What’s the Point of Beanless Coffee?

These three cans of cold-brew coffee were made without coffee beans.Berries were not picked from Brazilian coffea arabica trees, peeled, fermented, washed, dried, roasted, then packaged for delivery, to be unpackaged, ground, steeped in chilled water for 12 to 24 hours, filtered, and then repackaged into aluminum cans.Instead, this is the product of Seattle-based start-up Atomo Coffee, which seeks to reproduce the taste, sensation, smell, and narcotic kick of the world’s favorite drug without actually using it. They do so by identifying the roughly 40 compounds within coffee and reproducing them from a range of other organic sources, from green tea, chicory, dates, and so on. Their current offering includes a “Classic Black,” an “Ultra Smooth,” and their Starbucks-iced-latte-esque “Oat Milk Latte,” and they’ll sell you a six-can variety pack for $14.99. As the chief operating officer of Atomo’s, Ed Hoehn, told me, they are “building a molecular level coffee.” That Mr. Hoehn said, is “what differentiates us from others that build, quote-unquote ‘alternative coffees,’ trying to build something that tastes like coffee. We’re really designed our product at the molecular level to match the molecular structure of coffee.”Why, though?“Fake” meats, like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, have an intuitive purpose — they remove death from the meat production process. What function does Atomo provide?Sustainability. The journey from coffee bean to coffee cup is an intercontinental, energy-intensive, industrial Rube Goldberg machine, and coffea plants are vulnerable to even slight temperature changes. Mr. Hoehn, pointing to research from the National Coffee Association and others, says that “roughly 50 percent of existing coffee crop lands are going to have to move uphill, meaning more deforestation. It already consumes a lot of water to grow coffee. And then you have the carbon footprint of transporting coffee from fairly remote regions of the world.”As documented in Augustine Sedgewick’s “Coffeeland,” this process is also ethically fraught, with overworked and underpaid laborers. By reconstructing coffee from its molecular components, Atomo is able to divorce itself from this process, as well as remove inalienable chemical flaws of coffee, such as an acidic bite, and make it a healthier, more nutritious beverage.Yet, above anything else, coffee drinkers care about the taste. For Atomo to succeed, it needs to taste like coffee and taste good.So, does it? No, and yes, respectively.According to Mr. Hoehn, two out of three people find Atomo “indistinguishable” from traditional cold-brew coffee when doing side-by-side comparison tests. If so, either they chose an odd coffee to compare it with, or I’m the third person.Poured into a glass, the two black offerings look strikingly like the real stuff, from color to surface texture, but they don’t taste like it. “Classic Black” smells somewhat like coffee and has a surprisingly smokey, nutty bite but is closer to an iced fruit black tea than coffee.“Ultra Smooth” is even further from the mark, with a sweet nose and a similar flavor to Black, but sweeter, smoother, and much less smokey. They’re pleasant — the combination of earthy flavor, smooth delivery, and little acidity makes them effortlessly drinkable — but they’re not confusable for coffee.Except the “Oat Milk Latte.” The creamy sweet oat taste masks any oddity of Atomo’s brew, and the net result is a less acidic, more easily drinkable, tastier version of the bean-sourced original. You wouldn’t know it’s not coffee, and given the choice, I would take Atomo’s iced oat latte over Starbucks’s.Though currently on sale, these three products are being discontinued as Atomo pivots to hot coffee. This was the advertised product in their 2019 Kickstarter, but only had a “breakthrough” in the recent months. This will release as a traditional French press ground, and an espresso ground and be sold directly to consumers through their website and retailer partners, but also made available in partnering coffee shops. In time, they plan to introduce coffee pods and return to cold-brew, but the chilly investing environment has forced them to focus on the biggest markets.Will this replace coffee as we know it? No, and Atomo says they don’t want that.Oatly became a billion-dollar business by de-emphasizing vegans and convincing ordinary consumers that their sweet milk tastes great and should be bought alongside the bottle of full-fat. Atomo wants to do that for the coffee bean.“We’re not battling coffee,” Mr. Hoehn said. “There’s 6 percent year-over-year growth of the category, but there’s essentially a forecasted decline in supply.” Of Atomo’s aspirations he observed that “we feel like we are a nice complement to traditional coffee” and contends the firm “can build a multibillion-dollar brand just living in the gap that will be left in the supply chain and the increase in demand over time.”

What’s the Point of Beanless Coffee?

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