses. Yeah, it's not a very acidic hit. It's also not very bitter. It's not very bitter. Yeah. So, I mean, what we try to do is get a coffee that's really sweet, is really balanced and like nicely sort of big bodied and low acidity and a little bitterness. Well, what's interesting is it almost tastes like an espresso profile, but as a drip, as a drip water balance. And the cool thing is that you can also drink it with higher concentration, like espresso style, if that's how you like it. you make us a 10% one? Sure. Heat up the water again though. What was the name of the of the actress? She was so awesome in Little Shop of Horse. In the movie? Yeah, she was still awesome. I don't remember the movie. I liked that. Anyway. Theatrical work. Well, of course you do. You, you know, born raised New Yorker, you know. Weaned at the theater. Okay, uh, so, uh, so Nastasio likes it, which, as I say, is not, by the way, Nastasio's brother, so like, it can be on the air. He could pull up a mic. I see, uh, him and his fiancé are sitting there and the wing is just staring into the glass. It's so weird. Your whole family lurkers, Nastasia, lurkers. So when do you think you're going to be up and running with production? We're, I mean, we're like old hands on deck working on it. where it's getting better all the time, and by early October, we should be at sort of a much, much better point. David, you a coffee man? Love coffee. Why didn't he? Why didn't you get a cup and try this stuff? Because I got to make the wheels turn here. Oh, now you have wheels in the sky keep on turning going through my head. By the way, don't know where I'm going to be tomorrow. By the way, Dave, it's Ellen Green. Oh, yeah. Anyway, okay, so, uh... You want to do a break and then come back with your... Yeah, come back. come back. Yeah, Dave will get us some coffee. Nastasia's brother will come in and we'll pretend like the show is starting again with whole new, whole new set of questions and answers. Okay, coming back with cookie issues.

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[28:17] And we're back. What's up, Stas? All right. Over the break, we tasted some espresso strength. Sudden coffee. was espresso strength. Obviously no crema, not in emulsion. You know what you need to sell, is you need to sell a little like a frothing device. So you can be like, you could do an espresso strength and then go, and like froth some air into it. You don't like that idea? No, personally, not a cremophon. Oh, in general. No, but why do you not like crema? Because you've tasted it separately and it's different constituent because it's coming out mainly at other part of the extraction, right? Is it you don't like, what is it you don't like about it? It's really bitter. Well, it is, but is that because of what, is that because that it is frothed or is that because of when it's happening during the shot? Have you actually tried frothing your product and does it taste bitter? So, what I think about a crema? The crema is basically a foam where you have basically like oils, proteins, and just like physical, like

[29:14] unsolable parts of the coffee bean. And I think it's those, mainly those kind of bitter, unsoluble parts of the bean that are just so fine that they go through the metal metal filter that make it more bitter.

[29:24] Right, but hear me out here. If you're looking at, if you're looking at, like, machine profile on Krema, right? The way that it used to be said was that lever machines produce a lot less crema, but have a lot better,

[29:36] they have a lot. Some people like the flavor profile of lever machines better. And the reason is, is because they're pushing less water through at the end because the pressure is dropping as the spring goes down,

[29:44] right? As a spring. Right. So you're getting less crema on that because you're pulling out less at the end. At the end is when that like last floating stuff and you're extracting that stuff out, right? And that's why the crema is bitter because that's where it's coming from. Whereas we all know that espresso has higher foaming capacity than regular

[30:03] coffee when you're making regular drinks with it. So merely the fact that there is foam on top isn't necessarily mean that that foam is bitter. It's where the foam is coming from in an actual regular produced espresso shot, right? Or could be. Which I go back to my other question, have you actually tried foaming your product to see whether you like it? I actually haven't tried just like foaming the holding, but like I've tried shaking it and it doesn't sort of produce, like if you try making a frappe out of it, it

[30:29] doesn't, doesn't, like, shake, like, film quite as, like, doesn't film the same way as Nescafe. Again, a Nescafe, like you've lost me. Yeah, but like, but like, in other words, like if I was to take this product, Nastasia's like, don't rank on my stuff. Don't rank on my garbage. Uh, like, but if you were to take, uh, if you were to take an espresso shot, right,

[30:49] let it cool in a cup, take, you know, some sudden coffee to the

[30:53] same, uh, the same extraction density, right? And then you were to add milk and shake with ice with the with the regular

[31:01] espresso, foam appreciably better on the shake? Probably would. But that's also, so what we do after we brew the coffee. We, uh, in a way, do full trade, which literally reduces the amount of prima and remove some of those undissolved solids that personally I don't enjoy in the coffee and I,

[31:19] like, we want to have removed. You could sell those to Dave. Right. Well, no, I actually like lever shots best. Like, like, when I've had side by side, same barista, same beans, uh, same grinder,

[31:33] like same espresso machine corporation. That's actually when I say when I've had. It was one time. It was Vittorio Arduino. I had one of their levers versus their not and their lever machine. I was like, oh my god, I love this shot. Have you had pressure profiled? Yes. We could talk about that at the end of the show. We'll talk about the coffee. We'll talk about the coffee. You know that I built my own pressure profiler like years ago with I shunted it. I shunted out my pro con pump with a, with a ball valve and was able to profile pressure, but it sucked because I had to reach underneath my counter and then put my head up to look at the gauge to see where I was going, but I could, I could dial between 100% bypass, so 0 pressure and

[32:14] all the way up to, um, 9 bar and then just go anywhere in between, but it was, it's real

[32:19] touchy. Like throttling pressure with a ball valve like that is touchy because it's not linear anyways. How did it taste? Great. Like, like, one out of 8 shots, I was able to get like a pretty smooth ramp from, you know, like, uh, like full spring pressure, which it's been a while, but it's like, it's like

[32:40] a 100 and like the, right when the spring releases is like a 100 and, I think, 50 PS, I don't know, in bar. And then it goes down to well below, or maybe less maybe 8.5 bar. don't know. Anyway, but it goes down to well below a normal thing at the end of the shot because obviously it goes down. So I was able to get decent shots that way. was just so much of a pain in the butt. And then I was going to try to build one with a servo that would do it. But then eventually, I didn't do it for many years and eventually it became like a thing. But now a lot of people, like I was talking to the Lamar Soco people, yesterday, in fact, and those guys were like, people are so worried about all these variables, they don't even control like the most important thing, which is the dose.

[33:16] They don't even control the dose. And so they're like, all of this pressure profile stuff, whatever, great. He's like, the fact of the matter is, is that now temperature profile, everyone's got temperature profiles going

[33:25] where like Ranchilio's new machine, they can do a temperature profile. In fact, one of their temperature profiles was they start it colder in the beginning and end hotter, which is the weirdest thing ever because you're like, intentionally producing a tart shot, right? So you start with your extraction at a low temperature, you're sucking out like a very acidic shot,

[33:43] which, like the only people I know who make, like, yeah, it's not, it's like a, it's purposely aesthetic shot, but I guess some people like it, right? Kind of like, what do you what do you say about this? You were at the show, you saw this machine, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it doesn't make any sense. I don't really believe in the temperature profiling. I mean, it does make sense in the sense that if you have colder coffee in the beginning, you might, like, absorb more energy and you might want to have a higher temperature in the beginning, and then basically, like, ramp down. Yeah, but I wouldn't, ramping,

[34:11] ramping... Oh, it doesn't make any sense to me. Like, it's not gonna, it's a different thing having like a sour or acidic, and that's only gonna make

[34:18] you, like, sour, like very unpleasantly, like, like, tasting a citrus. Right, it's not gonna, it's not gonna make it like whiny or more Kenyan tasting. Definitely not. Yeah. Do you like that crap and espresso, by the way? Do you like those like African acidic whiny notes and espresso shots or no? I guess not. I'm tasting your coffee, so I guess not. Right. Well, so the thing is that so just an Ethiopian coffee called Picasso, and it is a lot more acidic in the beginning, and we're, I mean, we're still very early on, we're working on preserving more of

[34:47] that acidity through the process, but we start with something that's kind of more acidic. So we have. Oh, because it gets blunted by the process. Yeah. So if you taste this against any other instant coffee, it's actually a lot more acidic than anything else, but it does not taste

[35:01] that acidic compared to like a drip coffee. Right, right, right, right. And I mean, personally, I prefer more, I was kind of very sort of a city. profile, but now I prefer more like just a bit more balanced sweeter approach. All right, so since you're an espresso guy, Where are we? This is also something I was discussing with the lawn Mart Soca people. I thought we were going to talk about this after. one more second. Can't stop. I can't stop. I can't stop myself. Okay, gee, geez, okay. So where are we in the where are we in the espresso volume wars? Are we coming back up to normal shot volumes or are we still with these like skim cup crazinesses? I think we're coming back to like normal Williams, like one to 2

[35:37] ratios, like one part, coffee grounds, 2 like 2 parts, coffee, the cups. So we would use something like 20 gram dose of gram coffee and like 40 grams of coffee in a cup. In like 2001, like people were like, I'm using 16 grams, and they're pulling like what would now be like a long shot, and now, and then

[35:56] like, it's gone, but you're, she's coming somewhere in between, huh? Yeah, well, I mean, so, like, 10 years ago when I started eating coffee, it was, like, super straight out. So like using the same like one-to-one, like using a ton of coffee and then having 30 little coffee in the ground. Yeah, like, 06, 07, stuff like that. It was like, it was literally, yeah, they were filling triple baskets and then like, you know, I was like,

[36:19] where's the where's the coffee? You know what I mean? It's like, which I mean, I think is really bad. Like what the most important thing in coffee is sort of the extraction, you know, which is how much stuff you extract out of the ground. And the more water you use, the higher extraction you're looking at because you have same amount of coffee, but more water to do the job. And so, at some point, like, a couple years ago, it went to the extreme, like, people using 20 grams coffee in, like, 60 grams in a cup, which in some ways can be very enjoyable.

[36:49] It's a different type of a coffee, but I think now it's, it's somewhere around like the sort of closer to regular. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in my mind, I still make it more like, you would have gotten in 2001, because I guess, I don't know, that's what I like, but whatever. That's me. Okay, now hold on now. Off coffee for a minute. We can go back and coffee later. Dave, what happened to your face? Well, okay, I got many things. before we talk about what happened in my face. Should I do the face first? No, no, no, no. not going to do the face first. Let's let's take a now, let's take a minute. Really sad news. On Friday, Dorothy Can Hamilton, the founder of the French culinary institute, now the International Culinary

[37:34] Center, died in a car accident in her beloved Nova Scotia. Uh, and I don't really know the particulars of it yet. I don't know because, you know, they just publicly announced it, I think, on Sunday night, I think, or something like that, right, Nastasia?

[37:51] So, you know, Dorothy, uh, she was the only person in the car, uh, as far as I know, the only person killed in the car. She, um, founded the French culinary in like 1984, right? It was around the same year actually on food and cooking came out. And, you know, she was kind of the force behind a lot of what was good about culinary education in the United States for many, many

[38:20] years. Uh, She uh, gave me my 1st real job in the in the food world. you know, when I was the director of culinary technology there for years. with Nastasia. And, uh, yeah, so... I, you know, it's not, she was not sick, it was not nothing. It was very terrible, terrible news. Uh, and my heart goes out to, um, to her family and to the whole community at the ICC. Um, Yeah, it was terrible news. So, Anyway. So I don't know, we should have done that right before the break, I guess, because now I don't want to talk about anything for a minute, but we should

[39:03] have, or we should, and I never handle anything well because I'm a moron. But, um, Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of people have gone through that school. affects a lot of people. Most recently, she did the, she did the expo at Milan, the food expo at Milan. So just, you know, stayed, uh, super in it, super active, you know, one of the things I was there, she rested control away from

[39:27] investors and got the school back. And yeah, she was just, uh, you know, She was

[39:32] a, she was a force to be reckoned with. Dorothy, anyway. Terrible. Terrible. So, onto, uh, onto, how do you transition for that? onto what I was doing, uh, last week. I was in Catalonia last week, giving a talk at Alicia, the Alicia Foundation. you familiar with us? Paul, you familiar with this? Alicia is the cooking foundation. I think it was founded by Faran and the Elboli people, or it's founded by the Catalan government, and he helped out with it. But it's in the middle of this town. It's near a town called Navarklas because I can't pronounce the other one. The other town is something literally like fruity bags. It's like fruity bags, but it's in, it's in Catalan, so I don't even know how it's like fuid bags or something like this in fruity bags. And it's fruity bags. And it's, and, and I was there, and actually, interestingly, I was doing a demo for a bunch of, uh, olfactory

[40:24] scientists, and I was using the actual centrifuge that was the 1st one that Faran had used. And by the way, not nearly as good as the one that we used to use

[40:34] as the French culinary boom stars. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, the flip side is he got his new. So, you know, he didn't have to clean all the rabies out of it like we did. You know, it wasn't sprayed with like CSI juice like ours was. But the, uh, also, I used the actual rotary evaporator that, uh, that the Rokas

[40:54] used to do their oyster uh, distillate way back in the day. Uh no comment. No comment. It turns out that rotary evaporators need quite a bit of maintenance to have them work

[41:05] properly and it wasn't set up like it was a pain. So, like, literally, I, and they know it. Like, they're like, you know, we don't, they don't really do that kind of work anymore,

[41:14] Delisi, but they have all of the stuff left over. So I was like, okay, so I went to go use it because I was doing, and actually this fits into a question. There was someone who asked about not sweet honey a week ago. Uh, and uh, I commented that I can't remember whether I had done a honey distillate, but when I went there, I was supposed to mess with uh, olfaction, right? And when I used gymmic acid, gymmic acid is the, is the material that knocks out your sense of sweetness for about half

[41:39] hour, and Nastasia's done it, you've done it, right, Paul, with me? You never have? Tastes terrible, tastes like, tastes like the bottom of a rodent cage. It's awful. But you swirl it around and then for like half hour, or more sometimes, you can't taste anything sweet. So white sugar tastes like sand. Uh, every, it just, it just knocks out everything. It's completely unpleasant, but it's, we use it to teach, um, kind of what sugar does to

[42:04] texture, so you can just remove the sensation of sweetness, and it knocks out artificial sweeteners. It knocks out the effect of miraculous. So, you know, it ruins that party too. It knocks out. Brown sugar doesn't taste sweet. Things that smell sweet to you, but like candies, things that you associate with

[42:22] sweetness. Don't taste sweet at all. What does brown sugar taste like? Sand with a little bit of a butterscotchy hit. But the melting sand. But honey still tastes sweet. And so I distilled honey there and served them honey desolate with none of the sugar and they all agree it tasted sweet. So there's something about honey that we perceive as sweet. That's not, that's olfaction based, that's not have anything to do with the sweet receptors because your sweet receptors are totally wiped out by, uh,

[42:51] genenic acid. So that's going back to the question that Andrew asked last week. So anyway, so while I was there, I also did some oldies but goodies. I used to do it. I did a thing years and years ago called the cheese course where I would take wines. I would take like 3 sweet wines. I would take off the brandy on a rotary evaporator, and then reduce them down to about 60 or 70 bricks so that they were like a syrup that had never been heated, and then serve them both with cheeses

[43:16] in an array of like, you know, array of toppings. And so anyway, so I did one of those cheese courses. So I had to evaporate the stuff down, and the rotary evaporator was a little bit leaky, so I couldn't get the stuff that down. But they had a vacuum oven. So I ripped the vacuum oven apart and like put a cold trap, built a coal trap on the output of the vacuum oven because it had a really good vacuum pump, then stuck the stuff in a vacuum bag and taped it to the interior, the cylinder, the vacuum

[43:41] oven, and was able to get all of my product down to 70 bricks in the vacuum oven. And I was like, I had to go to a lunch. When the lunch was over, I had to go get the stuff out of the vacuum oven. And now all of Alicia is like all this glass. It's all glass everywhere. glass, walls, glass, doors, just glass, freaking glass everywhere. And like, I guess for like HVAC reasons, they staggered the door. So you have to go in one, and then you have to turn and go in another, and then the kitchen's all

[44:09] glass, all glass. And so like this thing, I, I don't know, I thought it was a freaking door. And, uh, and when I walk, I walk fast, especially when I'm going to get something. I't run because you don't run in the kitchen, right? I walk fast. and boom, right into the glass, like right into the glass, like right on the point of my

[44:29] forehead because when I walk, I walk with my head slightly down and slightly turn to one side. It's my kind of thinking mode style as you've seen that a 1000000 times, right? Slightly down and slightly to one side. And so I hit right above my left eyebrow. Like, like, boom. I didn't pass out, but I did one of those, like, I did one of those, like, sumo squats down, and it

[44:49] was, and like, just stayed there for, like, frozen, like, in, like, uh, like, what? Like, you know, like, you can't see because you're on a radio, but like one of these. It does look like I've never seen you from this angle before. Dave has a very low center of balance. Yeah, yeah. You know, you get down because, you know, it's like the horse dance and karate, like, you know, like a hurricane's not

[45:10] space able to blow you down. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, if you want stable, you go down, you go wide and you plant like this, you know what I mean? Anyhoo. So I was like, I'm going not to actually hit the floor when that happens. Yeah, because if you hit the floor, that's just amateur hour. You know what I mean? But so I'm there, and I'm squatting down, and this has never happened before, I was like, I could feel my head inflating. Like, that's how fast the edema was building up in my head. And so I was like, oh, man. And so I was also staring down on the ground waiting to see if I see the drip, drip, drip of blood. No blood because the glass so smooth. Glass so smooth. I tore a little bit, so there was a little bit of blood later, but inflated, you saw the original pictures,

[45:54] Nastasi. It was like I had embedded a grapefruit under, not grapefruit,

[45:59] orange under my eye socket. And then the next day it was kind of totally glued shut. But the entire conference heard it. So even the guy giving a talk at the time, like a room and a half

[46:09] away was like, oh, man. What was that? You know what I mean? And like, and like the people standing near me were just like, ooh. You know what I mean? You know, look what you have and you don't really know what's going to happen. And when I went to the hospital, turns out, uh, Catalonian, uh, medical care vastly more efficient than US medical care. Vastly more efficient. I was in and out of that ER in like an hour and 10 minutes, like on the dot. Uh, and, uh, we, you know, we ended up all laughing because I didn't break any bones and uh, anything. And, uh, I was lucky at him. I nose. I'd just been to a talk the day before where the guy mentioned that if you break your nose in the wrong

[46:50] way, It shears all the nerves from your olfactory nerves into your skin, and then you lose your sense of smell. So I was like, oh, leave it not my mouth. And so I'm there and the guy, I have like, I have

[47:00] Chef Jame, the chef from Alicia, who has brought me to the emergency room doing the translating, and he says, the doctor says there is no cure for loss of dignity.

[47:09] And then like the 1st day when I went back, right, I just had my kind of like elephant man face rocking it, you know what I mean?

[47:19] And people were just like not eating as much as they should have been eating. And like, you know,

[47:23] like, you know, again, this is radio, but this look. Across the table for me. So then I started wearing sunglasses and the next day, even though I literally looked worse with this big giant pussy weeping,

[47:36] like I blob, people were like, you look so much better today. So I was like, it turns out when you mess your face up, people like it when you wear sunglasses. That's just the truth. That's why blind people wear sunglasses. I don't know Maybe. Anyway. So that's what that's what happened to me. Okay. Um, anything, I feel like other things have happened. I feel like we've had. Oh, hey, Paul, Paul asked me before, because Paul also, did you ever end up giving your Breville induction unit

[48:02] back or did I told you? Why the hell would you do that? I told him that you were going to steal that. No. Anyway, conscience weighed on me. I gave it back. For real. All right. Oh, by the way, Paul, for those of you that don't know, Paul is like Mr. Drone. Would you say you're Mr. Drone, or more like Captain Drone, or like Admiral Drone? Are you more of a naval drone? Mr. Drone Jr. Mr. Drone Jr. He has like a collection of drones. He could he could take over a small village with his drones. have several drones. So I, uh... Are you on board with Dave's? I haven't told him. I about to tell him. Really? My worst my meanest idea of all time. So I'm at I'm at Governor's Island a couple weeks ago. And I see this kid flying a kite. Right? Now, is there anything more oldie timey, awesome America? Everyone dreams that their kid is gonna do running in a field with the grass, flying a kite, right? And I was like, what if you just sharpened the props on a drone, and you were on the other side of the hill, and you were just like, I just cut the kite. Just cut the kite. wouldn't that be the worst thing ever? That would be the worst thing ever. Worst thing ever. Let's do it No, I can't. Like, the thing is, is like, it's the kind of thing that you would want to do so you could see the look on the kid's face and then press a button and rewind it and never have it happen to the

[49:14] kid, because you don't actually want the kid to, like, lose their kite. And Stas was like, the kid's flying a kite because his dad is making him fry the freaking kite. Kid doesn't want to fly the freaking kite. Yeah, that's true. Nastasia. Do you not like flying Kai nostasia? Not really. Do you? She had a bit of problems with tangling kites. Ooh, you're a kite tangler, huh? Were you trying to do those stunt kites? Stunt kites don't work. Stunt kites are sad. Why are stunkites sad? I need a friend to do stunk kites, don't you? Oh, and neither of us had those growing up? Yes. Finally, after all these years, we shared a moment. This is the first time we have ever shared a moment together for any reason. So on back to the induction burner, I found another good use for accurate induction burners. Ready for it? Rue. Gumbo. Gumbo Rue. Dark Rue. Because, like, otherwise, you know, like, you have Alton Brown, but you can't put it in the oven full, like, an hour. Who wants to do that? If you have an accurate induction, you can just make a roux right on the thing. Like stir it once every never. It doesn't ever burn. What do you think? Good application, Paul? Sounds very good. Do you like Roo? Do you like gumbo? I love Ru. You don't like gumbo? I love gumbo. Okay. I was about to lose it for a minute. I was like, what? Okay, so, uh, have, like, 3 minutes. Okay, Dave, what's happening with your bar? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, good one, Paul. So this has turned into like a very different cooking issues in normal. So on October 15th... We're here today with Dave. Yeah, that's some questions. On October 15th, we'll be Booker and Dax, the current Booker

[50:50] index bars last service. So Sambar is going to close temporarily and they're going to remodel. And when they're done remodeling, they will have taken the booker in Dax space and absorb it, Java the Hut style into the renovated sambar, so there will be no place for us. It's sad because... There was nothing wrong with the bar. The bar worked fine. You know what I mean? Like, uh, but we're gonna we're hopefully gonna reopen soon. I have no date as yet planned because it's all part of negotiations that are ongoing that I can't really discuss, but there's, I'm, I definitely plan on reopening, uh, reopening a

[51:30] booker index as soon as, uh, I can because I enjoyed. I enjoyed it. Bigger and better. Uh, I would aim for smaller and worse. But it's always kind of my goal is like smaller and worse, but, you know, if I have to go bigger and better. Like if smaller and worse is not an option, then I, yeah, bigger and better. You should trademark, though, while you can. Smaller and worse. That's like when I when I walk around this city, I'm like, damn, like slow and stupid wins the race. If, like, if the people around me are any indication, slow and stupid wins the race. Yeah, because it's like, honestly, like, like that whole hair and tortoise thing is such garbage, right? Like, 1st of all, like fast and steady wins the freaking race. fast and steady. You got like 2 minutes for this ramp, by the way. All right, well, no, I'm not I'm not even going to get into it. It's like, I hate all of those, all of those things like, the airport stuff. Which airport stuff? Just going through customs. What's the deal with airport food? Oh, oh, oh, no. I had really good... I was so kind of, you know, I had no idea because I hadn't heard about Dorothy, so I wasn't like depressed about that at that

[52:29] point. But, like, my eye was inflated, like, a free game baseball. I have to fly in cattle class back from the thing. So I'm in the airport and I see this like awesome like Hamon, like in the thing. And normally I'm like, I can't take that back to

[52:42] the, to the US. I'm like, wait, I'm just going to buy some really expensive freaking ham and I'm going to eat it on the freaking plane. All by myself. Now you have another song going through my head. That's Daz's favorite. You like that one? I heard you sing it and I heard it like vaguely. But anyway, so yeah, so I bought I bought that and the lady was like, you can't take this back to the US. And I'm like, I'm not gonna I'm gonna eat it. And she was like, oh, nice. I didn't say it. You know, I was like, potacle mint. And then I walked out. You know what I mean? I put my sunglasses on. All right, hold on, on. One minute, Dave. Oh my god. Wait. So we had a question on rice, and I don't have time to get to Quinn's question on rice. Um, Quinn asked me about, he was he or she. I don't know. do you think? I thought it was she. So she was cooking rice and had a problem where the rice at the bottom of the pot was mushy compared to the rice at the

[53:31] top, rice at the top. So I want to answer a question, and I had about 10 or 15 minutes of rice information

[53:38] to like start spewing in a ramp, but I don't have the time to do it. So what I want from you, I'll spew that stuff, including the awesome article I read, the impact of pre-soaking on the flavor of cooked rice by ET

[53:49] champagne, best author name ever, ET champagne, writing about the flavor. Interestingly, the answer is that pre-soaking rice, although we do it, seem to have a negative flavor impact according to this document. So you should read that another document I produced for you was the formation of cracks in rice during

[54:05] whetting. But I need some more information from you, Quinn. What kind of rice are you cooking? For instance, I want to know exactly what kind? So some rice is harder to cook without the bottom going mushy than others, like

[54:16] certain like jasmine rice. I need to know what kind of rice you're cooking. And I need to know what quantities you're cooking because you might just need to move to a wider pan because a lot of times when rice is mushy on the bottom and not on the top, the issue

[54:26] is, is that your depth of rice is too high for the cooking method that you've employed. So send me back some more information on what kind of rice you're doing, what quantities, what size

[54:34] pot, and we'll tackle your question next week on cooking issues.

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