Bacon was first placed into coffee.

Researcher proceeded to hold bacon up to light while laughing maniacally.

Bacon and coffee were then placed into Magic Bullet apparatus and blended for 10 seconds (or less). No cream was added. The mixture took on a creamy colour and texture. Repeat: no cream was added.

Researcher became nervous; began to exhibit signs of distress such as sweating and trembling hands.

Despite further blending, chunkage was apparent. Given previous encounters with chunks, researcher became visibly agitated. After several minutes of contemplation and pacing, he exclaimed “[expletive deleted], I’ve got it,” produced a coffee filter, and set up another apparatus.

Coffee was poured through (another) filter in order to remove chunks. Coffee had taken on thick texture and required manual squeezing in order to drain into mug. Researcher became covered in oily coffee.

Yield was small, but enough to gauge properties of coffee. Filtering was successful; no chunks were detected. The texture was, however, slimey. Taste was not terrible. Smokiness of bacon came through, as did saltiness. However, the researcher was left unsatisfied, expressing a desire for an idealized bacon coffee that he claimed to “have dreamed about nightly,” yet also added, “I will not rest until I find it.”

Further research is needed.

Footnote: The unfiltered, chunk-laden coffee was also attempted. Not recommended. Taste was similar to Cafe Benedict, except chewier.

Readers with strong stomachs may wish to observe the residue.

This research was funded by two generous organizations: Klix offers spiffy coffee vending kiosks, while Flavia offers smaller bean to cup coffee machines. Those certainly look better than vending machines where I’ve worked. The sludge that came out of those didn’t need weird things to taste weird.

Two follow-up experiments in combining bacon with coffee were conducted under careful laboratory conditions. Test #2 is presented below. Test #3 will follow in next week’s volume.

Bacon Coffee, Test #2:

No-Name brand SIMULATED BACON BITS CONTAINS NO MEAT were distributed over the coffee grounds. Coffee was then brewed as normal.

A surprising finding: after being soaked with water, the bacon bits resemble bacon more than they did before:

The primary finding was that SIMULATED BACON BITS CONTAINS NO MEAT did not contribute the desired amount of flavour. Even after sweetening with cream and honey, the coffee remained nearly unaffected, save for an unpleasant increase in saltiness. Researcher concluded that bacon bits in coffee were not even repugnant enough to be of significant interest.

Further tests are needed.

Apparently cassava looks like this:

Hmm. Not something I’d want to put near my tongue, but luckily it came all peeled and chopped up. Some Googling revealed that it’s a potato-like vegetable. Tapioca is made from processing it into flour. I also came across this tidbit:

Konzo is an epidemic paralytic disease. The outbreaks are associated with several weeks of almost exclusive consumption of insufficiently processed bitter cassava.

How can you resist a vegetable with its own paralytic disease?

As for how to prepare it, a friend on Twitter suggested this recipe for Vietnamese cassava cake. Hopefully making it into a cake would be “sufficient processing” to stave off the konzo.

The cake was … different. The cassava has a unique taste; kind of like potato, but with a bitter aftertaste that I attribute to the konzo-causing cyanide.

I couldn’t eat the whole thing though, so it was time to throw some in coffee.

I can definitely taste the cassava. That bitterness I mentioned seems to be accentuated by the coffee. However, this isn’t terrible. To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the cake, so this was a good excuse to plop some in coffee, take two sips, then toss it down the drain. Yet here I am, halfway through the mug, still drinking.

The caramel taste of the condensed milk is nice here (and would probably be great in coffee on its own). The texture is thicker than coffee, kinda powdery.

It’s getting even thicker as I get to the bottom. I can taste the poison bitterness more and more with each sip.

There’s a slight sludge at the bottom, but not enough to worry about. Bottoms up!

Oh god. Is that a tingling in my extremities?

Apparently Chia seeds are not only edible, but nutritious too.

The seeds come out as tiny dry pellets. Following the instructions for growing a Chia pet, I soaked them in water for about half an hour, after which they became a jelly-like mass.

Honestly, looking at it, this grossed me out more than a lot of other things I’ve tried here. Especially since the Chia pet they came with still haunts my nightmares.

But I had to try the stuff on its own before putting it in coffee (to make sure it follows the one rule). The gooey texture was a bit weird, and was followed by some crunchiness that reminded me of poppy seeds. The taste was slightly nutty with a hint of a fresh, citrusy flavour.

Definitely edible, so time to add it to coffee.

“Luckily,” the stuff floated instead of sinking to the bottom. It stayed as a solid mass at first, but with a little encouragement the seeds broke up and whatever chemical sludge holds them together dissolved into the coffee. Bottoms up.

You know, this is not as bad as I was fearing. Remember the drink Orbitz?

I’m reminded of that, or bubble tea. The solid bits add an odd sensation to each sip as they slip and slide down my throat, but don’t really affect the taste of the coffee. I feel some of them clinging onto and between my teeth, but hey, I was planning on flossing anyway.

All in all, I wouldn’t ch-ch-chow down on this every day, but it was a surprisingly enjoyable experiment.

I shared the love on Metafilter a few days ago. So perhaps I have a voice in what you review next (heh)? I suggest mayonnaise and/or crumbled up Doritos in the grounds.

Indeed, the link from Metafilter is largely responsible for a lot of this blog’s recent success, so Taft deserves special attention. Mayonnaise it is!

Except I don’t have any mayonnaise around. I don’t even have its cheap and ugly little brother, Miracle Whip. Oh, but what have we here? PC Low Fat Whipped Dressing? I suppose that’s the next next best thing.

After my Eggspresso post, several people wrote in to suggest improvements. One that came up repeatedly was to whisk the egg into a little bit of coffee, then slowly add the rest, so it turns into a thick cream rather than a chunky mess. Since whipped dressing has egg in it, I thought I’d try this technique.

It seems to be working. There are a few floaty bits, but mostly it looks like coffee with a nice amount of cream.

I slowly whisk in a full mug. It’s looking good. Doesn’t smell too bad. Maybe this will be a surprise success. Bottoms up.

Oh. Oh my god. The moment it enters my mouth, I know that something has gone wrong. It’s sour; oh jesus, it’s like acid burning my tongue.

In the name of science, I take another sip. No yeah, this is the closest I’ve come to chugging vomit. Somehow it’s even worse than blue cheese dip.

I should have gone with the Doritos.

I thought it was really just artificially fish-flavoured and pinkified cream cheese, but the third ingredient is real honest-to-goodness smoked salmon.

Be sure to avoid leftover bagel crumbs stuck in the cream cheese.

In with the coffee. This one needs to be mixed up really good. But even then…

My god—it’s full of stars.

It looks really cool when you swirl it around.

Ah, but my arch nemesis, texture, is back. The bits that refused to melt tasted like little blobs of half-melted rubber. Maybe adding cream will help.

Er…nope.

The taste of the coffee itself was actually not that bad. Once I was able to suspend the knowledge that I was drinking coffee with fish in it, I realized that the smokiness of the salmon actually did go pretty well with the earthy Sumatra coffee I used.

I thought maybe the chunks were just cream cheese that refused to melt, so I threw the mug in the microwave for a while. All that accomplished was a fishy-smelling microwave. I’m thinking the rubbery white bits were the salmon itself, which given their unrecognizable state, tells you something about the quality of the salmon used in the cream cheese. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to list “ground up fish product” on the ingredients label.

Maybe if the coffee was drained through a very fine filter (say, a coffee filter), it would be drinkable. Delicious even. But unfortunately I tossed it down the drain in disgust before I thought of this. Maybe next time. Stay tuned.

However, we all have busy lives, and we can’t always commit the time and energy necessary to alternate between stuffing bacon in our faces and sipping coffee. Which is why I have invented a time-saving and delicious way to enjoy your whole breakfast in one mug: bacon coffee. You, too, can enjoy this groundbreaking innovation; simply follow these steps:

1. Make some bacon.

2. Add cream and sweetener. Always sweetener. Think of your heart.

3. Add coffee.

4. Enjoy!

This project was a little daunting at first. The world of meat-based coffee additives is, as far as we could tell, completely unexplored. It could have turned out disgusting. But to be honest, it wasn’t. The bacon added a subtle smokey flavour that did not clash at all with the dark roasted coffee. The bacon grease left a beautiful sparkly film on top and gave the coffee a creamier texture than usual.

At the bottom of the mug is a beautiful puddle of bacon-wrapped coffee.

The only problem is that you’re left with a large chunk of bacon sitting there, which makes it hard to drink the last bit. And what do you do with the bacon? While bacon flavoured coffee is quite delicious, coffee flavoured bacon is bland at best. I will continue to research different ways of combining coffee with bacon, such as adding bacon bits in with the coffee grounds, and blended bacon-coffee smoothies, and report back.

See also:

The Royal Bacon Society

Pre-Made Maple Bacon Coffee

Candied Bacon Coffee Ice Cream

Added Apr 20: Look, an official Bacon Maple Latte!