Review: Somatik Coffee

I am someone who likes my coffee blacker than a raven’s wing at midnight on a new moon. At work, before filling my cup, I lift the pot up to the light, if I can see through it I will pour it out and make it again rather than drink that clear garbage. With that being said, Somatik is a delicious cold-brewed black coffee and with 15 mg of THC from a clear hash oil, it is the only clear I would ever want in my morning cup.

No matter how you like your coffee, hot, cold, black or with milk, Somatik is an excellent way to start your day with a microdose of THC and all the caffeine you’ll need to make sure you don’t get any of that sleepy-edibles feeling. Even better, the cannabis company has partnered with Ritual Coffee, which means the coffee portion of Somatik is organic. While California has a reputation for doing everything organic, that is hardly the case in the cannabis industry, making Somatik a real stand-out among other edibles and easily the best medicated coffee I have tried. Even the packaging is well thought out, which is why they used brown glass to block UV light which can decarboxylate your cannabinoids and potentially ruin the product (unless you want your THC to become CBN).

After trying the brew, I caught up with Christopher Schroeder, the CEO and creator of Somatik. Schroeder is a former graduate and mentor at the Gateway Incubator. He describes the 4-month canna-business accelerator as “intensive” but leaving you with “a 360-degree view of the cannabis industry and a business that is compliant and investment ready.”

His approach to creating Somatik was also quite intensive as he meticulously selected ingredients from different beans and brew methodologies.

“[I experimented with] different lengths of times, different filters, different brew styles, we kept tweaking it over about 40 batches of beans and brew types, until we got the right flavor,” he says.

Ritual Coffee has been his favorite coffee since he moved to San Francisco11 years ago. Since he already had a relationship with founder Eileen Rinaldi through the non-profit SF Made, collaboration between the two was a natural choice. Schroeder said he “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.”

In addition to the organic cold-brewed Ritual Coffee, Somatik uses “a clear distillate” which they test for pesticides, microbial, residuals, and potency.

While speaking with Schroeder we touched on the elephant in the room, the proposed regulations under the Medical Cannabis Regulatory Safety Act, namely the manufacturing provisions which propose banning added caffeine in edibles.

“From the limited information we have at the moment we believe they are referring to additive caffeine,” he said noting that being a proactive business-owner, he plans “to use the public comment window to clarify.”

In terms of the benefits of cannabis microdosing, Schroeder believes Somatik could play a part in the current trend.

“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,” he said.

This ties back into Schroeder’s goal of creating an “every-day” edible, something accessible and functional that can help a wide range of people.

How to Enjoy: The bottle says it all, “Serve chilled. Shake Gently. Drink a small amount and wait up to 2 hours for effects. Dance, rinse, repeat.”

Potency: With 15 mg of THC, Somatik is not necessarily for those with high tolerances. I personally dose my THC at around 100-150 mg over the course of a day, which by most standards is a fairly high dose, but I have a considerable tolerance. That being said, I am not taking that full amount in one sitting, I like to stagger my doses throughout the day. For someone like myself, 15 mg is plenty for my morning coffee.

Taste, Cold: Bold, rich, and pleasantly bitter on the first gulp, with a lingering taste of burnt caramel on the soft palate at the back of the mouth. Following sips were less acidic, yielding to a very warm and pleasing smokiness, mixed with more of that caramel sweetness as a more flavor-forward note, that continued to linger until it was all I could taste. There was no detectable flavor of cannabis, just very high quality, organic, cold-brewed coffee.

Taste, Hot: Heating it up really released that caramel scent, leaving my kitchen smelling like a candy-shop. While the package said to consume cold, having tried it both ways, I am convinced that the flavor got immeasurably richer and fuller when heated. The bitter taste was gone, replaced by a dark, sweet cherry flavor, with secondary notes of caramel and citrus. The citrus notes seemed to get stronger with time as the sweetness mellowed as the coffee cooled down.

Effects: I felt the effects earlier than the normal hour and a half it takes for edibles to kick in, from my experience drinks tend to be processed faster than other edibles. The Somatik resulted in very uplifting effects with no sleepiness, as one would expect from coffee, it seems that the caffeine is enough to compensate for any sluggishness the THC may cause, or it could be because caffeine changes how THC effects the body.

TELL US, have you tried a cannabis-infused coffee?