Sprinkles In My Coffee

"Sprinkles make everything better," my mom likes to say.

This saying goes back to summer excursions to McDonald's for soft serve ice cream cones.  They were always delicious, but wouldn't they be better with some sprinkles?  We thought so, so we started bringing our own containers of sprinkles to the drive thru with us.

We would pull into a parking space and dip our cones into the rainbow goodness.  The sprinkles did spice up the otherwise plain vanilla ice cream, but the laughter at our own absurdity was what really sprinkled the extra fun on those memories.

When I was struggling through my senior thesis in college, my mom sent me a care package, and I can't really remember anything that was in it except for the container of rainbow sprinkles marked, "Just in case."  Just the sight of those colorful specks of sugar and the meaning behind the small gift was enough to cheer me up.

I didn't think to use them though until one day when I knew I would need an extra boost of something to get through a long day of classes and work.  I was about to brew my daily coffee when I heard my mom's voice in my head saying, "Sprinkles make everything better."  Laughing at my absurdity, I decided to grind up some sprinkles with my coffee beans.

As the coffee brewed, I half-hoped that the rainbow sprinkles would somehow change the color of the coffee, but of course they didn't.  I thought I detected a slight extra bit of sweetness, but I'm pretty sure it was my imagination.  The placebo effect worked though.  I put the coffee in a travel mug and giggled all the way to class, just knowing that there were sprinkles in my coffee.  It was a little thing, but it brought me comfort and joy.

That's what I aimed to do with this blog from the beginning, to find the beauty in the little, ordinary things of every day, to add a little color to the things that are otherwise gray or dull.  Over the years, it has evolved into spiritual and personal reflections and ramblings, and more recently, experiments in all things coffee.

I have enjoyed writing all of it, but recently while I experimented with delicious coffees that I discovered from other companies across the country, a sad container of old, ordinary, just-okay coffee beans sat with its future undetermined.  I knew I couldn't waste it, but I couldn't drink it by itself either.  With the help of a coffee shop I discovered on Instagram, the idea of how to add something extra to this ordinary coffee began brewing in my head.

On Instagram, I stumbled on Vagabond Coffee in Jacksonville, Florida.  They make their own gourmet pop-tarts (they make their own pop-tarts!) AND they have sprinkle Fridays.  That's right, on Fridays they post pictures of delicious looking pop-tarts and lattes sprinkled with rainbow sprinkles.  And the cherry on top of all these sprinkles?  My mom was born in Jacksonville!  Apparently the soul of that place has sprinkles in it, and sprinkles are therefore in my blood.  Now I have a huge coffee crush on this coffee shop and cannot wait to (hopefully) go there with my mom when we go to the Jacksonville/St. Augustine area for a family reunion next summer.

Until then, I will have to make my own sprinkle coffee experience, hence, my solution for these ordinary coffee beans.  Since I work as a barista, I typically drink high quality coffee, and the thought of tainting that delicious black coffee with sprinkles has been far from my mind, though I do add them to my lattes on special occasions.  One thing I have absolutely never done is add them to cold brew. . . SO for the (name)sake of this blog, I owe it to you, to my mom, to myself to at least experiment with sprinkles in my cold brew coffee.  Just for fun.

And honestly, I had more fun taking pictures of the project than anything, but here we go!

Sprinkles, coffee, sunshine, an adorable hedgehog mug, and an adorable mug and saucer in my favorite color from one of my dearly beloved coffee friends

= HAPPY

The sprinkles and the beans.

The sprinkles and the beans ground together.

I added a total of about 2.5 tablespoons of rainbow sprinkles to 1 cup of beans and ground them together on the coarsest setting for cold brew.  I then added an extra .5 tablespoons of whole sprinkles to the grounds JUST FOR FUN.  If we were going for taste, that was WAY too many sprinkles, considering the fact that they are almost purely sugar but I was having too much fun taking pictures, and a single tablespoon would not have been enough fun to photograph.

Above left is all the sprinkles and coffee ground together with that extra splash of sprinkles.  How fun does that look?!  Above right is everything mixed together with 3.5 cups of water.

I definitely used a nut milk bag AND a strainer to filter this out.

The remnant sprinkly grounds.

Like I said, all the sugar made the cold brew way too sweet for me to drink more than half of a cup.  I added my cashew & brazil nut milk and it tasted like sweet cream with a coffee aftertaste.  Too sweet for my blood, but that sweetness may be just what some of you want in your coffee.  If you're feeling adventurous or have some bleh coffee you need to spice up, try adding sprinkles (and let me know how it goes)!

If nothing else, I guarantee you'll have fun and the absurdity will leave you laughing, which is always good for the soul!

Happy brewing!

Aw, Nuts!

Remember that Juan Carlos coffee from Honduras that made such a delicious cold brew, when I was Winning at Home Cold-Brew Coffee-ing?

Well, I recently made it as a coffee concentrate with the same method I use to make regular cold brew, only I let it sit and brew for 24 hours instead of 12.  I planned to use that concentrate to make an iced latte with my new homemade Cashew & Brazil Nut Milk.  Yes, I made my own nut milk.

And no, Justine, I didn't stand there and squeeze the milk out of the tiny nut udders. ;-)

I got the idea from Ashley Tomlinson over at The Little Black Coffee Cup.  She writes about #ThingsThatGoWithCoffee, and one day she posted a simple recipe for this homemade, creamy nut milk that doesn't separate and goes great with cold brew coffee.  It was her beautiful photos paired with both my love for cold brew coffee and my recent failed attempts to avoid dairy that motivated me to try this.

First, I'm trying to avoid dairy because 1) as I enter the throes of adulthood, my body is slowly losing its ability to properly digest it and 2) I find that even though I can handle small doses of it, the long-term effects of constant consumption have been suspicious enough that I want to cut it out as much as I can (obviously I will still have cheese on occasion, because come on, cheese!).

Second, my attempts to avoid it have failed thus far because 1) I love coffee but 2) I can't drink too much black coffee due to its acidity and 3) it tastes so darn good with milk or cream that 4) all of the milk alternatives out there that I have tried either aren't creamy enough to satisfy me (coconut milk) or overpower the flavor of the coffee too much (coconut milk, almond milk, soy milk).  Also, a lot of store-bought nut milks have lots of preservatives, which are mostly not bad for you (other than carrageenan, which hardly anyone uses anymore anyway), but I still try to avoid them.

SO, because all of these years working as a barista and my intense desire to be healthy and cut out most processed foods have caused me to be so high-maintenance about my coffee and my diet, I embarked on the new adventure of making my own nut milks at home.

With the inexpensive nut milk bag I got on Amazon, it was incredibly easy to make (trust me, if a recipe has more than 5 ingredients or too many complicated steps, I am OUT), and even with our cheap but reliable blender, it turned out really well!  It really doesn't separate much (which was a huge relief because I tried making my own pecan milk a few months back which was tasty, but it separated so completely that it was a little unappetizing to look at), though it could use a good shake before enjoying.  After I added it to some cold brew, I noticed that over a period of time, there was a little separation, but nothing that a gentle swirl didn't take care of.  

It is incredible creamy and has a nice, naturally sweet nuttiness to it that delightfully complements coffee, possibly (dare I say it) even BETTER than cow's milk.  I tried all the experiments with this, and it is just as good with hot coffee as cold brew.  It pairs very well with espresso, and when steamed for a latte, it isn't quite as smooth as cow's milk, but holds up just as well as almond milk.

So, I was really excited to try a latte with my homemade nut milk and homemade cold brew concentrate.  But as it turns out, the oh-so-magical Juan Carlos is just so delicious even when it's brewed twice as strong as it usually is that I only needed to add a small amount of my nut milk to it to make it creamy.

You will notice some white flecks from the milk.
I think these would be eliminated with a better blender,
but even if not, they don't affect the taste!

 Yesterday, though, I used an inexpensive Guatemalan coffee that I've had sitting around in a Glad container for months to make a cold brew concentrate.  I mixed half of that concentrate with half of my fresh batch of Cashew & Brazil Nut Milk and goodness gracious, it was creamy coffee perfection!

Now my eyes have been opened to a whole new world of enjoying coffee.  My plan is to experiment with different types of nuts and combinations that might go well with coffee.  Stay tuned!

Whiskey + Coffee = {An Experiment}

Once upon a time, when I was still a green barista, I discovered a whiskey barrel-aged coffee.  Boston Stoker released a very small batch of an experiment they had conducted aging a Brazilian coffee in a whiskey barrel.

This is an old practice, dating back to the 17th century, but that was the first I had heard of it.  At the time, I didn't even like whiskey unless it was drowned in Coke (so that it didn't have that burning, wood feeling as it slid down my throat).  This coffee smelled delicious, though, so I tried it.  And it was delicious.  The Brazilian coffee had a well-rounded, chocolaty body, nutty notes, and just a hint of whiskey.  It was wonderful, and five years later I'm still raving about it.

After that, I slowly began to really taste and enjoy whiskey on its own.  Of course, I started with the sweet stuff, Wild Turkey American Honey (YUM), because it didn't have that harsh, burning-wood taste to it.  It was smooth and delicious, and I could sip it slowly on its own.  Gradually, I came to appreciate the milder, smoother bourbons, like those from Four Roses and Buffalo Trace.  For my birthday, I received a fantastic bottle of Eagle Rare from my in-laws (thanks again!) that I enjoy on those evenings when I don't have to be at work the next morning.

So when I caught wind that Dark Matter Coffee (whose espresso blend I wrote about here recently) was about to release four batches of different barrel-aged coffees, I knew I had to try one.  This was my chance to revisit that experience I had five years ago, now fully armed with a greater knowledge of and appreciation for both coffee and whiskey.

I chose the Guatemala Catuai Natural aged in a barrel from a Single Barrel Four Roses Bourbon.  Since I had tried a couple of Four Roses Bourbons, I knew I enjoyed their smooth sweetness.  (And, okay, I'm not going to lie, I LOVE roses and that, Shakespeare, is what's in the name.)

When I opened the bag of freshly roasted beans, I received a face-full of chocolate and whiskey.  It was lovely, but very overpowering.  I decided to let it sit for a day before brewing it.  The next day when I went to smell the beans, the whiskey woodiness was so potent, it was like sticking my face in the barrel itself.  

As the coffee brewed, the aroma of whiskey filled our tiny apartment.  I poured myself a little sip in my newly acquired and totally adorable hedgehog cup that I now use for sipping tastes of coffee and whiskey.

 I took a few sips to sift through the layers.  The whiskey aroma was strong and overpowering.  The body was very light and smooth, and the acidity was almost completely muted.  I tasted some very sweet, fruity notes that I enjoyed. . .until they were overpowered by the whiskey.  As the coffee cooled, it began to taste like wood. . . I took another sip and...yep, wood.  It tasted exactly like wood.

It was as if the coffee hadn't been able to stand up to the powers of the whiskey saturated wood surrounding it.  I decided that maybe if I let the coffee sit and off-gas for a few more days, it would settle and come into its own.  I tried it again today (about a week later), and the whiskey was a bit milder, but the coffee was still lost in the sea of whiskey.  And maybe it's because I've been watching a lot of Scrubs lately, but I got lost in this daydream:

Our brave coffee stands on a wooden plank above a stormy sea of whiskey.  It has been sentenced to death and shoved into a wooden barrel. The swords of enemy pirates poke and prod until the barrel rolls into the sea with a splash.  The entombed coffee rolls and fights against the waves until it succumbs to the force of the whiskey, and drowns slowly, down into the depths...The remains of the coffee are but a drop in the sea.

Whiskey is a good thing. . . in moderation.  It is delicious.  It takes the edge off of a rough day.  But in the morning, when I sit down to have a cup of coffee, I want to taste coffee.  Maybe I simply don't have the taste acquired yet for real, hardcore whiskey.  But I do have a taste for real, hardcore coffee, and I didn't taste nearly enough in this batch.

My theory, based on the limited knowledge I have of the process and the two barrel-aged coffees I have actually tried, is that this Guatemalan coffee simply did not have enough body to stand up against the waves of whiskey in that barrel resulting in a coffee that tasted like straight whiskey.  On the other hand, the Brazilian coffee from that original batch I tried had just the right amount of body so the result was a coffee with a hint of whiskey.

The moral of the story:

Dark Matter Coffee + 3 Floyds Beer = GOOD

Dark Matter Coffee + Four Roses Bourbon = I'D RATHER JUST HAVE THE WHISKEY, THANKS