Strictly Business
Made in
By Monica Mead
When summer got hot and sticky, my Grandma Ruth put her morning coffee aside, transforming it later in the day with ice and a little sugar as an afternoon pick-me-up.
“A lot of people drink black coffee and a lot of people drink iced coffee black, and there’s just something about it,” said Paul Ralston, hearkening back to that old-fashioned caffeinated cooler.
Owner of Vermont Coffee Company, Ralston knows all things java. As a self-confessed “serious home brewer,” he also knows a thing or two about small batch brewing.
Meanwhile, Lara Lonon and Jim Robison, the husband-wife team behind Moretown’s Pop Soda, brew all-natural soda with aromatics like lavender and ginger and whole-flower hibiscus.
It’s only natural, then, as in the peanut butter cup commercial (“you got chocolate in my peanut butter; you got peanut butter in my chocolate”), that the two worlds would collide.
Pop Soda, self-described “pop with pulp,” has formed an alliance with Ralston’s Bristol-based roastery to produce what Lonon affectionately dubs “our handsome soda.”
Trademarked Coffee Fiend is all-natural coffee soda with umph. Think cuppa Joe with carbonation, and you’ve hit the mark.
Robison said “We’ve played around with the idea of a coffee soda from day one.”
Big and bold, Coffee Fiend “is not coffee soda for the masses,” Lonon said.
Risky maybe, but as Robison sees it, “being a small company, we can afford to (take a risk).”
Pop Soda uses Vermont Coffee Company’s Dark Roast, its most expensive, slow-roasted blend. Giving due coffee credit front-and-center on Coffee Fiend’s hip label, it’s an example of affinity marketing at its friendly best.
Ralston said while a lot of folks have ideas for his coffee, he’s reluctant to jump into projects. It was Lonon and Robison’s “respect for the coffee,” he said, that cinched his involvement with Coffee Fiend.
“It was really great to do a cold coffee project,” said Ralston, “because (Vermont Coffee Company’s) whole emphasis…has been on the hot side.”
Coffee Fiend isn’t the first coffee-flavored soda.
“There have been a few entries in the carbonated coffee drink world recently but (they) have been so overly sweet that it threatens the category in general,” Ralston said.
For example,
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters introduced Double-Bean Elixirs back in November,
offering the treacle-sweet concoction (produced under license by
Even Coke just released Coca-Cola Blak, a mid-calorie, vaguely referenced “carbonated fusion beverage.” Translation – Diet Coke with coffee extract, high fructose corn syrup and aspartame.
In contrast, with only 30 calories and 8 grams of sugar per serving, Coffee Fiend has two predominant flavors – dark coffee and chocolate (not fructose and aspartame). One bottle delivers 80 mg. of caffeine, making it a cooler with kick. One can even navigate the short list of ingredients without getting tongue-tied.
“He was excited that we wanted to brew coffee soda from scratch,” said Lonon of Ralston. “He has a brewer’s head and practicality.”
Admiration for Ralston’s roasting (“We love his coffee,” Robison said) and his stint as home brewer extraordinaire made Fiend a reality.
Eschewing “extracts” and “natural flavors,” hallmarks of conventional soda producers, Lonon and Robison wanted to brew Coffee Fiend just as they did other flavors: the old-fashioned way.
As Ralston noted “They actually brew the stuff. They don’t just take extract and add fizzy water to it.”
Test batches produced varied flavor results until Lonon and Robison experimented with ingredients to round out the palate profile that is Coffee Fiend.
Ralston recalled initial production. “An interesting and good coffee soda was a lot harder than I thought,” he said, “and I think it really stretched and challenged Lara and Jim.”
“All of our sodas have that herb component to it,” said Robison, so when anise was introduced to round out the dark coffee tones, it proved a winning complement.
“I think the breakthrough was the anise and the particular way they did it,” Ralston said, explaining that Pop Soda’s particular anise infusion is a guarded secret.
Pop duo Lonon and Robison extol the pleasures of Fiend floats using
Strafford Organic Creamery coffee ice cream which features Vermont Coffee
Company’s Café Alta Vista-label “Tres Mariposas”
coffee. For food lovers, it’s a triad of
It’s a really interesting drink,” said Ralston of Coffee Fiend. “They really sock the coffee to it, and it shows up in the glass. It’s a fabulous thing.”