How come there is no real “wacky experimentation” side of the coffee community? The only one I can identify is the “snobby” coffee community (you know the one), and the rest being mostly just a refrained version of that.
Compare that to the homebrewing community, you have the snobbs (the mead community is infamous), but then there are the “prison hoochers”, turning anything containing sugar into alcohol.
Where are the mavericks who perform the important societal task of discerning if “is coffee and cheeto-spice a good combo?” and “what happens if you brew coffee with red bull?”
On a more serious note it would be great so more people try different ways to spice coffee, instead of just trying to brew the flatest, “perfect” brew. I’ve found adding some fruity black tea to my coffee in a French press to work really well.
My cube neighbor did that at work today: she thought her tea was overwhelmingly coffee, but I thought her coffee was completely ruined
You basically described some of the folks on the Specialty Coffee Enthusiasts Discord group.
Try adding a cinnamon stick into your french press sometime.
Just because you arent aware of it doesnt mean it doesnt exist.
I follow a baristfluencer who makes all kind of wacky things and does events and competitions.
Websearch for “the bripe”.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever bought 7am
Holy shit this is amazing!
There was a Starbucks trend where they added olive oil to their coffees and it was giving customers the mega liqui-shits. Does that count?
Coffee mixology is also becoming a thing now. I imagine some crazy combos have or might come out of that.
For me, I’m buying beans that are expensive enough and complex enough, my FAFO is dialing in my grind and brew temp. To mess with these beans by doing anything beyond water is about like using 21 year old single malt Scotch to make a whiskey sour. **The results are less than the sum of the parts. **
Now, if for some reason, a bag of beans gets a bit old, I’ll play around a little bit. Also, I’ve had people gift me really awful or bland beans, and I despise wasting food. I find a drop of fruit extract in the brew water can add a little hint of complexity.
Scotch is probably the wrong flavor profile for a sour, but I firnly believe that cocktails are always better with good liquor. Even a rum and coke, use the best rum you can afford.
Depends on the Scotch. I had a speakeasy tiki bar, i.e. unlicensced and strictly word-of-mouth, for a couple years. I used the whiskey sour as a specific example; I played around for a long time at making my ideal whiskey sour. Top shelf, wells, Islay, Speyside, Highland, playing around with sourcing the eggs for the whites vs. using dried albumin, Amarena vs (real) Maraschino… you get the idea. Lots of my supertaster (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster) friends sampled more cocktails than might be healthy. :D The winning recipe used Clan Macgregor Scotch, which is absolutely a nasty well bottle. The kind of bottle I wouldn’t serve to even people I hate. :D But the final result won blind taste tests and is much more than the sum of its parts.
I have some really rare and expensive rums. I would never subject something like, say, Plantation (now Planteray) Trinidad 2001 to a rum and coke. I think even a cocktail that showcases a spirit, such as the Mai Tai, covers up too much of the complexity of high-end spirits, becoming less than the sum of its parts. Some spirits are just meant to stand alone, maybe neatened. Bringing this back to coffee, most great beans IMO are similarly meant to stand alone.
Now, all that said, garbage in, garbage out. For most anything that goes into the pie hole, I agree that one should use the best one can find within certain contexts. Planteray OFTD or Stiggins in a double R&C, with a homemade cola, fresh-squeezed Meyer lemon, and .5mL of double-strength vanilla… <chef’s kiss!>
Not sure if this is what you mean, but there’s a locally famous coffee shop in Boone, NC that makes seasonal specialty drinks that pairs coffee with all sorts of things. Some of the more interesting ones I’ve seen over the years:
- Campfire - nitro coffee, milk, burnt sugar, homemade toasted marshmallow
- Coffee paired with matcha
- Espresso with grapefruit and burnt sugar
- Espresso, lime, local honey, ice, garnished with a candied lime and a piece of honeycomb
Then of course you have your random places that mix chicory into coffee, which I enjoy from time to time. Cafe du monde in New Orleans is the famous one. A local shop in Carrboro, NC has it as cold brew.
So it’s out there in the world, I’m not sure where these folks talk online though.
I love coffee and matcha but both really fucks me up for some reason and tastes… better than some of the ‘healthy shakes’ that I’ve tried.
Personally i found a very old sailor technique to produce the coffee the best for me - letting a coarse grind sit in cold water for about 10-12 hrs and double filter it afterwards. Sweetened with maple syrup and cream.
This really makes my day. A bit of joy in the morning.
I’ve never heard of Cold Brew having any sailor origins, but happy to have found someone who enjoys it in the wild.
I tried it once but tried using a narrow necked bottle which was a disaster.
What do you tend to use?
I use my aldi measuring cups (the 1,5l ones) for „brewing“, then a french press for the first filtration and a normal „pour over“ filter for the second filtration. So with pretty basic utilities, but it works best for me.
I use a special brand of beans (from hanseatic coffee roasters, hamburg, germany). It has a really flowery flavour which i love.
I started experimenting with brewing coffee by tea rules to make it silkier without adding milk (mostly lower temp / longer brew), and that worked so well I kept importing more and more practices from the tea side of the caffbev world.
Anyway, nowadays I drink my coffee with cheap orange pekoe blended with no coffee, brewed for 5 minutes. Oat milk optional.
I believe this to be the far bold horizon of coffee drinking.
I was halt expecting this to end in cold-brewing the coffee, but importing the best of the two major hot nature juice worlds is quite wholesome and thus an acceptable substitute!
I don’t know if you would consider her “snob”, but morgandrinkscoffee has a lot of fun ideas for coffee drinks and cocktails.
I have found that a modicum of salt can be most efficacious
A woman I used to work with would put lime and salt in her coffee. Nasty to me, but she loved it
that wasn’t coffee, that was tequila
That sounds positively revolting. I like a little lime in tea, but my palate still works well enough that I don’t need to jolt it with hot rat piss just to feel something. Maybe if I make it to that age I’ll give it a go.
What is FAFO?
Fuck around and find out
people are using it to just refer to experimentation here but it has some charged political interpretations as well
Because there’s already a type of coffee that has been eaten and then shit out by a cat before grinding.
After that, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of boundaries to explore…
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
I recently drank some bland black coffee and ate some grapes while/after that. Tasted kinda awesome and I don’t know why. Give it a try
I could see the bitter mixing well with the sweetness/freshness of the grapes
