Wolff Coffee Roasters has released its Cold Wolff RTD Cold Brew and Concentrate bag-in-box coffees, providing consumers and café owners with a convenient way to drink and customise cold coffee.

Prior to COVID-19, the café or coffee house served as a meeting place and opportunity for social contact for the whole community.

But following more than a year of restrictions, lockdowns, and business disruptions, the ways people make, buy, and drink coffee has changed. More people are working from and making coffee at home, and Penny Wolff of Wolff Coffee Roasters tells BeanScene the roaster has worked hard to find ways of recreating that social connection and experience.

“The new ‘coffee house’ during COVID is in fact the ‘coffee home’,” Penny says. “The depth of Australia’s coffee culture taught Wolff that you cannot just roast and sell coffee, you have to understand its context, being the ‘elixir of connection’.”

However, not every coffee drinker has the skill of a trained barista or can afford the high-end espresso machine and other equipment needed to reach that café-quality experience.

Inspired by the popularity of Wolff’s ready to drink (RTD) cold brew bottles, sold at the Big Bad Wolff Espresso Bar in Hendra, Queensland, the roaster set out to offer its cold coffee in a larger format for people drinking lots of coffee at home.

“We’ve seen a lot of people enjoying our bottled cold brew over the years, but it can be difficult for customers to replicate and enjoy that style of coffee in the same way at home. It takes know-how, time, skill, and effort to craft your own cold brew at home,” Penny says.

“That’s why we introduced our Cold Wolff cask concept in September, moving into summer, people can enjoy a delicious cold coffee that is very easy and convenient in the comfort of their own home.”

The cask is available in two 1.5-litre formats, the Cold Wolff RTD and Cold Wolff Concentrate cold brew. The Cold Wolff Concentrate forms the base for all coffee drinks, like an iced coffee, latte, or long black, while the Cold Wolff RTD can be enjoyed over ice straight out of the box.

“Family members and housemates might enjoy their coffee in different ways, or with different milk choices – low fat, lactose free, oat et cetera – and this is an easy way to cater for everybody,” Penny says.

“Lockdowns put a restriction on how people can go about getting their caffeine fix, but Cold Wolff is having it readily available on tap at home, sitting neatly in the fridge.”

Cold Wolff is available retail from Wolff Coffee Roasters directly, at the Big Bad Wolff Espresso Bar or Wolff’s website and social media via a subscription or single order purchase, with sister café Dandelion & Driftwood stocking its own RTD and Concentrate cold brew range too.

The RTD and Concentrate boxes are also available to Wolff’s wholesale partners, who can sell them on to consumers or use the cold brew to easily supplement their coffee menus.

“With the new Cold Wolff cask format, it’s very easy to deliver master cartons straight to our café customers and it’s also more convenient for them to not only sell outright but use for café service also,” Penny says.

“It allows the barista to craft that iced latte much faster than using hot espresso (and melting the ice). This is especially important at the moment with restrictions, and takeaway-only becoming the norm. The cup process is simplified, load with ice, add a 30-millilitre shot of concentrate, mix in the milk of choice, and the customer is out the door.”

If kept in the fridge, sealed Cold Wolff will hold its quality for 16 weeks and once opened, is best consumed within six weeks. Wolff Coffee Roasters receives the Cold Wolff bulk stock at an ambient temperature, allowing six days to ship the product to wholesale partners and customers before it is recommended to be refrigerated. 

Penny says these recommendations are based on maintaining quality of flavour, as there is no health or spoilage concerns with the RTD products.

“Cold Wolff is a natural energy source, being produced with only two ingredients – delicious Wolff coffee and ultraviolet-treated, triple-filtered water – with no preservatives, no added flavours, and definitely no acidity regulators. This means the cold brew is also vegan friendly and gluten-free,” Penny says.

“We are delighted to work directly on these new products with Mark and Glenn from Pinnacle Beverages Australia, who have been a wealth of support during the product development phase.”

Rather than traditional immersion brewing, the RTD coffees are made with an active cold extraction, using a BrewBomb water management system to precisely control the movement of water through the coffee grinds. This provides control of the extraction process, optimising yield and flavour potential. 

For the first release of Cold Wolff, Wolff Coffee Roasters chose to use a single origin from the Mexico Las Cotorras coffee farm. The mixture of washed Bourbon, Typica, Caturra, and Mundo Novo varieties provide “a deliciously balanced drop, with subtle acidity and dominant notes of raisins and chocolate”.

Las Cotorras, Spanish for ‘the parrots’, is named after the magnificent birds of the El Triunfo Biosphere, the last of the Central American cloud forests. The forest naturally traps condensation, sustaining a large amount of animal and plant species. Penny says in this area, you can witness the juxtaposition of southern and northern species, which are attracted to the area’s natural richness.

“During COVID, kindness continues to be our addiction of choice. We truly are seen as the local roasters with a big heart, and part of that comes from supporting our farmers where we can,” Penny says.

“Whenever we release a new product – whether whole bean or something special like our cold brew RTD and instant specialty – for us, it’s all about the transparency of where the beans are coming form, and how we can showcase those farmers.”

The concentrate uses a slightly darker roast profile than the RTD cold brew, emphasising the caramelisation flavours that will cut through when paired with milk. Penny says several months of development went into both the concentrate and RTD to ensure both recipes were the best they could be.

“We trialled many different single origins for our cold brew and locked in Mexico Las Cotorras as we felt it was really balanced, with lovely natural sweetness that wouldn’t require any additives in the final product,” she says.

“Through winter, people have enjoyed brewing their hot coffees at home, but as we turn to spring and summer, that will definitely shift and they will want to start drinking something colder. It’s a moving market and the Cold Wolff cask provides us with the versatility to do different things in future. We’re not locked into a particular blend and can change it up with different flavour profiles and single origins.”

Wolff Coffee Roasters is supporting the launch of the RTD range through its Wolff Vlogg YouTube series, demonstrating how to enjoy Cold Wolff as an iced latte, long black, and mocha. The Wolff Vlogg also demonstrates how to pair it with spirits for some inspiration when making an espresso martini or creative cocktails.

“Coffee is really about that social connection we all love, going to the local café and having that contact. With lockdowns going on around the country, there’s that feeling of ‘is coffee an essential service?’ We like to think it is, but if we have to stay at home and not gather outside, Cold Wolff is a convenient way of sharing that experience at home,” Penny says.

“It’s a nice comfort for us to know that our customers all around us can enjoy a delicious cold coffee in their own homes or businesses.” 

For more information, visit www.wolffcoffeeroasters.com.au

This article appeared in the October 2021 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.