This Ramen Gets Patch Notes...? Why v3.1?

Vite Ramen is the ONLY ramen in the world with patch notes made out of spite.

Or patch notes at all, really. But what the hell are patch notes?

And why the numbers v3.1?

(note: it’s different from Vite Kitchens System v3.1)

Don’t you hate it when companies just change up the recipe and don’t say anything? Yeah, me too, so we’ll always make it a point to say when we’re doing things so you know exactly what’s going on, and why we made the changes!

So... why patch notes, and how out of spite? And why v3.1?

Because we never, ever want to stop improving.

We didn’t come up with recipes and call it good forever. The first version of Vite Ramen, honestly, kinda sucked. It was built on a different philosophy, built on too many compromises of fear. You can read more about that here: https://viteramen.com/blogs/news/how-vite-ramen-went-from-inedible-to-incredible-the-untold-story-of-patch-notes

And from there, we’ve kept it up, learning new ways of doing things, new ingredients, new methods, honing and training our skill to make things better, and better, and better. We’re not aiming for perfection. There’s no such thing. We’re aiming for better.

Our first version was v1.0, released after our Kickstarter.

Then:

V1.1

V1.1.1

V1.2 (this one created the problem we needed to solve in v3.1)

V3.0

...

A very consistent number set that makes sense, right? :^)

V1.1 was a flavor upgrade-- specifically, when we first started, we weren’t sure exactly what we were doing, and we, like many other food manufacturers, got baited into having our recipe created by someone else... who purposefully used cloaked, proprietary pre-blends so that if we wanted to recreate the recipe, or improve it, we’d have to go through him.

It’s a pretty standard industry tactic.

And also, really pissed me off. Out of spite, for v1.1, I went and just learned how to do all of it myself. I read up on so much, talked to so many people, and measured and tasted so many things that I developed carpal tunnel on both hands, hardcore grinding between making the noodles in 10 hour shifts and creating the new recipes with what I learned.

and have been creating our recipes off our own system and suppliers ever since.

Ha. Try to gate me from my recipes now, huh?

Original v1.0 was called Vegan Mushroom Shio, and contained the greatest amount of proprietary recipe, something we couldn’t replicate, and so the one I made myself from the ground up was updated to “Vegan Miso” instead. There were replacements in other recipes as well, but this formed the foundation of understanding that we’d start to improve over the years.

V1.1 also saw the addition of MSG. Remember how I said v1.0 was built on too many compromises of fear? At the very start, we didn’t build necessarily on how we believed it should be done, but rather based on “market conditions” -- Our “research” led us to believe that we should try to make it without MSG, and a whole slew of other bullshit that made the original v1.0 taste... well, to be perfectly honest, pretty bad.

Starting with v1.1, we began to find our feet, and began to fight for the things we believed in instead:
https://viteramen.com/blogs/news/why-did-we-add-msg-to-vite-ramen

And oh boy, did we get a lot of pushback. So, so many angry customers saying they’ll cancel orders, shittalk us to everyone, never order again, etc, etc...

Yet, we held our ground anyway. Now, MSG is in all of our ramen, because IT’S DAMN GOOD, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Those original “studies” were based off the effects of INJECTING MSG INTO BABY MICE BRAINS.

...I DON’T THINK THERE’S A SINGLE THING THAT WOULD GO WELL WHEN YOU INJECT IT INTO BRAINS.

Or, there’s that other one which mice were fed HUGE amounts of MSG. I think when I calculated it, it’d be the equivalent of me trying to eat EIGHT POUNDS of MSG, or 3.6kg

YEAH OF COURSE THAT’D CAUSE PROBLEMS?????

Anyway.

V1.1 also saw the BIGGEST change in our noodles. We finally upgraded from “ol reliable,” (it wasn’t), a pasta machine, to “Amethyst,” the dedicated, roller based noodle machine we use today!

And, of course, it wasn’t without its own struggles either. When we were trying to switch to the new setup, there were a LOT of issues. From a dough lift system that took forever to clean because it had to be COMPLETELY disassembled, to Amethyst’s temper tantrums at the beginning that sounded like gunshots and shook the entire machine violently, to the mixer FLINGING dough out the top like a rocket because the manufacturers had put the wrong motor in...

I still get flashbacks to those 4am nights arguing over bad wifi connections with the manufacturers of the machines. Part of it turns out to be that the machines were absolutely NOT designed for the amount of protein we have. One of the big reasons why a high protein ramen of this kind hadn’t been attempted before is simply that, well, protein is the enemy of machinery, and will destroy it easily.

Cool, right? That’s why v1.1.1 happened...

From v1.0 to v1.1 makes sense, right? The step up process should be v1.1, v1.2, v1.3, v1.4, etc, etc...

...

So what... what was v1.1.1?

Well. Did you know that every single day when production started during those early years, I would be hit with extreme anxiety?

Not only because our dehydrator had a tendency to either pop the breakers and/or start burning the noodles/setting them on fire(that’s a story for another day), but because while we had fixed the noodle machine for the MOST part... it would still have some issues because of the protein.

See, protein is the enemy of machinery because protein is HARD to work. If you’ve ever had to knead dough for a while, you know what I’m talking about. The more protein, the harder it is to knead, and even machines have their tolerances for how hard they can be worked. Not only that, protein makes things want to shrink, which means that sometimes the dough would shrink so much between our rollers that the dough sheet would just snap!

And, the worst times were when it’d get so bad, so tough, that the machine gave up trying to work it... and throw a tantrum.

I say throw a tantrum nicely, but it was INCREDIBLY loud pops, like a shotgun going off. The entire machine would shake, and jump(something that’s VERY scary for an industrial machine) due to all the energy and stress built up, tension that exploded outwards all at once.

What we found out was that the chains would literally not have the energy to drive the sprockets during certain times, and then all that energy would need to find release SOMEWHERE, often with scary results... but luckily, not catastrophic ones. Well, except for that one time, where an entire roller assembly got shattered. Or the motor ripped itself up from its supports. Or...

...

Okay, anyway, you get the point. Part of the issue was that we were trying to run the machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions, or at least the best we could. We took measurements of the space between the rollers, we checked pressure, we did all these different scientific, nerdy things, basing it all on numbers, creating spreadsheets and calculations and...

None of it worked. Ever. It kept happening, and we kept despairing, more and more, wondering when the machine would finally break, and we wouldn’t be able to produce anymore, and need to figure out how to fund a new one, which would have the same problems, and...

Was high protein ramen just a pipe dream, after all? Was this why no one else did it? Did they all have the same problems, and gave up?

Yes. Turns out, yes, these kind of problems were exactly why it hadn’t been attempted.

But also... skill issue.

Am I stupid? Probably. Dense? A lil bit. But that lets me endure through these hardships, these problems, and spend way more time and effort to figure it out than others.

See, I’m not the brightest. I’m not the fastest learner. I can struggle a lot where I see others get through things a lot faster.

But the one thing I can do is endure. The thing I can do better than anyone else is to tank the stress, tank the pressure, tank the pain, the late nights, the repeated failures of testing, over and over and over and over and over again until my fingers bleed and my body falls apart and my mind frays and I’ll still fight, and push, and struggle against the problem until I outlast it.

And so, that’s what I did.

And I learned that when you work with something as live as dough, something with as much character and personality as our flour blend with quinoa and protein and fiber and kansui, it’s not reductive numbers you rely on.

It’s listening to the machine. It’s feeling the dough. It’s understanding from a holistic point of view, working the machine with a human touch, and an intrinsic understanding that can’t be replicated by numbers.

When I dropped that adherence to numbers, things began to work out. I started adjusting the machine purely based on feel, on the subjective observations of dough tautness, of its stretch, of how the air felt that day, how well the dough hydrated, not from measurements, but from how it came together, how the crumbs felt in my hand, from how well it squeezed together.

And from there, I taught that system of feel and touch, and finally, then, as we began to listen and understand Amethyst’s pressure, she began to calm down, began to work with us and cooperate. Turns out trying hard numbers and logic all the time doesn’t work, huh? Even the machine spirits need their feelings and emotions listened to and heard. And from there, came patch v1.1.1.

Part of listening to Amethyst was understanding that, unlike what the manufacturer said, thinning the noodles out more actually created better results all around. We also swapped over from Bolivian quinoa into Canadian quinoa instead, which created a more mild flavor on our ramen, making it more compatible with all kinds of broths.

Because it was a change in noodle architecture, we didn’t want to put it as v1.2-- and so, we did v1.1.1

V1.2, after all, was reserved for the bigger changes... but v1.2 also introduced an arch-nemesis that’s being changed in v3.1

It was a MASSIVE change. From names, to flavors, to even the Noodtrients themselves, we tried to improve EVERYTHING.

For those of you who were around for that change, you know how much better it got from the v1.1.1 patch notes. We got rave reviews, and even changed up our packaging, and so much more! I won’t bother trying to cover everything here right now. You can check the actual patch notes if you’re interested.

But there was one giant, crucial mistake we made. See, back then, my twin brother Tom, who’s the co-founder of Vite, and who has since left for his health(but you’ll see him around on the Discord every so often): https://viteramen.com/blogs/news/on-spoons-and-mental-health

He was the nutrition side of things. He graduated with a degree in clinical nutrition, after all, and he handled that while I did the flavor side of things, since I cooked at a Michelin Star restaurant and all.

Vite Ramen is nutritionally complete. That means we have EVERY vitamin and mineral, in bioavailable forms, which means that they can actually be absorbed by the body.

But can something be TOO nutritious...?

Turns out the answer was... yes. Yes it can be.

Well, sort of. See, from the start, Vite Ramen was nutritionally complete. But not all vitamins and minerals are made the same. Take magnesium, for instance. Magnesium oxide is one of the most common forms of it you’ll find in multivitamins, because it’s cheap. It fulfills label requirements, and reads the same percentage as other forms, but can your body really absorb it?

...not really.

Meanwhile, we upgraded our magnesium form from magnesium citrate into magnesium gluconate, turning it from really well absorbed into THE MOST BESTEST WELL ABSORBED.

And we did that with a LOT of stuff... Which caused problems. Once again, that’s a huge list, go check out the actual patch notes if you want to find out more.

See... the thing is... we also discovered later on, after v1.2 was actually released, that anything with the name “Gluconate” after its name, while highly bioavailable is also just really BIG in general.

When I say BIG, I mean LITERALLY BIG, especially when it comes to calcium gluconate. That meant the amount of literal mass of Noodtrients became HUGE in comparison... and that meant you can TASTE it a lot more. Being giant also means we get something I call “flavor occlusion,” which is a fancy way of saying the more mass you have of one ingredient, the less you can taste the other ingredients. Pretty intuitive right?

Which, uh... despite vitamins and minerals being really good for us and what we need, they don’t taste good. At all. Which, you’d think that’d be the opposite right? It’s really dumb that it isn’t. Our bodies are sabotaging us, I swear.

V1.2 also added... L-selenomethionine.

Uh oh.

UH OH.

We’ll get back to that later when we get to v3.1.

Overall, though, the changes were REALLY GOOD, and made v1.2 leagues above v1.1.1 in both nutrition and flavor, and we were super happy with it.

But... we started to get more and more reports. Concerning reports about the flavor, described as “Smells like pennies” or “has a disgusting smell” or “smells like a musty hotel,” but in patterns that we couldn’t figure out at all. We got strange reports of flavors that we’d never tasted, and no matter how many packets we opened and tested, we could never figure it out.

What was going on? What were these phantom flavors people were tasting?

That’s what we ended up fixing in v3.0... but not enough.

Remember Gluconates? Turns out there was another problem with them.

They also just... smell really bad to some people, but only SOME. You know how some people have a gene where cilantro tastes really bad to them? Some people have a different gene in which gluconate forms of nutrients tastes REALLY BAD to them.

Me and the other Vite staff at the time didn’t have this gene, so we had NO IDEA this was happening until we got the reports. So, for v3.0, we changed our Noodtrient structure again, to remove gluconates and put in different forms of high bioavailability nutrients, but something that wouldn’t taste absolutely FOUL to people with those genes!

...Wait, why v3.0?

Why not v1.3?

Well... this one’s a bit of a marketing thing. We’d started to see that people were getting confused with the v1.2, v1.1.1, v1.2 and such, and so we realized whole numbers, when it came to big changes, would be better for clarity’s sake.

I know you’re now thinking, “...but you chose v3.1”

OKAY HOLD ON WE’LL GET TO THAT I PROMISE IT’LL ALL MAKE SENSE.

V3.0 was another massive, comprehensive change that completely revamped the Noodtrient base, and also did another thing which made people upset at us: We raised the baseline sodium levels to 33% on the ramen, instead of 25%.

Thing is... Nutrients don’t matter if you don’t eat it.

And by and large, the biggest comment we’d always get is “it tastes bland,” which, by the way, is the MOST unhelpful comment, because it just doesn’t SAY anything. Might just be my autistic specificity talking, but it makes it really hard to pinpoint and figure out exactly what the person doesn’t like about it. “Blandness” can come from a lack of spices, of flavors, of salt, of acidity, of kokumi, and a huge number of combinations of other things.

But, in this case, it was a pretty obvious one. Salt. People like their salt. And 25% sodium... just wasn’t cutting it.

Which, to be fair, sodium IS a necessary nutrient. It shouldn’t be demonized like it is. It’s also one of the easiest to control, since you can also sweat it out via exercise, and through drinking a lot of water. There’s also a lot of arguments about how much we should believe the salt studies to begin with since they weren’t controlled for other variables, but that’s not something I’m going to touch today.

Basically, sodium is a nutrient like any other. It’s hard to get in nature too, which is why we crave it so much, and why it tastes so good to us. Combine that with the fact that if people don’t like it, they won’t eat it, and we knew that we had to make some compromises.

V3.0, thus, increased the sodium limit on the lower sodium varieties, like our Original 3 Flavors to 33% instead of 25%.

Now, here’s the big thing we noticed that made us do this change. Most people, EVEN THOSE WHO COMPLAINED ABOUT SODIUM LEVELS, would ADD salt, or some form of additional seasoning, whether it be liquid aminos or soy sauce, to their v1.2 ramen.

When measured how much people would generally put... we saw that people were very often putting MORE THAN 50% DAILY VALUE OF SODIUM in their ramen.

See, thing is, the PERCEPTION of salinity isn’t the same as the ACTUAL sodium. That’s why there’s a difference between, say, table salt, and finishing salts, the kind that gets sprinkled onto steaks and cookies.

Hilariously, having our sodium being lower actually caused HIGHER sodium intake on average, from the majority of people adding salt.

Thing is, with the ingredients and techniques we have access to, we’re able to make things TASTE a lot more salty than the sodium percentage would otherwise imply. That means that by increasing sodium levels to 33%, we can make it TASTE like the sodium levels were way, way higher!

One of the things we also let go of was the adherence to 500kcal per packet. Seriously, no one cared that I was modulating every single flavor to be EXACTLY 500 calories, which made it... also really hard on recipe building. Not having everything be exactly 500 calories gave me way more freedom as well to build even better flavors.

If you’ve had Vite Ramen recently, you’re tasting the v3.0 platform. During this era, we also introduced “Flavor Unlocked” flavors, where we went flavor first, and didn’t care about how much sodium was going in. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those are our most popular flavors.

As for the Noodtrients? We condensed them down, and removed gluconates from the equation, changing them out for bioavailable, but ultra-dense versions instead. This solved two things at once with flavor-- we no longer had the problem with gluconate genes and people having a problem with that smell/flavor, and we no longer had giant gluconates occluding(blocking) flavor, which simultaneously ALSO increase the perceived saltiness!

But... there was still the phantom. The big problem.

L-selenomethionine.

So. v3.1. Let’s get into that.

Why v3.1, instead of v4.0?

...Well, because like v1.1.1, it’s not the BIGGEST change and complete revamp. Well. I mean. Sort of. But not really?

In my mind, at least, a v4.0 would need a fundamental rethinking, or giant changes to everything. That’s maybe for later, and I have some ideas for that, but that’s a LONG way down the road.

Meanwhile, for v3.1... we’re looking to get rid of the main antagonist we’ve found.

See, turns out, L-selenomethionine was another culprit like gluconates. When we changed from v1.2 to v3.0, we thought that gluconates were the thing causing people’s adverse reactions. While we had a lot fewer complaints, we DID get more specific flavor distaste notes.

Huh?

We got rid of gluconates... So what was going on?

Turns out, there’s ANOTHER gene that makes people think that L-selenomethionine, the most bioavailable form of the nutrient selenium, smell and taste like the WORST thing in the world.

V3.1 was primarily designed to get rid of this, and swap it to another bioavailable form, selenium glycinate...

But of course, you know me. I’m not content with just a small change. Why not take the time to upgrade our Original 3 Flavors meanwhile...?

After all. We’re always improving. We’re always trying to be better, and better, and better. Progress despite imperfection.

And so, that’s EXACTLY what I did. Each of them have received upgrades that boost their flavors to ANOTHER level of deliciousness, while still retaining the lower sodium values. AND, of course, they’ll have versions included into the v3.1 Vite Kitchens System, which will be letting you get them at a CHEAPER price than before as well!

But what are those flavor changes, exactly...? How will all this work and be cheaper?

Well. Stay tuned, and find out next time :^)

Remember to be kind, and savor life’s little victories!

-Tim, Founder Vite