The ultimate buddy story that created the Bripe Coffee Brew Pipe - the ultimate outdoor coffee experience for adventurers
The Bripe team is at Outdoor Retailer Summer Market tradeshow in Salt Lake City this week in Summit Distribution's Booth #19027 in the Main Hall
Tim Panek escaped the jungles of corporate America over 20 years ago. He and his wife Linda took their four children to the real jungles of Costa Rica to live a life of adventure, entrepreneurship, and community service. In 1998 Craig Hall started a Canadian success story with his wife Amber called Equator Coffee Roasters. The couple now have four children of their own living in the country just outside Ottawa, Ontario, Canada's capital city.
Together the two buddies created The Bripe Coffee Brew Pipe – an ultra-light, ultra-portable coffee brewing device that redefines making coffee outdoors as a tactile, social be-your-own-barista experience.
Like most things worth doing in this world, the Bripe required Panek and Hall to sweat the details. Panek made the first Bripe prototype out of paper then fabricated one in copper. He continued prototyping and landed on the “inner cone” design that gives the Bripe its heating and cooling efficiency to make a great coffee shot in three minutes or less.
And that’s what they did. The Bripe Coffee Brew Pipe is a small, light, copper and silver pipe that makes great coffee in the great outdoors. No electricity, gas canister, kettle or stove. A Bripe only requires ground coffee and water, and the Bripe Coffee Brew Kit that retails for US$84.95 includes a portable butane-powered quad jet torch to fire your brew.
Like Panek, Hall loves trekking into the wilderness and sharing his outdoor adventures. The same year he started his company, he was leading a church youth group at a remote Cree community in the Canadian province of Quebec.
Panek happened to be there on a totally different mission, and after meeting Hall, invited his group to participate in a spiritual dance and music gathering. The two men got to know each other and Hall proposed taking his youth group to Costa Rica. Panek hosted the whole group along with Hall’s family to stay at his jungle home on the Pacific Coast.
They went on treks and adventures including a visit to the Grand Chief of the Indigenous Peoples of Costa Rica, and their friendship, soon to span two decades, was sealed.
In 2015, Panek approached Hall with an idea. He wanted to be able to enjoy a great coffee shot when he was outside, and found that all of the existing coffee-making products were too complex, too bulky, and weighed too much to fit into a backpack or in his river kayak. He saw an opportunity to create a simple, compact coffee brewing kit.
As soon as he saw his friend’s prototype, Hall said, “I’m in” and insisted they immediately go to a patent office to protect the cool new invention. Hall then used his experience as a coffee guru to help Panek further refine the Bripe. Their collaboration added features such as a precision-etched stainless steel filter for various grinds of coffee, and a thermometer (that also doubles as a stir stick) for precision brewing.
Working together, the two buddies also upsized the pipe section of the Bripe so people could enjoy milk, sugar or cream with their brews.
Starting this summer, Bripes will be available in outdoor stores and indie coffee shops throughout North America. The iconic New York City outdoor retailer Paragon Sports was the first retailer in the USA to offer Bripes in its online catalog earlier this week. Now everyone, on thier own or in a group of "Bripers" can enjoy an ultra-portable, ultra-light coffee shot everywhere, from a remote mountaintop to a white-water river run to a cycling trail to a quiet bench in a city park. Winter adventurers can similarly enjoy a Bripe brew on a snowshow or back-country ski trek. Makinig a Bripe brew leaves zero environmental impact except coffee grounds.
The Bripe co-founders' sense of adventure in creating the Bripe also includes their strong sense of mission. A portion of Bripe Inc.’s profits is going to help build a self-sustaining coffee and cocoa-roasting operation with the Quitirrisi Tribe in Puriscal, Costa Rica under the umbrella of the Fundeico Foundation, with donated land by Tim and Linda.
Wherever your adventures take you, bring your Bripe and enjoy your brew. Tell em Tim and Craig sent ya!
Weighing only 337 grams, the Bripe Coffee Brew Kit comes with a handheld quad jet torch butane lighter, reusable variable photo-etched stainless-steel filter, thermometer, coffee tube and carrying case. With water and ground coffee, a great brew everywhere, on any adventure, is ready to drink in about three minutes.
[GEAR REVIEWERS CAN REQUEST A BRIPE KIT AT OUTDOOR RETAIL SHOW IN SUMMIT DISTRIBUTION BOOTH #19027 IN MAIN HALL, OR EMAIL NATHAN.RUDYK@GMAIL.COM]
