The journey east begins Tuesday! Plus some logistics and a People's Purple pic.
almost 5 years ago – Fri, May 17, 2019 at 06:25:32 PM

They'll be floating soon!

Our fancy freight tracker tells us the boat with the world's most precious cold brew cargo is scheduled to leave Taiwan on May 21, which they're estimating puts all the gear in our warehouse on June 18. That's just an early estimate of course, but their estimates are usually pretty reliable. 

As of now, that would mean Rumble Gos/Go's/Goes (the plural form is a little weird) at your doors by the end of June. Fingers crossed that timing holds because that's PEAK cold brew season!

Surveys get locked down next week

Since the filters will be on their way shortly, we'll be locking down your survey responses (i.e. color choices, add-ons, etc.) next week, but we'll give you 48 hours of heads-up before we do so. If you want to review/change your selections or add an additional filter for a friend (you generous soul), now's a good time for that. You can easily review/change your survey by searching your inbox for "rumble go backerkit". And if you still can't find the survey there, go to the following link and where it says "Lost Your Survey?", just enter whatever email address you have linked to your Kickstarter account: https://rumble-go-portable-cold-brew-coffee-maker.backerkit.com 

FYI, you'll still be able to update your shipping address for a few more weeks, in case you're moving around a bit. We won't lock addresses until the absolute last minute before we start fulfilling rewards, and we'll give you the heads-up before we do that too.

Pretty People's Purple Pic

From logistics to pics. Remember that stretch goal you scored? It was for a third bottle color option, which you then voted on to make that color People's Purple. Well, you know what? You still haven't seen a pic of one with our fancy logo etched in steel on it. Lo and behold...

Makes you teary-eyed, doesn't it?

More to come next week! In the meantime, give a shout with any questions.

-Hans & Karl

Woohoo! New samples of the base look great and work great. So we're ready to ship from Taiwan once again!
almost 5 years ago – Tue, May 07, 2019 at 11:59:37 PM

Rumblers,

Pumped to report we're back on track! The newest round of production samples of the silicone base are officially good to go.

We finally received a handful of them last night, took a few deep breaths, and then got to work trying to find flaws. They fit perfectly, so there's no longer any noticeable wiggle when they're attached to the filter, but yet they're still easy enough to attach/detach. They feel tight and can't be rotated nearly as easily before (you may recall the earlier "product feel" issue where this rotating cap felt a bit off). And cosmetically they're looking pretty spiffy too. That new tool our manufacturer built definitely did the trick.

So this means your Rumble Go filters are ready to make their maiden voyage to America! Everything goes to the port this Friday, May 10 and should leave Taiwan a few days later. That has them in our warehouse in early/mid June, and hopefully in your hands by the end of June. Consider that a very tentative timeline that we'll be firming up as we go.

We'll keep you updated with any major shipping milestones, and we'll also be back in touch with some process-related stuff and some pics too.

Also, we haven't locked survey responses yet, so in case you need to make changes (e.g. new shipping address, different product selections, etc.), you can update your survey by either digging out the old link from your inbox, or by clicking the following link and entering whatever email address you use with your Kickstarter account:  https://rumble-go-portable-cold-brew-coffee-maker.backerkit.com 

As always, we're here to help so reach out with any questions!

Hans & Karl

The base: Third time. No charm. Another month.
about 5 years ago – Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 08:00:03 PM

Rumblers,

Wish we had some better news to report, but unfortunately that fix we'd planned for the silcone base proved to be anything but. We received three samples of the new pieces on Monday, and 2 of the 3 are behaving identically to the problematic ones we told you about last week (1 of the 3 is slightly better, but still not really good enough). We even noticed a slight ability to wiggle one of the bases this time (video below), and we don't need long-term testing to figure out whether that might become a problem. 

Video of the base "wiggle" - A little tough to depict on-screen, but here you can see how that bottom ridge moves toward/away from the metal filter. We need this base to fit tighter than that:

So we're not shipping our freight tomorrow as planned. Our manufacturer agreed to rework the actual molds this time. You might recall from the last update that their initial fix only involved adjusting the silicone's curing temperature. But this time they'll be retooling the shape of the molds, and that's a lot more intensive a process. Overall, they think it will set us back 5 weeks (in theory). Based on backers' reaction to our last update, it seems like folks are more interested in getting a good product than an earlier one, so we're going to push forward with this rework job. It's a little bit of time and a little bit of money, but we think it'll be worth it.

So add another 5 weeks, and hopefully everything will be leaving Taiwan by the end of April. We're reluctant to give anything more concrete than that at this point so we don't get anyone's hopes up, but we'll keep you updated with our progress.

Really appreciate your patience here. As always, give a shout with questions, thoughts, concerns, jokes or obscure coffee knowledge. We're all ears.

Hans & Karl

Silicone base being reworked once again. Freight shipping pushed back another week and a half.
about 5 years ago – Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 07:58:46 PM

New Freight Shipping Date: March 21

We were all geared up to float these puppies across the Pacific, but after receiving our production sample last week, we caught an issue that we didn't really feel comfortable with. It didn't at all affect the way the filter brewed coffee, it was more of a "product feel" type of thing. One of those issues that makes you think there's a problem with the product, even if there isn't one. Anyway, to give us time to correct it, we needed to push the freight shipping date back a week and a half to March 21.

Read on for deets... 

Again with the base this time! Basically, the production sample of the silcone base that we received could now be rotated/turned very easily while it was attached to the filter. We tested it thoroughly, and didn't notice it becoming detached or allowing grounds to escape any easier than the prior versions. This was just one of those things that didn't feel quite right to us. And we hadn't seen this issue on any of the prior samples, so we weren't happy with it. 

Now, if reworking the base would have resulted in months more delays, we wouldn't have done it to be honest. It's a pretty minor issue and the filter could have been cast off as "good enough". Fortunately our manufacturer agreed with us that it felt off (a stand-up move by them, since factories don't typically love redoing a new run of parts for free), and importantly they said it could be corrected pretty quickly. The fix had to do with adjusting the temperature of the silicone while it's being molded. This adjustment enables the base to be ever-so-slightly bigger and results in it hugging the bottom rim of the filter more firmly so that it can't rotate quite as easily. 

So we'll see! The revised production samples were shipped to us earlier today and should be delivered by Monday. Hopefully all goes well so we can sign off then and have them on the boat later that week (March 21).  

That's really it. Hope everyone's OK with a wee bit more delay. Give a shout if not. While we can't speed things up, we're always keen to hear your feedback, good or bad.

Thanks for your patience and fingers crossed! We'll let you know how they turn out next week.

Hans & Karl

Yay! Another improvement! & Boo! Another delay!
about 5 years ago – Fri, Mar 01, 2019 at 10:15:14 PM

Rumblers,

Coming at you with another good news/bad news update. :) & :(

The bad news first: we're delayed again. Some of you figured this out already since we've passed by the estimated date in update #9. This one isn't a massive delay either (just a bit under a month) but it's a delay nonetheless and we don't like those. So our apologies! We're now expecting the filters to arrive in the US in mid-April, and then quick-turn shipping your fully-assembled rewards within a week of their arrival. So the current estimate is to have Rumble Gos in backers' hands by the end of April.

Next, the good news: we're delayed because the silicone base has been improved one last time. When we wrote the last update, we were quietly dual-tracking two different base molds, which basically differed in height only. The first one (the one you saw in update #9) was the vastly-improved version that was ready to go into production. But at the same time, we were also testing a newer, slightly-taller version of the base that allows it to fit an even wider array of bottle sizes, and hopefully even future-proofs the filter a bit better for bottle sizes that don't exist yet. Overall, the difference is two additional notches (going from 9 different height levels to 11) and a quarter inch in overall height. 

Now, we also had to keep the height of the fully-collapsed filter the same, otherwise the new one would have been too tall for some of the shorter compatible bottles. So to compensate for the taller base, we ended up shinking the height of the metal filter by a quarter inch as well. Fortunately that's a far simpler and quicker tweak to make to the metal tooling, and so that was a much smaller deal than the change we made to the base mold.

After testing this new filter against the update #9 filter, we found the newer version didn't adversely affect the integrity of the filter and we also couldn't taste any difference in the quality of the coffee, so we decided to move forward with production of this newer version.

tl;dr You'll be getting a more flexible filter that's compatible with a wider array of bottles, so hopefully that's worth a few more weeks! 

Best news of all: we're done with all the tweaking! We've officially begun production and booked freight from Taiwan with an expected ship date of March 11. Give it 30 days to arrive at the port and then a few more days to get through customs and reach our warehouse, and then a week to assemble all of your individual rewards and ship them out, and we should be looking at the bulk of rewards going out the week of April 22. That's the plan for now. Fingers crossed! 

Next week we'll be sending out a more process-oriented update with details around finalizing your Backerkit surveys and addresses, but that's for another day so no rush to deal with any of that stuff right now.

A huge thanks to you all for your patience. We're really psyched about the changes and hopefully an improved product is worth a few extra weeks. Enjoy the weekend!

Hans & Karl