North Texas Daily

Christina Ulsh / Senior Staff Writer

Dead Beat Coffee, a Denton-based company that brews and bottles cold-brew coffee, will soon be selling its chilled coffee concentrate online for busy folks as well as the artisan-coffee-loving community.

“We want to revolutionize the way people interact with coffee because it’s such a central part of our culture,” said Dalton Kane, 23, co-owner and chief marketing officer of Dead Beat. “[Views are] a little bit skewed on what coffee actually is and what it can be.”

The cold brewing method, which Dead Beat uses to make its coffee, is a process that takes almost half a day. This room-temperature method, compared to hot brewing coffee and dumping it over ice, extracts more flavor from the bean and allows the product to last for a couple of weeks instead of a few hours.

Kane said he was convinced that coffee could offer more ever since Nick Stevens, 22, founder, co-owner and chief brewer of the company, brewed his first batch of Dead Beat coffee and gave some to Kane.

“Cold coffee is so unique,” Stevens said. “The low acidity and the lack of bitterness—which is almost impossible to get rid of any other way—are just some things that cold brew coffee can do.”

This method of brewing also allows flavors to be persistent. When hot, coffee has a certain flavor that changes when it cools down. Brewing the coffee at room temperature prevents this from happening, Stevens said.

In most parts of America, it seems people view coffee a specific way, thus they look for certain things for coffee to offer, Kane said. These characteristics are quantity, crazy flavor options, a social experience and convenience.

The mainstream idea of having more coffee overshadows the idea of having quality coffee, he said. Dead Beat will have promotional products during certain seasons. However, its standard ingredients are coffee and water.

“We are essentially a business of unadulterated coffee,” Kane said.

While meeting friends for coffee is still something the company advocates, the social experience doesn’t always need to be taken to shops when coffee can be available at home, he said.

With Dead Beat’s coffee, customers can have convenience without sacrificing quality.

“People can have great artisan coffee without having to pop a plastic packet into a machine that spits hot water through it into a cup,” Kane said.

He said most people don’t have 12 to 14 hours to brew coffee, but Dead Beat does.

“We hope to offer a quality product to those people to help them avoid over-processed garbage that their taste buds have learned to call coffee,” Kane said.

Stevens said freshness of the coffee beans is important to creating the sought after consistency and taste.

Dead Beat uses various coffee roasters to stay diverse. All of the brands they use, however, are direct trade and single-origin brands.

Direct trade is a form of commerce where coffee roasters buy directly from coffee bean farmers, while single-origin coffee is grown in one particular geographic region.

Stevens said he speculates Starbucks’ coffee beans and grounds are probably two months old, while Maxwell House’s are possibly 3 to 6 months old.

“I know this specific bottle, the beans came out of the roast oven three days ago,” Stevens said regarding a bottle of Dead Beat coffee in his hand.

To ensure the coffee stays fresh, Dead Beat won’t have available stock. It will make batches of coffee as they are ordered.

Benjamin Carpenter, who manages The Whitehouse, has been in the coffee business for approximately five years and has been a lifelong coffee enthusiast.

“I do know people are pretty crazy about cold brew iced coffees,” Carpenter said.

He said people who order iced coffee ask about how the coffee is brewed and are excited to hear The Whitehouse uses the cold brewing method.

“They appreciate it more because we put more time and effort into it,” he said.

Dead Beat is a good undertaking, Carpenter said. Its use of the cold brewing method shows the company cares about providing a quality product people enjoy.

“From time to time, people need things on the go. In this business that I run, people come to my coffeehouse to sit and do work,” he said. “For people who don’t have time to sit in a coffeehouse for half an hour or an hour before work or school or between the two, it’s a good alternative.”

The idea for the company started brewing about six months ago. Dead Beat Coffee’s Facebook page launched Oct. 20 and has 162 likes.

The page tells users once Dead Beat reaches 250 likes, it will open its website.

Once the official website is launched, people can order 16-ounce bottles of Dead Beat coffee concentrate for $15.

The bottle can yield up to six cups of coffee with the addition of water or milk. Having concentrated coffee allows drinkers to decide how strong their coffee is.

An ounce and a half of the concentrate is equal to about a cup of hot coffee in the amount of caffeine it has, Stevens said.

Hot coffee can take about 10 minutes to brew. Cold brew takes hours to make, but with Dead Beat’s nearly ready-to-serve brew, a cup of coffee can be fixed in about 30 seconds.

Stevens said brewing coffee is a therapeutic dream job because it incorporates what Stevens loves doing.

“Looking at the city we live in, the culture we have here and the creativity we have and the encouragement we have from the people around us, [it] puts me in a mindset of understanding I do have a skill set,” Stevens said. “Though it may not be art or writing music or whatever, for me it’s being able to delicately craft [coffee].”

Dalton Kane and Nick Stevens examine their syrup and coffee concentrates on Friday afternoon at Dead Beat Coffee. Feature photo by LaKaisjah Williams / Contributing Photographer