Want to start composting but don't know where to begin? We were right there with you and have done the dirty work of figuring out the perfect, non smelly, no fuss way of composting. Here's our system! Have more tips or tricks? Add them in the comment section and we can all learn from each other. Check out our friends Compost Collective KC on their socials (@compostcollectivekc) for more composting information! 

Next time you find the Camper at Brookside or the Warehouse, grab one of Compost Collective's Swap Buckets. $10 for first timers, $8 for swappers. It comes with a compostable liner, lid, bucket and instructions.

There's a few tips we have for keeping the composting experience seamless and non smelly at home.

1) Place your bucket outside. This keeps the smells inside your house to a minimum while you're collecting your food scraps. A back or front porch near your kitchen door, a patio, etc. Don't have an outdoor space easily accessible? Line the bottom of your compost bucket with newspaper or cut up toilet paper rolls to keep the smells under control. I've also heard great things about activated charcoal liners like this one to reduce smells.

2) Find a little mini compost receptacle that works for your kitchen workflow. We use this because it can easily clip onto our kitchen cabinet to make sliding your food scraps into the mini compost bucket easier.
Here are some suggestions: My Fave.   Complete Package w/ Charcoal.  Cute & functional. One Kim Kardashian would use. 

3) Use little mini compost baggies to fit inside your mini compost can (usually 3 gallon works). Just be sure this bags are certified home compostable. A lot of greenwashing happens in this industry. Be wary of trash bags that are "green" but don't say certified compostable or BPI. Usually if it looks or feels like plastic, it's plastic and won't compost. 
I stick to World Centric, UNNI or BioBag. They can be found at Whole Foods, Nature's Own or Natural Grocers or Amazon. 
​
4) Cook! Chop! Juice! Shred! Make delicious things! Whenever you have food scraps or compostable items (like our Wild Way cups, lids and straws), slide them into your mini compost receptacle until it gets full (usually 3-5 days). Once full, tie up your mini baggie and place into your lined Compost Collective Swap Bucket. Seal the lid tight. Bring your mini compost receptacle back in, give it a nice wash and let it dry before putting in a new liner.
​
5) Repeat! Keep using your little lined kitchen compost bin for your daily use, and whenever you fill it up, tie it and put in the lined Compost Collective Swap Bucket. It takes me and Jon about 2 weeks to fill up the big bucket! 

If you can eat it, it grew from the earth, or can return back to the Earth, it's probably compostable. Checkout our list of compostable items and then review Compost Collective's list of compostable items. 

The Wild Way is just one of MANY compost swap locations for Compost Collective KC. See their full list HERE. Visit us, or any one of these other locations to drop off your full bucket and swap for a new and clean one for only $8. No mess. No dumping. You just drop it and swap it for a fresh one. Easy peasy lemon squeezy (which are compostable ;)

Not to mention this is a great way to visit other Kansas City businesses you've never been to before! Exploring new spots while supporting small business AND contributing to less waste??? Could this be any more enticing?

Jon's infamous "tongue's out" concentration face.

​Meanwhile I am sitting in the sunshine by the garage door window, tanning my white-winter-ridden legs and daydreaming about new ideas for the business, scribbling thoughts down into a journal I will most likely lose in the next week (probably in my backpack), and then rediscover in six months, to be reinspired by the words I write down today. I forgot to eat this morning, so I found some two month old Peanut Butter Granola that usually graces our food menu, but that has sat uneaten since the shut down. I ate five handfuls and washed it down with some cream top milk I picked up from our dairy farm this week. I’ll probably have another espresso here myself in a moment, which I will get my husband to make me...because it’s just better when he makes it for me. Then I’ll switch gears into boss-mode and update my website a little, put out the barista schedule, think of an insta post or two, place a few orders, and be ready for a glass of wine by 5.

photo cred: Stephanie Smith of @stephaniesmithKC

Ethiopia is known as the birthplace of humanity and also the birthplace of coffee. Coincidence? I think not. But, let’s leave the humanoid/evolution/LUCY(remember her?!) conversation for family get-togethers and stick to coffee here.
 
What do we mean when we say the birthplace of coffee? Basically, the coffee you drink is under a big umbrella called “Arabica”. You may have heard this before. It’s the species of coffee that’s most commonly grown and consumed. This species traces its beginnings to Eastern Africa, now Ethiopia. From here the Arabica species of coffee plant was taken and via Yemen, split into two main off-shoots (Typica & Burbon), and was planted all over the world giving us many different varietals, off shoots, and mutations. This pic should help! 

Credit to SCA!

But HOW did we discover coffee you ask? In my opinion? Who knows. It’s like asking where did Yoda come from. We can only speculate. There is, however, a story we’ve collectively signed off on that I’ll tell you. Long, Long- Ago, in a field full, full of hay, was a goat-hearder named Kaldi and all his goats (maybe one named Yoda? Could be!).

​Kaldi was out and about doing his thing when one or more of his goats started acting wacky AF. Naturally, he was curious what these crazy kids (goat joke) had gotten ahold of. He figured out the berries on a nearby bush must have been the culprit and as any good goat-hearder would do, he ate some because, you know, why not? Now Kaldi is turnt. He went to the local market where his buddies are at and hooks them up with the first cup of coffee ever – and the rest is history.

​Now, it is super cool this commodity product so many people consume, have consumed over centuries, make careers from, and use to fuel the day has such a long history. It is also SUPER cool that Ethiopian coffees are SUPER popular for their interesting and dynamic characteristics. So we decided to create a panel of Ethiopian coffees, showcasing here at our Warehouse for the next few weeks both on pour over and on espresso so you can get your #KaldiKraze on!
​Here's a preview of what we're offering!

 The four Ethiopian coffees we've curated to share with y'all:

- A natural process Kayon Mountain from Lexington Coffee Roasters out of Lexington, VA, with a score of 94/100 from Coffee Review : look for notes of dark chocolate, melon, and pineapple.

- A natural process Yirgacheffe from Dragonfly Coffee Roasters out of Boulder, CO, rated as the roaster of the YEAR by Roast magazine (slow clap) : look for notes of berries, candied lemon, and clove.

- A natural process Limu from Empire Espresso in my old neighborhood of Columbia City in Seattle, WA : look for notes of sugarcane, bergamot, and mango.

- A washed process Worka that was bought by Atlas Coffee Importers (primo importer X 100 billion) partnering with roaster& friends; Cat & Cloud from Santa Cruiz, CA : look for notes of jasmine, peach, and Meyer lemon.

Please join us THIS Saturday, 1/25/20 for a special experiential event as we unveil these coffees! All day we will be pulling shots of these four coffees, and slinging some pour overs. Come between 9AM-10AM to experience these coffees side-by-side with a flight of all four on Kalita Wave brewed by coffee master, Christopher Melton. $7 for a flight of all four.

Get REAL caffeinated by taking shots of each espresso as well. Why not? Let's taste some of the best coffees out there! For more info on the event, click here!

Can't make it Saturday? No fear, these coffees will be around for the next month. Try one, try them all and discover the true origin story of coffee, Episode: Ethiopia. 

Until next time, when we will delve into that rich terroir more. 

​

And then there is us. Y’all probably know us PRETTY well by now. So here are a few facts about The Cluttons that you pry don’t know. 
​
1) Jon is my personal chef and literally I forget to eat if he doesn’t feed me. I blame it on being busy but in actuality, if you’ve had his food - you’d know why I don’t eat anything else. 

Womp Womp Womp.....

Welcome to 2019!

Wow. What a year 2018 was. For our first year in business, it was pretty WILD. We definitely named our business appropriately. I wonder if we had named it "The Calm Way" things would have been a bit more....tame. Guess we'll never know. Luckily we wouldn't change our name, or the road we're on, for anything.  

We met so many awesome people over the last year. 2018 was one for the books. 

​Now, as we start 2019, I wanted to write about the same thing I wrote about in 2018 - water. 

In case you want to revisit the posts about water in 2018, I've provided links below. 
​
Top two are definitely An Ion Took a Compound on a Date and #MakeScienceCoolAgain. I got a little nerdy in Into to Total Hardness, so it's probably okay to skip. And we left off with us trying to figure out the water recipe in Dialing in Water? Is That a Thing? It's probably okay to skip too. Abbreviated version, I screwed up the experiment.

In case you feel like making your own water for coffee, I wanted to detail out the process we took to develop ours. It took me summoning all of little Freshman Jon's chemistry knowledge. Mostly acid/base equilibria, but a little bit of thermodynamics as well. If you don't feel like making your own water for coffee, Christine and I are going to sell some in the shop. You're always welcome to stop by and grab some. 

There are a few different way to do this. The first, somewhat more challenging way, is to learn everything that you can. Like...EVERYTHING. Christine calls this, "the Jon way". Reading things from the experts is the best way to start this process.
​
There are a bunch of good resources online. Start here. It's a talk by Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood. It gives the story behind the science.

Then, I'd suggest reading all our crazy blogs from last year about water. (Yes, even the ones I said weren't important to read above). 

THEN, move onto these: 
Dissolved Minerals in Water and Their Effect on Coffee
The Science of Finding the Perfect Water for Coffee

And finally, when you think you've read enough about water....read this book, Water for Coffee, written by the expert Dr. Christopher Hendon. It sits atop our little bookshelf in the trailer. You're always welcome to come stop by and read it. 

You can also see the paper behind the book published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry,- Hendon et al., 2014. 

Now, the second method, is the "Christine Method".
It is much more efficient.
Like....much, much more efficient. 

Here it is: grab some epsom salt, baking soda, and a white lab coat (that's just for show) and try out these recipes. Make some coffee with it. You're done. You're an expert. 

Christine Method Resources:
​Barista Hustle Water Recipe
DIY Water Recipes: The World in Two Bottles
White lab coat 
​
Whichever method you choose, just enjoy it. Enjoy the process. Try. Fail. Try again. Fail again. Drink a beer. Try again. And if you need help, you know where to find us. 

Here is the link again for the Water Cupping.  We will go through our process, taste some coffees, learn about water, and answer any questions you may have.

If you can't make it to the event, we will start selling our "Wild Water" in mason jars at the shop. So you can brew coffee at home with our special water. 
​
Kansas City, thank you so much for letting us serve you in 2018. It has been amazing. 

And to my sweet wife - Christine thank you for allowing me to turn a coffee shop into a chemistry lab. Thank you for empowering my passions and dreams and finding ways for them to grow symbiotically with yours. Thank you for letting me obsess, just a little bit, about water. And thank you for being you. 

For the past eight months, it's been me, Christine, and our camper. We wanted to take the road less traveled. To make coffee the way we wanted to make coffee. Greet people the way we wanted to greet people. And serve the ingredients we wanted to serve. 

No shortcuts. No worries about maximizing profit margins. Just the biggest smiles and the best coffee possible. 

Because we've been so small, we've been able to focus on things that ordinarily would be put on the back burner and written off as "good enough for now." We have spent countless hours on manipulating water recipes (yes...water). Steaming all kinds of alternative milks. Driving hours to and from De Soto to get farm-fresh milk from a local Kansas dairy. And pulling countless shots with different pressure profiles. 

We are able to do these things because, we are small. And we like it that way. 

Dark horse. Drip coffee is 98% water. 

​The beauty of being small is that we get to pay attention to that 98%. I swear, I have tried so many different shots of espresso with so many different combinations of water. The number one mediator of spro (espresso) quality is water. Same with pour overs. Same with drip. Same with all coffees. 

The beauty of being small is that all of our water has to be brought into our little camper and stored in tanks. We can put whatever water in those tanks that we want. And instead of bringing in city water and running it through filters, we dose our own water with a recipe of minerals that best suits our espresso, our equipment, and our desired taste profile. On any given Sunday you may see Christine and I at Natural Grocers, filling up 40 gallons of water from their Reverse Osmosis system. We can do this, because we are small. 

A 12 oz. latte is 80% milk.

The beauty of being small is that we get to pay attention to that 80%. I fell in love with coffee over iced lattes. In the hot Austin heat, there's nothing better.  The thing that made these iced lattes was Mill-King milk. It's low-temp pasteurized, non-homogenized, and 80% of my iced latte. 

The beauty of being small is that we get to use small, local dairy. And not any small local, dairy, but a small local dairy that treated their cows humanely and offered non-homogenized milk. Hildebrand is the only one. It makes our iced lattes what they are. If you're interested in more information about the importance of milk, see here. 

Coffee is 50% growing, 50% roasting, and 50% brewing. (Yes, we know that math doesn't add up). 

The beauty of being small is we get to focus on brewing and let local roasters focus on roasting. These two things (brewing and roasting) are very different beasts, and Christine and I would not be capable of taking on both. 

We get to partner with Repetition, Oddly Correct, and Blueprint Coffee. All of them are incredible, local roasters doing incredibly high-level work. I just want to take a second to talk about Repetition. We use their single-origin Mexican on espresso and drip coffee, and lately we've really been digging their Kenyan and Ethiopian on pour-over. 

Repetition is run by Amy and Ryan Pope out of Lawrence, Kansas. I feel like their own words describe them best. "Here, we apply an ethos of sustainability and respect, global connections with growers, and refined yet adventurous palates to the work of making every single cup memorable." The thing that makes me proudest to partner with them is their focus on gender-equality in coffee, all the way from farm to cafe. It's a topic that hits home. Amy recently traveled to the Cauca department of Colombia where she visited with the Asociacion de Mujeres Productoras Agropecuarias del Cauca (AMACA), an association of women coffee producers. Established in 1999, they now have 208 members and advocate for women's ownership over land and resources, and leadership within their respective communities. 

So let us recap. Amy, a bad ass female head roaster and business owner, traveled to Colombia, to meet some bad ass female producers, where she ordered their bad ass green coffee, that was roasted, and is now being sold at my wife's bad ass coffee shop. Need we talk more about how insanely cool this is? Who runs the world? Girls. That's who. 

And lastly. But certainly not least.

A coffee shop is 100% about the customers.
​ 
The beauty of being small is we get to focus on that 100%. If you haven't been in the cafe, then let me paint a picture. A smiling human behind a baby blue espresso machine, who knows, that you are just as much a part of the wild way as they are. 

Without you guys, we wouldn't be here. We say this often, but this broken record won't stop repeating. 

You guys, are what make this possible. You guys are what make being small, so fun. 

At The Wild Way, we like to take the road less traveled. And sometimes, we mean that quite literally. That's why we drive out to De Soto every Wednesday to pick up our creamtop milk order from this awesome small dairy company out of Junction City, Kansas - Hildebrand Farms.  We think their milk is THAT good and throughout the blog I'll get into the science of why. They don't deliver to Kansas City, so we meet them the furthest East they come, De Soto. They are literally the best.

 There are three main components in milk: sugar, protein, and fat. 

Lactose, is the main type of sugar in milk. It's about 15% as sweet as table sugar. It adds that subtle sweetness to your lattes. You definitely want a high lactose content in your milk. Hildebrand comes in on the high end with about 12g. 

The majority of protein in milk is casein. Casein groups together in bunches called micelles (remember this for later). You need protein for good lattes. Protein allows for the stabilization of microfoam. Without enough protein, you get very watery lattes and some shady looking latte art.

Both the amount of fat and the size of fat globules in milk have an impact on mouthfeel (Chojnicka-Paszun et al., 2011). You don't want too much or too little fat. Too little (fat free) and you lose the creaminess and texture on your tongue. Too much of it (heavy cream) and it blocks receptors on your tongue and consequently your ability to taste the coffee. Similarly, when suspended fat globules are too small, you lose the velvety-rest-on-your-tongue deliciousness. When fat globules are too big, the milk starts to taste heavy. 

This is a touchy subject for a lot of people, so I'm going to be careful with it. Because of my autoimmune disease, I dove pretty hard into the nutrition literature this last year, and it's made a big difference for me. I learned so much. At the same time, I understand why health and the fat topic can be a sensitive one, so I will try to approach it carefully and stick to the literature and people much smarter than me. 

I've included articles by some people that I really trust. What they discuss and what most of the evidence points towards is that we were misled by much of the low-fat advice we were given in the 1990s. Fat is an important and necessary contributor to the diet, especially high-quality fat sources like olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, and grass-fed animal fat sources. Fat is important for the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins like vitamins A, D E, and K, many of which Americans are deficient in.

I won't dive into things more than that because I'm not a medical professional and more importantly, I don't want to be another lecturing blogger. But, there are some really smart people out there who are working hard on preventing chronic disease through lifestyle change. I've linked their work below. I would strongly suggest reading their stuff, looking at the data, and coming to your own conclusions. When it comes to health, there's a lot there to learn.

If you ever just want to have a casual conversation about this stuff, come stop by the trailer on a Saturday. I do research for KU med and one of my passions is empowering people to read, understand, and be confident in research.

Books
Paleo Principles by Sarah Ballantyne
The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. 
The Big Fat Suprise by Nina Teicholz

Blogs
What About Fat? - Sarah Ballantyne
The Diet-Heart Myth - Chris Kresser 
​Saturated Fat Does a Body Good - Chris Masterjohn

Somewhere down the road we decided we don't like things to separate. Peanut butter - throw some hydrogen in there (I see you Jiff). Almond milk - let's put some emulsifiers in there. Milk - let's homogenize you. Naturally, fats (hydrophobic elements) and water/sugar (hydrophillic elements) don't like to mix. We all know this. We've seen real peanut butter separate. Without homogenization, milk does the same thing. As you let milk sit, a layer of cream rises to the top (hence creamtop). This layer of cream is what's used to eventually make butter. 

This layer of cream sits on top of our milk bottles. If you visit us at the trailer, this is why you may see us whisk the top of a new milk bottle or ferociously shake a milk jug before pouring from it. This is the natural way to incorporate the cream and milk. Sometimes, you are lucky and you even get little bits of fresh cream in your iced lattes. Those bits are the best part, so enjoy. Now onto more science.

Let's look at milk from a more molecular level. When milk is least processed it has large globules of fat and micelles of casein protein suspended in it. In the image below, you can see the globules of fat. And in the image below that you can see a casein micelle.

The homogenization process breaks down the globules of fat and the micelles of casein to mix everything evenly so that there is no separation between cream and milk. To do this, dairy manufacturers push milk through really small pores at high pressure. This breaks the fat globules and casein micelles down until they have a significantly smaller diameter (Sandra et al., 2004).  You can see the impact of homogenization in the image below. Where did all of the tasty fat globules go?

Homogenization causes issues for a couple reasons.

1) Taste Issue. In Christine and I's opinion, non-homogenized milk tastes better. It tastes creamier with a better mouthfeel and a velvety texture. The size of the fat globule impacts the mouthfeel of the milk, and as the fat globules shrink in size, you lose some of the texture of the milk (Chojnicka-Paszun et al., 2011). We think that non-homogenized milk tastes more natural, more creamy, and velvetier. Definitely worth trying, if you're up for a little adventure. 

2) From a health standpoint, homogenization causes issues for some people. Milk is the second most allergenic food in children (Williams, 2013) and casein has been shown to cause gluten cross-reactivity (Vojdani et al 2013 and Paleo Mom article). Both of these issues are related to leaky gut syndrome. 

The issue with homogenization is the impact that it has on the casein micelles. Casein is meant to be delivered slowly to the intestine for easy digestion (Argov et al., 2008). However, after homogenization the size of the casein micelles are significantly smaller (Sandra et al., 2004)., effectively exposing more casein protein to the gut more quickly. For those of us with gut-related issues or sensitivities, this can increase inflammation and leaky gut. For some people, this is why milk sits so poorly. Often times it isn't the lactose, but a food sensitivity caused by the increased casein exposure to the gut from homogenization.

When Christine was at Cuvee, this is when we first learned about non-homogenized milk. She used a local dairy, Mill-King, from Waco, Texas area at the coffee bar. Mill-King also did not homogenize, and because of that, several of Christine's customers came to Cuvee to get lattes because they considered themselves milk-intolerant to anything other than Mill-King's milk. 

Milk homogenization has become so mainstream that almost all major dairies homogenization their milk, and even small-scale dairies do as well. That is why it was impossible for Christine to find a dairy that delivered to Kansas City that we could order our milk from weekly. Hence the road less traveled and a 45 minute drive out to De Soto each week. ​​

The data are clear when it comes to grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef - grass-fed are healthier and more nutrient dense (Daley et al., 2010). Grass-fed beef has higher levels of the hard-to-obtain, active form of vitamin A, higher levels of powerful antioxidants and nutrients glutathione and CLA, and a better ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids, not to mention a number of other benefits (Daley et al., 2010). Unfortunately there hasn't been nearly as much research done on grass-fed vs. grain-fed milk; however, according to the data that we do have, the nutrient comparisons are very similar. 

Grass-fed milk is 2-5x higher in CLA, a nutrient linked to a decreased risk for inflammation, cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes (Dhiman et al., 1999). Grass-fed milk has about a 2-3:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, compared to an 8-40:1 ratio of grain-fed milk (Patel et al., 2013). Omega-3 fatty acids are generally anti-inflammatory, while omega-6 fatty acids are pro-inflammatory. An ancestral ratio is about 2:1 omega-6 to omega-3. The higher the ratio, the more the body is pushed towards inflammation; one reason why our current commercial food process of grain-fed beef causes such issues.. Lastly, we know that grass-fed milk is higher in monounsaturated fats like oleic acid (found in olive oil) and medium-chain tryglycerides (found in coconut oil), giving a more balanced fatty-acid profile compared to grain-fed milk.

If you're still reading this, wow. Props to you. You are a champion. You are a reading warrior. I cannot believe I wrote this much about milk.  

So, all of that information I just threw at you brings us back to Hildebrand. Why did we choose to take the road less traveled?

1) Hildebrand is awesome. They are local, small dairy with incredible employees.

2) Hildebrand is the only local, small-dairy to offer non-homogenized milk. 

3) Hildebrand pastures cows year-round and supplements with alfalfa hay, silage, rolled corn, and soy when necessary, with the rolled corn and soy making up about 5% of the ration. These grass-fed efforts lead to ideal nutrition.

4) Hildebrand tastes the best, especially with coffee. :)

Come try it for yourself. 

photo cred: Adri Guyer

We can't thank you enough for coming out to support The Wild Way Coffee on our first week of business. Especially since, somedays, we were operating in less-than-ideal situations.

​Let me explain...

No matter how much you prepare, sometimes your generator goes down right before your Media Day starts. Sometimes, your coffee brewer is at a slight tilt because your operating a coffee shop on wheels and it makes the coffee taste watery. Sometimes, you think you fix your water issue by flushing gallons of Reverse Osmosis water into your machines and it comes back the next day unannounced and you don't know how many people you served that coffee too. 

Yes, all of those things happened the first week of us opening. Not to mention the many more crazy, wild, learning-curve realizations we underwent over the last 7 days. 

Here is a little synopsis for you. 

We finished construction on the camper, passed health inspection, had an "adventurous" media day, served for the first time, participated in the caffeine crawl, lost feeling in our hands because it was so cold, and had an amazing event with Seven Swans Creperie. What has stood out to me most after this first week of slaying some spro has been how many amazing people have walked up to those windows of ours. Every single person has been so kind and gracious. We've had so many great and unexpected conversations. These have been the best moments, so thank you for giving us so much grace and support and @tymitchell59 thanks for this dope photo. 

Coffee is delicious, so we take pride in the quality of our product - trying to do things as best as we possible can - the wild way. That's why we dose our own water, drive out to De Soto to pick up Hildebrand dairy (which is delicious and I'll write a blog about later), use alternative milks with the least amount of emulsifiers, make all of our syrups in house, carry 1900 Barker pastries, and support local products as much as possible.

As a young business, it is tempting to want to project the idea that we have it all figured out. I am going to just say it straight...we don't have it all figured out. And we definitely didn't have it all figured out the first week of our soft launch.

If you ever want a good comedy show, hang around 31st and Charlotte at 2:45pm on a Tues thru Sat. There will be this cute white trailer trying and failing to back into a warehouse during peak traffic. I make at least one obligatory trip around the block, Christine waves her arms around frantically at least twice, and you hear "HOLY CRAP STOP" yelled at least five times. 

Bring snacks. It's a good show. 

The "adventure" during our media day consisted of our generator, and therefore every piece of our equipment going down right when everyone showed up. As Christine and I were running around trying to figure out what was going on, every event attendee gave us grace. I don't think we could have made it through that day without their grace and the incredible help from our new neighbor Kris from El Torreon.

We went to bed that night honestly questioning what we got ourselves into. The following day was our soft launch start day and we didn't even know if our generator could make it. 

Thankfully, the generator was able to hold up; however, we had served about ten people coffee before we noticed the color, and realized the coffee was extremely watery. We were so puzzled, literally, the day before it was great.

We trouble-shooted and discovered that because we were on a slight tilt in the parking lot that day, the water from the coffee brewer was missing some of the coffee bed and going straight into the urn. We served humans watery coffee on our first day operating a coffee shop. Cue the palm in face emoji. 

Now...we level the trailer to the batch brewer instead of the countertops. And drip coffee is now my favorite thing to serve.  It tastes incredible. 

The following next couple days were a blur. But here is what we know.

We know we definitely served a lot of our first customers crappy coffee. Cue grimacing face emoji. 

Not only did we have the watery-coffee issue, but we also had a minerally-tasting-coffee issue. 

Christine and I noticed a weird, mineral taste in the drip coffee. We thought it was from the standing water we had used to test our tanks during the install process.

We decided to run pure Reverse Osmosis water through it to purge out any "stale" water. In essence, we literally reenacted Moses' flood on our coffee brewer. 
  
And after we did that the second (or was it the third..) time, it made the coffee taste better!

We went on with our coffee-brewing-lives thinking we had fixed the issue. The following day, our friends sent us a text message telling us the coffee we just served them tasted extra minerally. Cue brain-exploding emoji. 

Mofo water issue was back. 

Moreover, we realized the taste had also seeped into our steam wand and espresso machine as well. 

​Did we see the whole business flash in front of our eyes in that moment...
yes, yes we did.

So we made some calls, talked to some experts, and figured out that our plumbing was imparting a slight plastic/mineral taste to the water. Even though we used all food-grade tubing, it still was sensitive enough to impart unwanted flavors in the water. As our blog posts attest, coffee is 99% water, and what is in, or not in your water can make-or-break your coffee.

​That day Christine's dad and I ripped out the old plumbing, installed new plumbing and added in a heavy duty carbon block filter. We drained the machines, retested the coffee, and finally took a sigh of relief.

It tasted delicious. 

So, all that to say...

If you came between 4/13 and 4/18 you may have been an unlucky customer who experienced some version of our bad-water/coffee/equipment issues. And we are terribly sorry if we served you anything less than beautifully tasting coffee that you deserve. 
​
--------------
​
So I tell this long story for a couple of reasons: 

1) the community has been incredible supporting us and we believe that goes both ways. It's important for us as a business to be transparent, admit our failures, and take responsibility for them.

2) If you were one of those first 150 customers, we'd love to make you another cup of coffee. It literally hurts our heart to know that we made inadequate drinks that were anything less than what we believe in. We'd love to make you another drink, for free, do our best to make it a great experience, and let you judge the drinks for the way they're supposed to taste.

3) Thank you to those of you who were so kind in the way that you gave us feedback. If you ever taste anything off with your drinks, please let us know. You will be heard. We're all about the feedback and trying to do things as well as we can. 

Here's the truth. Christine and I will continually be learning. Once we fix one issue, I guarantee you, something else will come up we need to focus our attention on. But that's okay, because the only way we could fail is if we become complacent. The only way we could fail our customers is by saying, "that's good enough." The only way we could fail ourselves is by being okay with "just okay".

As long as we are striving to serve you the best coffee we can humanely muster, we consider it a job well done. 

​You are all literally the best. You made our first week incredible. We can't wait to keep meeting you, talking with you, and having your faces at our front window shape our story. 

Stay Wild,
​Jon Clutton 

photo cred: Adri Guyer

I have tried to write this blog like five times, and I cannot find the words. That might be because I'm not totally qualified to write about it or it might be because it's a tough subject. Despite my difficulties, I think it needs to at least be acknowledged. I'll do my best. Send your best wishes that I might find the right words. 

The trailer is almost done. For those of you who haven't seen the progress, follow my wife on instagram.  You'll get to see how the trailer's doing, and you'll get lots of short videos of my wife being exactly who she is. Example below. 

Let me set the scene for you. Three humans gather around a tall-standing table late at night, mugs in hand, freshly ground coffee aroma in the air, and not a single word uttered. The stakes are high and taste buds need to be sharp. The status of The Wild Way water is on the line, and we're doing an experiment of n=3. 

​The topic of water has puzzled us during this process of trying to get the camper up and going. Most coffee shops use a filtration system to modify the water content, but these systems have inherent issues and are expensive. We think that the best way to ensure quality spro, drip, and pour-overs is to dose our own water. It gives us more control over the quality of the product and helps us prevent scale in our machines. There's also the nice side benefit that it's less expensive. 

The question at hand is - what minerals should we add in? That's why Bryce, Christine, and I are doing this experiment. We know that divalent cations, calcium and magnesium, makes coffee sweeter, improves flavor, and gives a better body. We've written about this before. But what we don't know is what ratio of magnesium to calcium creates the best brew. That's what we're going to figure out. ​This "dialing in" of our water recipe will result in our final water recipe (yes, that's a thing) that will be used in our coffee camper to make all our drinks. 

We have three different waters. One​ with 100% magnesium, one with 25% calcium/75% magnesium, and one with 50% calcium/50% magnesium. As you might have noticed, none of the waters have a high concentration of calcium. Calcium reacts with bicarbonate at high temperatures, becomes insoluble, and causes scale. This can cause serious problems for espresso machines and batch brewers. Hence why we're keeping calcium in control.

To create the waters we dissolved magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, and sodium bicarbonate into distilled water. We held the overall amount of general hardness, TDS, and buffer the same across all waters. The exact ratios of each of the coffees are in a table below. The waters were initially made by Jon and relabeled by Christine so that none of us knew which water brewed which cup. The coffee was ground on a Baratza encore and brewed on a Kalita wave. Grind size, pouring pattern, and brew time were held constant across all coffees. Theoretically, the only thing that varied is the content of the waters.

​​We thought of it all. Controlled for everything. The true scientist way. HOWEVER, in my haste to cook pasta carbonara and make the waters at the same time, I didn't have time to quality control test the water for general hardness and buffer. This might come into play later. Little has changed since Ochem lab, when I forced my lab partner and friend, Jose Luis Olmos Jr., to redo a two hour experiment with me because I "accidentally" dropped our final precipitate into a melted "ice" bath.

Fortunately, if we have to redo this experiment of drinking a bunch of coffee, I don't think anyone will be too disappointed.

The method consisted measuring out the three waters, Christine brewing one cup of coffee for each water, resulting in three total cups of coffee. We tasted each coffee at three different temperatures, and then wrote down our thoughts and graded each coffee for sweetness, body, flavor, and overall cup quality. 

After we finished the third cup of coffee at the coolest temperature, we compared notes and scores. We weren't speaking at all during the actual experiment to ensure our thoughts didn't effect the others' opinion. 

Our results seemed . . . well . . . here they are. 

More Magnesium seems to be in the lead (i.e. the 100% or 75% ratio) but we need more data. Christine and Bryce have consistent taste buds, and I most likely screwed up the experiment.

So . . . which water made the best coffee? I summed all of the data and put it in the graph below. As you can see, the answer is "magnesium, maybe?"

​First impressions, you look at the graph, it looks like the 100% magnesium water has good sweetness, the best flavor, and the best taste overall. But there were three of us and straight magnesium BARELY pulled it out, so does that really tell us anything? Ehhh, probably not.  

We did find out a few other interesting things. 

1) Christine has good taste buds. We noticed that the more magnesium in the water, the more Christine liked the coffee. This is what we call a dose-response relationship and it usually implies a relationship between two variables. Christine's taste buds provided much more clarity than our data, and they leave me hopeful in magnesium. 

2) Bryce likes bitter coffee. Bryce also had a dose-response relationship. The more calcium in the water, the more Bryce liked the coffee. It also happened that the more calcium, the more bitterness. See 3 for why.

3) My carbonara was good, but my science was not. Listen to these tasting notes:

Less sweet smelling from get go, a little thinner, almost silky but not quite, weak in both mouthfeel and flavor, sweetness subtle, acidity lacking, taste lame, all around boring.

Those are Christine's tasting notes on the 50/50 coffee and the last three notes, "acidity lacking, taste lame, all around boring" - scream TOO MUCH BUFFER to me. Meaning we put too much baking soda in the water.

I was playing around the next night, trying to make more water for more data. This time I actually did a quality control test on the water. The buffer was almost TWO TIMES as high as I wanted it to be. I think there was an issue with our concentrate during our experiment. Awkward turtle. All of our data, may have been meaningless. Just like Ochem.

After discussing with Christine, we are going to continue the experiment over the next few weeks. We have the water dosed and will try each water again, for multiple days, and take thorough notes of our morning coffee. Hopefully, by the time the camper is ready, we will have enough data to find a more accurate correlation. 
​
​Thanks everyone! We'll keep you up-to-date.

​photo cred : fairtrade.com.au 

I had personal interest in this conversation because it was the FT movement that got me interested in coffee. In college I took an “emphasis” in FT and sustainable business. My first job out of college was actually the Marketing Coordinator for a FT certified fashion company. I shortly moved onto the coffee world, finding the perfect fit for my goals. But honestly, I haven’t actually pursued the answer to the FT question myself. I know there’s been debate in the industry and this isn’t the ONLY way to improve wages and communities in coffee farm sectors. Direct trade is suspected to have similar benefits, and also just being a good-human with a good-heart while operating a business is also beneficial. But as Jon is teaching me, it is important to examine what we suspect, with data, to actually determine the facts, not the fancy ideas marketers put in front of us. And when it comes to the benefits of FT certification, it looks like the data is in its favor. ​

Stay Wild, Folks 
Christine Clutton
Owner/Operator/Barista

​
​S u n d a y night I found myself wearing a white lab coat and protective goggles while holding a test tube with boiling green chemicals spilling out . . . metaphorically speaking that is. Really I was wearing my pajamas and Warby Parker glasses while holding a Brita filter in one hand and baking soda in the other. Albeit that doesn’t sound as scientific as the first scenario, for me, it was a step into the wild unknown of the science world. A world I intentionally tried to avoid my whole life. A world I thought was filled with braces, spectacles, and a void of understanding social cues. I know, I’m stereotyping here. You’d think that stereotype would have gone away after marrying my husband, who by all means, is a scientist. But it hadn’t gone away. And when Jon told me, two months ago, that he wanted to write science related topics in our blog, I literally cringed and hoped he would forget he asked. 

He didn’t forget.

Fast-forward to Sunday night when Jon and I were sitting on our black-and-white-checkered kitchen floor laughing at how our science experiment showed why our coffee at home had failed to hold up to our standards. We finally discovered why our home coffee tasted like shit. I wrote three blogs about what we did to fix our coffee, and all three blog topics really did improve our overall cup quality; but, we were still missing something in our morning coffee.
Our experiment Sunday night showed we were missing one crucial element to our water. No amount of brewing devices or varying roasts would have figured out our missing ingredient. The only thing that could have shown us . . . was . . . science.

Flipping science.
​
I am now a converted scientist. I ordered an engraved plaque in the mail to hang on my wall. It will read.