Jamieson Lamb (left) and Bethany Warder, owners of Ashanti Coffee in downtown Port Elgin, with the trike they use to serve their new Nitro Cold Brew.

Hub Staff

In preparation for their grand opening on Saturday, July 23, Ashanti Coffee in downtown Port Elgin has been working hard to get their “Nitro Cold Brew” ready to serve.

“The way it works is you brew the coffee and you have to put it on [nitrogen] for four days at a really high pressure,” said Jamieson Lamb, co-owner of Ashanti Coffee. Because the coffee and the nitrogen don’t naturally mix, “every six hours or so I go back there and I shake this keg, because you’re trying to get the nitrogen into the coffee.”

Lamb said that the finished product is similar to a Guinness in its texture. “You pour it through a stout tap and what that does is, in a stout tap there’s a diffuser plate and it accelerates or excites that nitrogen and it gets really creamy... you see it all cascading like a Guinness and it’s got the creama on top, the thick head, it’s really velvety, it’s really thick, it’s nice coffee.”

The brew is served in half pints because “the nitrogen will affix to the caffeine... it’s got a bit of a kick to it... so if I were to pour someone a pint that would probably be too much caffeine.”

Lamb, along with his partner, Bethany Warder, plans to have two kegs on hand for their grand opening and in addition, “we’re going to have free medium coffee all day, $2 lattes, we’re going to have live music... and draws and raffles.” Lamb added that there will be a ribbon cutting at 11 a.m.

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An alternate brewing method is to first steep the coffee, creating a sweeter flavour but flatter finish. “There’s no set recipe yet because this is all new, people are all learning,” said Lamb, adding that he has been keeping his “finger on the pulse of what’s happening on the west coast.”

He continued, “when you brew coffee, the hot water will bring out the oils and the tannins and that’s what gives you that bitterness so if you steep it then you don’t get any of that bitterness because... hot water was never added to it. So we’d steep it like you would tea and then that makes a concentrate and then when you mix it to the right level it’s delicious.” But Lamb said it’s a trade off. “That has a better flavour profile... but it doesn’t get the same sort of texture as if you were to hot brew it and then put it under nitrogen, so the trade off is kind of a flatter finish but with a better flavour profile or a better what you call ‘mouth feel’ but maybe a little more traditional bold (flavour).”

With it being a four day process, Lamb and Warner currently have enough equipment to have their Nitro coffee available twice weekly and when they’re not serving it at their Goderich Street location, they can take it on the road with their newly built tricycle and recently acquired permit from the Town of Saugeen Shores. The trike came from a company in Guelph and was designed to have a child seat in front of the driver. Lamb said he did find a company out of the United States that makes bicycles for this very thing, a “turnkey operation” but decided to come up with a more cost effective alternative. “We got our resident handyman to build the box and then we just got the keg equipment in last week.”

Lamb said they’ve done a couple of successful test runs down around the beach and market and plan to be out on the bike every Wednesday and Saturday throughout the summer. “We ring, ring the bell, someone waves their hand, we roll over, we pour a (half) pint and off we go,” said Lamb