Somatik: Amazing synergy of cold-brewed coffee, cannabis

I love cannabis, but one of the few drugs out there I love nearly as much is caffeine, more often than not in the form of coffee. While cannabis has been a daily part of my life for several years now, I have been a bit more successful at limiting how much coffee I am downing. Hot, cold, iced, arabic, turkish, dripped, poured over, I have had coffee in various ways and various places over the years, at gas stations, donut shops, the black rock desert, and local coffee shops the countrywide (even Twin Peaks, damn good coffee). While I have written a couple pieces on coffee and cannabis before, like with anything you love, is once ever really enough, or twice for that matter?

All photos courtesy of Mr. Joe Montana 

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Chris Schroeder and Clayton Coker, the CEO and scientist behind Somatik, a new cannabis-infused cold brewed coffee available in the Bay Area. Chris is a recent graduate of the Gateway Incubator, as well as a former Gateway mentor, and Clayton has a background in plant genetics, which came in pretty handy when selecting the bean, brew, and bud pairing.

1. The Leaf Online: What did you do before starting Somatik, and what made you decide to join the cannabis industry?

Somatik: I worked at several small and medium-sized businesses, most recently Jawbone, who makes the Jambox speaker. Before that, I worked at Rickshaw Bagworks, who founded a non-profit called SF Made, which is originally how I met Eileen Rinaldi from Ritual Coffee. I was ready for my next career shift and I had been eyeing cannabis for a while and doing some research, and I realized that the edibles market didn’t meet the needs of many people in my family. We wanted a product that was good for new users but one that could also have appeal to those who are more used-to cannabis. Coffee seemed like a good natural fit for an every-day edible, and I saw some similarities between coffee and cannabis. Ritual was my first choice and they are my favorite coffee in San Francisco since I first moved here 11 years ago.

We try to keep it not strain specific and remove as many terpenes as possible so that it was all about the coffee flavor; using a clear distillate makes it easiest to work with a variety of suppliers. We test for pesticides, microbial, residuals, and potency. We test both the distillate and the finished product as well.

2. TLO: What was it like going through the Gateway Incubator?

Somatik: You spend a 4-month intensive period of time building out your business and getting a 360-view of the cannabis industry, finishing with a business that is compliant and investment ready. I joined up as a mentor for their first batch of businesses, which gave me a good idea of what the process would be like. It was a great way to help out and observe before doing it myself. Coming from out of the industry I didn’t have a big network in cannabis, so it was a great way to meet people and build my network.

3. TLO: Whose idea was it to include the “Dance, rinse, repeat” on the label?

Somatik: That was my friend Victoria, she writes the copy for me. The great thing about Somatik is that it’s been a collaborate labor of love among friends. It’s a bunch of people I love coming together to build a great product.

4. TLO: The bottle instructs you serve chilled, but I found from my testing that heating it up made the flavor profile more intense and pleasing. What are your thoughts on heating up cold brewed coffee?

Somatik: It definitely changes the flavor. It’s not something I usually officially recommend, some people are drinking with with milk, some are mixing into their normal coffee, some are drinking it over ice, and I guess now some are heating it up. A lot times when you heat it, depending on the temperature, it can draw out more bitterness. If you personally gravitate to more bitter flavors, such as bitter beers, that could be a positive.

5. TLO: Tell us a bit about the process of selecting your beans and actually creating Somatik.

Somatik: We would go down to Ritual about once a week, and I would get different beans. It was a two-pronged approach, try different beans and try different brew methodologies. Different lengths of times, different filters, different brew styles, such as a hot brew where you introduce a small amount of hot water to wet the grinds before the cold. We kept tweaking it, over about 40 batches of beans and brew types, until we got the right flavor. We went with Colombian beans from the Giante region since they grew year round, meaning less supply issues, and I loved the flavor with its warm citrus notes.

Ritual is really known for their lighter roasting process than most roasters, their philosophy is that is brings out a more layered flavor. Cold-brewing aids in the complexity of the flavor. Coffee is finicky like cannabis, how you prepare it changes the experience. Cold brewing allows for more of the delicate flavors of lemon and fruit to come out, rather than being overwhelmed by those heavier chocolatey flavors. It was pretty amazing seeing how big of a difference a slight tweak in the brewing method, the grind size or filter size, could create a very different profile. We did blind taste tests with them, and voted to see the winner. We did the same thing for the infusion process, because the cannabis changed the flavor.

6. TLO: What are your thoughts on the rising trend of cannabis microdosing, and do you feel like Somatik would be a good product for new users looking to try THC microdosing?

Somatik: Microdosing is really important because it helps new people have a positive first time experience, and it helps people use cannabis in their every day lives, normalizing cannabis use. What I like about coffee is that for many people it’s an every day thing, I would like to see cannabis treated like caffeine. You have some people who drink coffee all day, some can’t drink it after 4pm, others don’t drink it at all. Because it’s a liquid it is faster acting than other edibles which makes it so you can tell sooner if it will be a strong enough effect. The idea behind Somatik is to provide predictable, positive doses.

7. TLO: What are your thoughts about the proposed OMCS manufacturing regulations which propose banning adding caffeine to edibles? Do you think they will affect Somatik?

Somatik: From the limited information we have at the moment we believe they are referring to additive caffeine. We plan to use the public comment window to clarify, and if they do intend to ban use of any caffeine we plan to put forward four specific arguments:

1. We would like CA regulations to mirror other legalized states, and no other state has a caffeine clause.

2. We would like medicinal marijuana regs to be similar to other FDA regulated substances and many medicines including DayQuil and Excedrin contain caffeine.

3. There is no conclusive scientific research to promote the idea that the combination of caffeine and cannabis is unsafe

4. The combination of caffeine and cannabis is helping patients with specific problems more effectively than other treatments (such as IBS).

Look for Somatik at a dispensary near you, pour yourself a cup, sit back and enjoy some damn good coffee.