By Sarah Richmond
SPECIAL TO BARISTA MAGAZINE
In recent years, coffee industry professionals have increased their attention to the growing demand for properly brewed iced coffee that not only excels in taste but in aromatics as well. However, the market has remained relatively sparse for single serving cold brewing devices for the home brewer ”until now. Meet COIL.
I had the pleasureof sitting down with Tyler Deeb, owner of Misc. Goods Co., and coffee roaster Chris Heiniger of Quills Coffee, in Louisville, to learn more about the story behind their cold-coffee brewer, COIL. The project began almost two years ago when Tyler was doing freelance graphic design work and riding the wave of his successfully designed playing cards (featured in Wired, Martha Stewart, Story NYC). Chris says that back then, he was œjust a guy with 10 half-finished inventions in the basement, which included his original version of the COIL, fabricated from a one-gallon bucket, twenty feet of copper refrigerator tubing, and a metal funnel. It was too tall to use on a table so it had to sit on a chair or on the floor.
Once Tyler saw Chris using the proto-COIL, their partnership was born and Tyler began working tirelessly on redesigning COIL so that it would exude both functionality and beauty. He began sourcing the materials, finding manufacturers ”which proved especially difficult in terms of metal ”and, after working through three ceramic prototypes and 6 coiling prototypes, Tyler began to plan a Kickstarter campaign, which became fully funded earlier this year.
Essentially, COIL is made up of four different component parts: the bottom container, the middle container, the lid, and the coiled copper tubing that sits in the middle container. Freshly brewed coffee is poured (or brewed) into the lid as it passes through a hole leading to the mouth of the copper tubing within the bottom container. The coil is surrounded by ice water so that when the hot coffee flows through, the coffee exchanges its heat with the ice-cold tubing. What makes COIL so unique and such a stand out among other iced coffee platforms is it’s ability to drop the temperature of freshly made hot coffee from 210 degrees to as low as 48 degrees in less than four minutes. Tyler explains, “Quality roasted beans can become generic, under-extracted, and often watered down with other cold brew methods, which is why they wanted to create a new way for consumers to make iced coffee at home.
All of Misc. Goods Co. products, including COIL, are made in the USA and demonstrate the higher value of people and relationships over the bottom line. As Tyler says, œI love knowing where my manufacturing money goes. I love shaking the hands of the people who make my products. Our products reflect classic Americana design so America is where we make them. The story of COIL serves as a reminder to those in the coffee industry as well as those in the coffee community to take risks, to be committed to an idea and then allow it to pass through your hands ”to work hard and be satisfied.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Richmond is a recent transplant to the Asheville, NC area from Berkeley, Calif., where she brings over 10 years of experience in the coffee industry. Wearing many hats over the years as a barista, trainer, coffee roaster, manager, and lover of all things coffee, she is most passionate about the growing coffee community in Asheville and its neighboring states. When she is not turning coffee brown, Sarah can usually be found hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her fiancée and their 1 year old pup, Mack. Sarah and her family live in a cabin in the woods located in Black Mountain, N.C., and are enjoying the fullness good mountain living can bring!
Not cold brewed coffee.
Any coffee that uses water at a temperature above 72 degrees is not cold brew. For lack of a better term, it is iced coffee much like the Japanese iced coffee method (though the coil replaces the ice to cool down the hot brewed coffee).
It is an intriguing contraption though. Like the science behind it but the price is steep.
Thank you for the clarification, Robbie.
The concept behind COIL is an interesting one that I’m anxious to experiment with.
I would, however, like to draw attention to an error in the article and ask for a correction. Chris is not “of Quills Coffee”. The video on kickstarter seemed to indicate that Chris was a roaster for Quills but he is not. That would be none other than Houston Miller (a damn fine roaster and coffee professional I might add). Chris did once work for Quills but no longer does (not trying to negate his knowledge or experience in the coffee industry. He’s a coffee bad ass to be sure). As a former employee of Quills, a friend of the company, and a professional in the industry I would appreciate the correction. Thanks in advance for doing what is necessary to acurately inform our industry.