Laughing Through The Pain: Navigating Wellness

A New Kind of Caffeine: The Future of Coffee with Px

• Richard Blake • Season 1 • Episode 15

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Discover the energizing secrets of Rare Bird Coffee with Jeoffrey Dietrich, the mastermind who went from PhD to coffee innovator, as he shares the story of Px - the groundbreaking caffeine alternative. This isn't just another cup of joe; Px promises all the buzz without the unwanted side effects. As my co-host Andy Esam and I savor this exceptional brew, we're struck by its robust flavor and intrigued by its potential health benefits. Join us to learn about caffeine's natural origins, its unexpected effects on our bodies, and how Rare Bird Coffee is challenging the status quo of our daily grind.

Battling caffeine addiction is a silent struggle many of us face, but what if I told you the solution may lie within our genes? We delve into the intricate world of paraxanthine metabolism, discussing the addictive nature of caffeine and how genetics influence our body's reaction to it. Geoffrey gives a compelling look into why Px has been absent from the market and the potential for building a tolerance to this novel compound. We're not just talking about a coffee alternative; we're looking at a cultural shift in how we energize our mornings and sustain our days.

As we wrap up, we contemplate the future of coffee culture and how PX could enhance the lives of those seeking improved sleep and reduced stress. Through personal stories and endorsements from historical figures to modern-day biohackers, we're convinced that this is more than just hype. We also explore the nitty-gritty of brewing the perfect cup, from avoiding plastics to optimizing extraction. This episode promises a rich blend of science, passion, and the promise of a better, jitter-free tomorrow with Rare Bird Coffee's PX. Grab your headphones and a fresh mug; this is one conversation you won't want to miss.

00:00 Welcome to the Show: Introducing Jeffrey Dietrich

00:42 Jeffrey's Journey: From Bioengineering to Coffee Innovation

02:02 Introducing Rare Bird Coffee: A New Caffeine Experience

https://rarebird.coffee/products/award-winning-px-paraxanthine-coffee?selling_plan=2632515842

04:32 The Science Behind Caffeine and Its Alternatives

06:44 Personal Experiences with Caffeine and the Birth of Rare Bird

08:36 Understanding Caffeine Metabolism and the Role of Paraxanthine

11.14 - Link to Update Energy Drinks
https://drinkupdate.com/

12:45 Rare Bird's Vision and Product Range

13.46 - Link to caffeine content in Starbucks
https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-complete-guide-to-starbucks-caffeine

16:58 Addressing the Coffee Culture and Health Benefits

21:00 Exploring Adaptogens in Coffee

21:39 Debunking Morning Coffee Myths

23.15 - Link to study showing lions mane having no impact
https://examine.com/supplements/lionsmane/

23:38 Focusing on the U.S. Market: Strategy and Potential

24.25 - Link to study showing there is no reason to delay caffeine consumption upon waking 
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5JUZFVRCZP/

24:30 The Story Behind the Name 'Rarebird'
25:08 Best Brewing Practices and Health Concerns

28.28 - Link to Chris Williamson episode with doctor researching plastics
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/769-dr-shanna-swan-why-are-mens-testosterone-levels/id1347973549?i=1000652106798

28:48 Innovating Beyond Coffee: The Future of Parazanthine

28.52 - Link to Chemex coffee machine
https://www.chemexcoffeemaker.com/coffeemakers.html

31:25 Personal Coffee Routines and Health Hacks
36:51 Finding Rarebird: Availability

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to Laughing Through the Pain. Navigating Wellness with me Richard L Blake, my co-host, andy E Sam, and today we have Geoffrey Dietrich with us. So welcome Geoffrey, how's it going?

Speaker 2:

Thank you guys. Pleasure to be here Doing well. I have a cup of coffee in front of me, so no complaints.

Speaker 1:

Excellent. How are you doing, andy, andy, how's things?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, pretty good thanks. Yeah, I'm waiting for the sunshine in the UK any day now I'm told.

Speaker 1:

Any day now. Yes, indeed, indeed. Well, we won't tell you how good the weather is over here in California. Jeffrey's not far from us, listener, he's over in San Francisco. We're in Wormack Creek. We we didn't realize we were so close, but we are so. So Jeffrey can tell us a little bit about your background. I know you've got a PhD from Berkeley, got a bit of an engineering background. So how did that go from a PhD at Berkeley to what we have now a new kind of coffee?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it's a very circuitous route to get there, but probably a good place to start is. Like most scientists and engineers, I drink a lot of coffee. I started drinking it in undergrad and I've been a coffee drinker most of my life. There's a few times I tried to quit entirely. That's very challenging, but coffee wasn't really where I got started in my career. It was actually in bioengineering and specifically focused on engineering different types of cells to produce new small molecules and different enzymes producing small molecules. So I started off doing my PhD at UC Berkeley, actually working on new synthesis routes for antimalarial compounds, transitioned into biofuels so very different than pharma and at that time I was actually researching a class of enzymes called P450s which are responsible for metabolizing many of the compounds and things that we consume, and that was going to come back years later, be the, in some ways, origin of how we started to think about coffee and a new caffeine replacement, which is the focus of Rare Bird.

Speaker 3:

And can you tell us a bit about Rare Bird Coffee, Jeffrey? What is it? Is it a coffee producer? Is it a series of coffee shops? I've not really heard of it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I would say we are a coffee company, so everything we sell today is direct to consumer. There's a few restaurants, a few cafes where we're starting to have our products show up, but for the most part, you can find us online, and online only. What we do is pretty unique. We are a coffee company like any others, with the exception that our coffee doesn't contain caffeine and it's not decaf coffee, so our coffee actually contains a caffeine replacement. It's called PX, which is short for Paris Amp Thing. No one's ever heard of Paris Amp Thing, but anyone who's ever had a cup of?

Speaker 2:

coffee.

Speaker 2:

But everyone knows it way better than they think they do, because 80% of the caffeine that we consume is going to be converted to parazephine or PX by the enzymes in our liver. Going back to that PhD research, and what makes PX very interesting is that it's going to have a stimulatory quality, just like caffeine. It's going to wake you. Is that it's going to have a stimulatory quality? Just like caffeine, it's going to wake you up, it's going to make you alert.

Speaker 2:

But it has two key differences. The first is that it's metabolized faster than caffeine, so it's cleared on the body faster. That means that you can drink PX coffee later in the afternoon or evening and it's going to have less of an effect on your sleep quality as compared to a traditional caffeinated coffee. The second benefit is that, unlike caffeine, px, for the vast majority of people, is not going to trigger the body's fight and flight response or stress response, right? That's that jittery, wired, over-caffeinated feeling that probably every one of us who's ever had coffee will experience at some point in their lives. So let's get a bit of nutshell. Otherwise, it's coffee, right you brew it.

Speaker 2:

The same taste, the same aroma is the same, the exact same kind of ritual romance of a regular coffee and I can attest to that.

Speaker 1:

I am a subscriber of rare bird coffee. It does taste just as good as regular coffee and that's exactly why I asked jeffrey to come on here. I was like this stuff is awesome. I have a podcast, so I'm going to ask him some questions and learn more about this type of stuff. So that I reached out to jeffrey and said, hey, can we jump on a podcast so I can learn more and share this with my audience? Because I do. I really do feel like people more people deserve to know about this, not just because we want jeffrey to sell more coffee, but because I feel like people need this coffee. I really, I really do like it that much well.

Speaker 3:

So it leads me to think what's wrong with regular coffee? Then you mentioned fight or fly, and I think we've all experienced the jitters. But what's actually going on there and what? What kind of health? Yeah?

Speaker 2:

So I think the best place to start is really thinking about where caffeine came from and how it evolved, right? So caffeine is produced by a bunch of different plants coffee, tea, guarana being like the three big ones that people think about and it's actually evolved as an insecticide. So the plant is making it to dissuade insects from eating the leaves, the berries, et cetera, and it's essentially disrupting the central nervous system of the plant. So there's no reason to believe that this compound that nature evolved to have this protective effect essentially mess with insects is going to be the ideal morning beverage for people. It just so happens, it works and we just suffer through a lot of the downsides. And the reason that caffeine has this effect on most people, at least if you drink enough coffee the jittery, the wired feeling is because you're essentially triggering the body's fight and flight response. It's a magnifier of stress.

Speaker 2:

I think the best way to think about it is what caffeine does is it actually blocks the binding of a compound neurotransmitter called adenosine to receptors in the brain, and adenosine is the compound, along with melatonin, that controls your sleep-wake cycles. So what caffeine is basically doing is saying, okay, hey, do not be sleepy, you need to be awake and that's a response that is very similar to when you're being chased by a bear or a lion 2,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago that fight-and-flight response. So your body's basically going into this state of extreme stress and obviously we no longer exist in a world where we're being chased by wild animals. We're in front of our computers, but it doesn't mean that some deadline that we're procrastinating on isn't equally as stressful right, yeah.

Speaker 3:

And so how did you personally note that caffeine wasn't working for you anymore? And what could others look out for?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I would say early on, like during my undergraduate experience, my graduate experience, which were somewhat stressful, but really not that stressful, I didn't have any issues, right, I could drink two, three cups of coffee, be fine. It was really after that, when I started my first startup company, which was a high stress environment, I almost immediately noticed like okay, this isn't working anymore. I can maybe have a cup of coffee, but more than that. Like it's a downhill battle and it goes quick, right. So that's in part because of genetics.

Speaker 2:

So some people are slow metabolizers of caffeine, some people are fast metabolizers of caffeine and that's going to in part dictate how responsive you are to the compound and what effect it has. But additionally, there's genetic variations in these adenosine receptors within our brain. That also affects how we experience caffeine, or experience PX, for that matter. It just so happens to be I probably have that combination of genetics. It's like, okay, you're okay, but no more than one or two cups if you're stressed, right. So I actually tried to quit coffee a couple times. I did it with a reasonable degree of success. You could wean yourself off caffeine. It takes about a week or two, but as soon as I had some early morning meeting, like 6, 7 am, you're like, okay, I really need a cup of coffee. You're just back on it.

Speaker 1:

So it's a very difficult product essentially to quit yeah, and plus the headaches I get the terrible headaches whenever I try and come off caffeine and then I just I give up immediately and just go have a coffee which essentially that's a withdrawal symptom you're experiencing yeah, it's brutal. So yeah, you mentioned fast and slow metabolizers of caffeine. If someone has the DNA for I've got my DNA test and it shows I'm, like I think, a fast metabolizer of caffeine Does that mean I'm going to be a fast metabolizer of parazenthine as well?

Speaker 2:

Generally speaking, it's probably going to correlate well. We have not done those specific research studies, but it basically means your body's probably producing a lot of these p450 enzymes that metabolize the things that you consume. So it's going to be a pretty strong correlation where you're also going to be a fast px metabolizer okay what else?

Speaker 2:

is paroxanthine in just thinking when else anyone might have consumed it so up until about 2021, there were no products that had PX on the market, so in some ways it was a new ingredient, even though it's inside all of us by virtue of our caffeine consumption. But you would never have found it in a coffee or energy drink, and in large part it's because it was a very difficult compound to produce. You actually don't find it in nature and plants other than trace quantities. You can't isolate it, and so that means you have to synthesize it. They're using chemical synthesis or biosynthesis, which is my background, and you could buy it in small quantities, but it's extremely expensive. The first cup of PX coffee that we produced probably cost it was probably a $500 cup of coffee and it and it's like oh, you never want to run that experiment more than once no, my gosh.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think there is another company called um update, who do energy drinks, which I, which I like, but for me, I just like coffee. I need my coffee in the morning, so that's why I prefer the, the rare bird stuff. What sits behind that desire for coffee in the morning? First thing in the morning, so that's why I prefer the, the rare bird stuff what sits behind that desire for coffee in the morning, first thing in the morning.

Speaker 3:

Is it because we are just still so sleepy and we just want that jolt awake, or is it an addiction? Or is it a bit of both?

Speaker 2:

it's an addiction for me yeah, I think we should acknowledge that for all of us. Right there is you can not dependency, acknowledge addiction, right like. Essentially, your brain and your body has adapted to drinking caffeine, so when you don't have it you go into withdrawal, and that's part of the negative experience that you have that morning when you skip coffee. But as well, your body has changed the number of neurotransmitters present and so it's almost expecting that caffeine, and so it's basically bringing you back up to your normal baseline with that first cup of coffee. But it's doing it very quickly. Right Within 20 minutes there's a tremendous increase in caffeine concentration within the bloodstream. That's why it happens like so fast and you're awake almost immediately.

Speaker 1:

Do you develop a tolerance to paroxanthine in the same way as you would with regular caffeine?

Speaker 2:

While we have not done specific research studies, I can say with almost certainty that these caffeine and PX are going to behave similar in that regard.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and is there a maximum amount of paroxanthine coffees one should limit themselves to in a day.

Speaker 2:

So per the FDA rules and regulations. So PX is a generally recognized as safe or grass ingredient, but the maximum recommended consumption is about 300 milligrams per day, right, so it could be up to five cups of coffee, depending on how strong you make your coffee or how weak you make your coffee. There's some variation there. That compares to caffeine where there's a recommendation of 400 milligrams per day, although the honestly like most coffee companies, like starbucks etc. Like the caffeine content is quite high so you can get well over that if you get a large coffee. So that's not per se enforced yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I've never felt the sort of the anxiety as much as I have from, like, a nitro cold brew from starbucks, like when I brew coffee at home. I can have four of those and feel fine throughout the day, but one starbucks and I'm like scratching.

Speaker 2:

They are ultra caffeinated. I don't know exactly how much they have in it, but it's a lot yes, it is, yeah, so what are the rare bird products?

Speaker 3:

then, jeffrey, what do you say?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah so the vision for rare bird, I'll start there is we would like people to walk into any coffee shop in the us and see px coffee up there on the menu board. Right, it's not there today. That's the grand vision. It going to take some time to get there because obviously no one even is aware of PX today, but to get there. We're really looking to make a PX coffee that fits all the different coffee use cases. So we have a ground coffee today. We recently launched a really nice ready to drink coffee. It's not a cold brew, but it's a cold coffee. We are looking at doing an espresso cake up pods later this year. There's a lot of people, you know, that just make single cups at home or in the office, but basically we want to have PX coffee as an option in all the different ways that people consume coffee today.

Speaker 1:

I think I saw you. Maybe at the moment it's a ground coffee, coffee. You're thinking about doing a whole bean yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

We have some prototypes of that that are done. They're just not ready for prime time yet or commercialization, but we're absolutely working on that because that's really the ideal right. You just have beans and people can make an espresso grind, a traditional coffee grind, you know whatever you want with those so how?

Speaker 1:

so Is the reason there's no whole beans, because you have to grind the beans up and then insert the paroxysm in. How does that work?

Speaker 2:

It's really more of an aesthetic bar. We have a very high bar we want to hit. We don't want to change anything about the experience of making or brewing coffee. And when you do the infusion of PX into the beans it leaves a little bit of a change in color, like a little mottled, and for many people they don't care. But we said, hey, if we're going to do this, we want to make it look identical to a traditional coffee.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that sounds fair. The half-life of paroxanthin, because sleep is a big thing, that's a sort of big selling point. What's the half-life of PX?

Speaker 2:

So it's about 20 to 25 percent shorter on average than caffeine, right. So it's shaving off usually a couple hours from the amount of time that after you drink a caffeinated coffee or px coffee between when you may want to fall asleep, right, and that's going to change in terms of absolute time, again, dependent upon if you are a slow caffeine and px metabolizer or a fast caffeine and px metabolizer okay, so my regular rule is no coffee after midday, so I could maybe go no coffee after 1 pm if I'm drinking yeah, you can probably extend it like an hour or two into the afternoon.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a good rule of thumb okay, that's good.

Speaker 3:

That's really when you're going to bed if you're stopping at 12 I go to bed about 9 10 pm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, pretty early. I think one of the reasons for that is to be on the west coast and having friends and work in the uk. You've got to be up early to to do podcasts sometimes.

Speaker 3:

For example, jeffrey, can you tell me, without giving away too many secrets, how the process is different to regular coffee? You mentioned injecting pyraxanthine, but other than that, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I think the best way to think about it is we start off with a green coffee bean, so it's unroasted. It then goes through a decaffeination process which basically is pulling the caffeine out of the bean. We have a grant from the National Science Foundation developing a biotech approach to convert that caffeine and the px, so it's a single step manufacturing approach, essentially mimicking what the body already does. And then you take that px, you put it back into the coffee bean right at a high level, like that's the grand vision.

Speaker 1:

Very so it's not you in a lab getting a bean and a syringe one by one.

Speaker 2:

No, absolutely not I probably would have done that during my PhD days. You do a lot of tedious things like that during grad school, but no, we are fully commercial scale.

Speaker 3:

It's amazing to go for the coffee market and I admire you for it, Cause I think I was reading earlier. I think it's somewhere between 70 and 80% of UK households have two cups of coffee per head per day. So how do you think that's going to go with the messaging trying to get that many people towards a different kind of product?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I think that's the advantage of this type of product, right? Is that it is very well understood that people know what coffee is right, and the vast majority of us know what the downsides of caffeine and coffee are because we've experienced them. We also know when we have to stop drinking coffee during the day to be able to fall asleep at night, right? So in that regard, I think it's actually a big advantage, big advantage.

Speaker 2:

I think the question is, at the end of the day, what percentage of coffee drinkers are going to experience PX coffee better than a regular caffeinated coffee? Because we should acknowledge, there's people out there who can drink five, six, seven, eight cups of caffeinated coffee and they have no issues. So this is probably not going to be the product for them. But about half of coffee drinkers they have some level of caffeine sensitivity where they would probably want to drink more coffee, or they don't drink coffee at all regular coffee at all where they're going to see a pretty big benefit. And, I think, universally right. Everyone wants better sleep quality, no one wants to feel stressed, anxious, etc. So I think the messaging is really not about is this per se better than caffeine for everyone? But rather, hey, if you experience regular coffee in a negative way, try this out. And even if you don't, you're going to get some benefits from being able to drink this coffee in the afternoon.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think some people still think the jury's out on coffee in general. Some people think coffee is bad for you, no one should drink coffee. But I think certainly the biohackers space, given that the two biggest biohackers, ben Greenfield and Dave Asprey, have their own brands of coffee it's very much agreed that coffee is generally good for people's life and it is a life-extending thing, it's a mood boosting thing. I I know that in history they talk about voltaire. Apparently, voltaire used to drink 200 cups of coffee per day and he lived to a ripe old age. So, yeah, certainly I think coffee is, uh, it is a good thing for for most people. But paroxysm can make that good even better, right exactly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think, yeah, I would say. The net benefit of coffee is definitely there and caffeine is definitely there from a physical as well as mental health, cognitive health perspective. The downsides really are on the impact on sleep quality, and then the world is just becoming a more stressful, anxious place and caffeine is just magnifying that. So we're really seeking to address those two big points better sleep at night and feel better during the day yeah, and I have noticed that with the parazanthine my biggest challenge for sleep is sleep efficiency.

Speaker 1:

I fall asleep fairly well, but I struggle to stay asleep and I had maybe a five percent boost in my sleep efficiency when I drink parazanthine. So so, yeah, I can definitely attest to that. And when my sister-in-law was over here, she's quite like a high energy person and she says normally she can't drink coffee. But we gave her some parazanthine and she said she absolutely loved it. No jitters, like good mood, clean energy throughout the day. And she said normally, you know, she'd have coffee once a month. She was having parazanthine rare bird every day while she was here. So there's two positive reviews.

Speaker 2:

Excellent to hear. I love hearing it. That's what we want to do, right? We want to bring a little bit of joy and a little bit more mental wellness to everyone's day. Amazing.

Speaker 3:

You mentioned, the first prototype was 500 bucks a cup. Is the ambition to compete on a price point or is it just an acknowledgement that this is a different product?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I think the long-term vision is to have px coffee be identical in price right to a traditional coffee and obviously there's a big range there in terms of, like, the quality of coffee beans you're using and other aspects but to a first approximation. Right, we want it to come down in price over time, but right now it is certainly more of a premium product. We want to make it accessible to everyone, because everyone deserves to have a better day.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and are you doing anything with adaptogens? I thought I saw something with adaptogens.

Speaker 2:

We played around at first with a few different things when we were doing the launch, in part because we were very supply chain constrained. We just could not make enough coffee to begin with a PX coffee. But we quickly, I think, decided that was more of a distraction. They were working. I was like we're a PX coffee company. Just keep the story very simple, very straight and narrow.

Speaker 1:

Fair enough yeah no-transcript.

Speaker 2:

First consumption exactly always weave in some coffee puns here and there again. Um, this is a, I think, a concept that was kind of wellognized for quite some time, but it's just now reaching the mainstream and it really does come back to the role that adenosine plays within the body's sleep and wake cycle and how caffeine really interferes with that. And so by waiting an hour, you're essentially giving your body some time to go through the natural waking process before you give it that big jolt of caffeine that just almost like electrifies your body to wake you up.

Speaker 1:

Well, you'll be happy to hear that apparently that's just been debunked by a study. They did a study on people exercising I'm trying to find it right now. Max Lugavere posted it but it basically said that there's no scientifically valid reason to delay caffeine intake upon wakening. So they did a deep dive, but I think they were looking at people's sleep and then their exercise performance and then crashes, and they found no difference in people who are drinking coffee first thing in the morning and people who are drinking at two hours so they can drink rare bird even earlier in the day great thing you don't have to change your behavior at all.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, definitely interesting reading that study. I had not been familiar with those conclusions though dr darren et al.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just come out a hot off the press reader. I will have to change my behavior, because I have been delaying coffee for one to two hours, but now I I can just crack open a fresh, a cold brew or not a cold brew but a cold can at the side of my bed and drink it in bed. I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 3:

Selfish. Are you UK global or are you focusing just on the US market for the time being?

Speaker 2:

Focusing on the US market for the time being. I think we've got more than enough to chew right now. The coffee market is tremendous 250 million coffee drinkers in the US. So we're going to be focused there for the near term. Obviously, coffee is a global beverage. There's also other places. Caffeine is found like teas, energy drinks. The scope of where PX can go in the long term is big, but you've got to start small.

Speaker 3:

Whichever one of you comes over the pond next, bring me, bring me some if you'd be so kind.

Speaker 1:

I can definitely do that it's nice and maybe, if it's any of our listeners, some of our listeners have like, well, keto shops and online shops in the uk. Maybe they want to start uh, distributing to to the uk and europe. But yeah, we'll reach out to jeffrey for that. Don't speak to me about that. But yeah, one question we have is rare bird. Where did the name come from?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the origin is kind of eluded but it really comes down to to be a rare bird is to be unique, to stand out, and it was very hand in hand with some of the brand and company values around bucking the trend standing out, improving mental wellness, just living your best life and making sure that each day is like the best version of yourself and so there's this natural kind of overlap between those concepts and the word rare bird.

Speaker 1:

Nice, I absolutely love that. Yeah, you mentioned percolation. Do you have an opinion on what's the best way to brew coffee, or specifically parazanthine?

Speaker 2:

so, in terms of what's a px behaves very similar to caffeine, so it's going to work right. Whatever brewing method you're trying to use, I think, beyond that, it's really whatever your preference is. Like, I wouldn't say like I think there's people out there and say, okay, like a drip coffee is going to be a better quality coffee and then say a french press. But my opinion is, drink what you like, right, like, make it how you like. To make it a strong, weak, whatever. Who am I to tell you?

Speaker 1:

you know how to brew a cup yeah, well, uh, yeah, I have opinions on that. In terms of plastics, I feel like plastics, from a health perspective, are the biggest problem. I just listened to that chris williamson episode with a doctor who's researching plastics and things like that and how plastics are in, you know, everywhere, from the bottom of the ocean to in our blood, and the higher concentration of plastics, the more hormonal disruption children had, the more incidence of heart disease and cancer and things like that. So I'm getting very concerned about plastic. So I like to use the Chemex because it's filtered through paper and then it's glass. I used to use the AeroPress. I love the AeroPress, but it is plastic, plastic and yeah, then there is there more of an effect with heat as well?

Speaker 1:

I guess with the heat, it's also going to be potentially leaching those, those phthalates, into the coffee. And then there's a lot of very nice coffee makers out there koorigs and and espressos but I think they have a lot of proud plastic, so I do really worry about that kind of thing. So what's the other? The french press can be good because they're glass as long as there's no plastic there. And then that was the one, like the spanish family, a percolator, where you put it on the hob and it's that way. They're normally metal, so I think they're a pretty good option as well and is there anything to this?

Speaker 3:

um, I hear that you shouldn't basically scold the coffee bean or you shouldn't put it under direct like boiling hot water Is that the ideal temperature for extracting all the flavor compounds, px or caffeine, from the bean is something like 95 degrees Celsius.

Speaker 2:

So it's quite hot. One degree Celsius is boiling. When you get above that, you are going to start seeing more degradation of a lot of the things that you want right to be present in the coffee, whether from a, you know, phytochemical perspective, an antioxidant perspective or just a taste and aroma perspective.

Speaker 1:

The higher, the higher the temperature, the faster right those reactions and those decompositions are going to occur I have always been advised that you should drip a little bit of water on the beans and not saturate it, but just drip a little bit whilst whilst it's not too hot, wait a minute once it comes off the boil and so the aromas can diffuse, or something like that. Is there any truth to that?

Speaker 2:

uh, I have to. I I do know that the gold standard is to like do it in phases in terms of the extractive thing about from a chemical engineering perspective. I am not sure on the exact rationale behind that.

Speaker 3:

I'll have to look into it I can't tell you how much I was wishing you'd say that was absolute nonsense. Speed up the question. Well, okay, what?

Speaker 2:

I will say is that coffee extraction is probably the most researched like chemistry or chemical engineering, reaction or phenomena anywhere. Right like there are tons of articles written about it, everything from water quality to water temperature extraction time. Like it is thoroughly well researched, talkingly so have you got any?

Speaker 3:

would there be any ambition then, jeffrey, to look at caffeine and other products and swap it for paroxanthine or you?

Speaker 1:

coffee is obviously an enormous project but the most drunk drink in the world. Yeah, it's a big market.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, I was just thinking like technically, the same principle could be applied to other things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so rare bird is focused on coffee. Right, we're focused on coffee only today. Px can go anywhere caffeine is found, so you can imagine a future in which you have pxt, px, energy drinks, px, sodas, etc. Why we started with coffee is not only from a market perspective, because in my opinion, the benefits of px versus caffeine are best aligned with the coffee consumer right, energy drink consumers. It's a little bit different goal and you know, feel and what you're trying to get from a cup of coffee and do you do swiss water extraction for the decaf coffee?

Speaker 1:

is that how you get it?

Speaker 2:

of the decaf is a ea decaf, which is a sugarcane-based solvent, naturally produced, and we use that process in part because it retains the best flavors of the coffee, because there are a bunch of decaffeination processes out there that can make some bad coffee, which is why decaf coffee has a little bit of a negative reputation, which is carryover from the 80s and 90s. But that's one reason is the quality of the coffee, and the second is we wanted to make sure that we use a natural occurring extractant. Obviously water does that as well, but because of the taste benefits of ea we go that route nice you mentioned the.

Speaker 3:

Is it the, the FDA, who control product development? I'm assuming the Parazanthine. All the research is pointing to it being a very safe chemical.

Speaker 2:

Yep. So the FDA outlines the process to introduce a new food ingredient onto the market and it's a little bit ironic, it's a little bit odd, right, that this compound that's been thin. All of us has to go through that process. But you definitely want to make sure you check all the boxes and you're really understanding the safety profile. So the fda outlines here here's a set of studies that you need to complete to demonstrate safety. Uh, so we did those. There's another part, third party that's done those as well, and in every study that we've run or others have run, p PX outperforms caffeine in terms of human health and safety across a bunch of different parameters. So it's still obviously early days, but I think that the data is increasingly pointing that caffeine is less safe than PX.

Speaker 1:

Good to know. Yeah, how do you drink your coffee? Do you add butter to your, to your coffee? Collagen, anything like that creamer, anything?

Speaker 2:

I just I just add milk, I drink it. It's very simple, right? I will either do I'll make an espresso shot or I'll just do like a standard drip coffee, like that's the way I drink it. But again, my background is a scientist, an engineer. I am not a super taster, by any means fair enough, mine's quite complicated I'll go through it now.

Speaker 1:

Step one collagen. I put two scoops of collagen, so about 20 grams of collagen for you so collagen is a type of protein.

Speaker 1:

It's amino acid structure makes up a lot of our sort of like tendons and connective tissues and supposedly it's very good for beauty. And for a long time people were like, oh, it just gets broken down in the stomach. How does it go to your skin? But then they did. Recently I posted on my Instagram story show that people who were taking coffee did have better skin, better hydration and things like that. So it is good for anti-aging.

Speaker 1:

Step two C60, bucs Minstafullerene that's probably something most people haven't heard of. So Buxminsterfullerene, or C60, is a really potent antioxidant. It's one of the most potent ones out there. It's quite expensive though that's the one thing, but that's put into a carrier oil of MCT oil, so it's medium chain triglyceride oil. So medium chain triglycerides, a type of fat that the brain loves. It, yeah, brain fuel. It's a fat that gets more like a carbohydrate, so it's good for the brain.

Speaker 1:

Then I put in I have a little bit of creamer. Yeah, just regular cream. This is something andy and I, when he was over here visiting, he was like, why don't we put cream in coffee in england? It's so good. I think more people should drink cream in coffee, because it is. It definitely does taste good. Then I put in uh scoop creatine creatine as the most researched performance aid ergogenic out there. That's good for people with alzheimer's, it's good for people's brains and it's very famous for for being good for athletic. Arson venga was was derided when he brought it into the premier league in in the 90s, but now every professional soccer player is is taking creatine. And then I do take lmnt. So lmnt is a type of uh electrolyte. It's very high in salt and sodium and if you want to learn more about that, listen to our episode with dorian. But they have this chocolate caramel flavor that goes really well in coffee. So I'm making it into a healthy mocha type thing.

Speaker 2:

So that's my process I'm interesting, and do you mix it in the brewed coffee or do you put it into the ground coffee and let it extract as the the coffee is being brewed?

Speaker 1:

oh, I didn't know that was an option. I just put it straight into the cup and then, yeah, whilst whilst I'm waiting for the coffee to be brewed, the cup gets all that other stuff.

Speaker 3:

Try it in the brewing process.

Speaker 1:

So what? I put all that stuff in my Chemex along with the ground beans.

Speaker 2:

Yep, mix it up, make sure it's thoroughly mixed, and the reason why is because, again, that water coming in is going to be about 95 degrees Celsius. It is going to speed up the dissolution process of many of the things that you are using, with the exception of mct, which is going to be poorly water soluble and you're going to find likely that it's going to just increase the solubility, make for a kind of better experience in that final cup okay, you're going to lose a little bit, because there's gonna be some residual water that stays in the grounds, yeah, but the vast majority is going to come through into the cup.

Speaker 1:

What about the collagen? Do you think that would go through or that should go straight into the cup?

Speaker 2:

It all really depends on the water solubility. I'm not familiar with the solubility of collagen.

Speaker 1:

It's quite clumpy. I have to use an electric whisk to get it to mix in, so it might not be the best thing to put into the beans.

Speaker 2:

The other interesting thing that you're doing is, essentially, you are piggybacking a lot of these additional health supplements on your coffee routine. I think it's a really interesting concept, because coffee is something that people want to do every day. We don't change that behavior. You can use it as a tool to start taking the things that don't give you, like that immediate acute benefit, but give you the long-term benefits from a health perspective that you're looking for. Yeah, the bulletproof coffee.

Speaker 1:

that is, I would say, what really kick-started the biohacking. The bulletproof coffee. That is, I would say, what really kick-started the biohacking movement or space. And that was just adding butter and MCT oil to coffee and the idea there was like one, you're getting supposedly healthy fats, but when you mix or blend that fat it really slows down the absorption of the caffeine. So avoid some of those crashes and things like that. But with paroxysm you don't have to worry about that anymore crashes and things like that, but with paroxysm thing.

Speaker 3:

Don't have to worry about that anymore. Well, I'm glad that jeffrey doesn't think his wonderful coffee is being ruined by your concoction in the morning again.

Speaker 2:

Make it however you want to make it as long as you enjoy it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're not selling any more to him.

Speaker 3:

I would tell you about my coffee routine, but it's a whole other episode.

Speaker 1:

Oh really, yeah, go on. What is it Go to?

Speaker 2:

the office Even more elaborate.

Speaker 3:

I put an espresso pod in the machine. Oh God, put my cup underneath.

Speaker 1:

And just black, just black. Yeah, all that changes when.

Speaker 3:

Jeffrey brings my rare bird over. Excellent, excellent.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, thank you very much, jeffrey. How do we find you and how do we find rare bird?

Speaker 2:

yeah, you can find rare bird uh on our website, rarebirdcoffee um. Rare birds, all one word uh. It's also available on amazon. You know, those are the two routes to get it today. But check your local coffee shop because you never know, we're just going to start showing up in a few places this year okay, and you're on instagram as well, right rare bird yep, yep. Instagram at drink rare bird twitter as well, linkedin all same handle awesome, awesome.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's been so good to speak to you, jeffrey. Thanks so much it's. Yeah, I've learned a lot, and I wish you all the very best, because it sounds like you're on to something big here we think we are.

Speaker 2:

It's a pleasure to join you guys. It was a fun conversation and I love talking about coffee, so I look forward to next time awesome, all right, well, thank you, jeffrey andy.

Speaker 1:

thank you, listener. Remember to like and subscribe and write us a review and find us at the breath geek on instagram and at andy sam on instagram, and I'm richard l blakecom as well. We look forward to seeing you next week. Bye-bye, cheers.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for listening Bye.