Right now, my coffee smells like campfire.

Liquid smoke is meant for braising meats and adding to recipes, but it seems like a natural fit with coffee’s natural smokiness. Indeed, it doesn’t affect the taste of the coffee much. The smell, though, brings me right back to cool nights in the middle of the woods.

If I plugged my nose, this could be mistaken for bacon (*). It’s got that subtle hickory flavour that I’ve been looking for. Bacon coffee probably won’t get much better than this non-bacon flavoured coffee. (Though it won’t stop me from trying; stay tuned).

Since this coffee isn’t very visually striking, I looked for pictures to stick up here, and found this:

It may look like an alien tripod robot sent to turn our families into ashes, but is in fact a very impractical coffee jug to make and store coffee while camping.

You could drink campfire flavoured coffee prepared on a campfire. Dawg.

* New name for my upcoming death metal band: Mistaken for Bacon.

Then, a few days ago, a friend of mine (hi Nick) sent me a recipe for coffee-infused ham gravy. I had to give that a try, but given this blog’s ongoing quest to combine bacon with coffee, bacon seemed a better choice than ham. And what could I do with the coffee-bacon gravy? Pouring it on eggs and more bacon seemed only logical. It’s sorta the opposite of Café Benedict.

As with most endeavours, the first step is bacon. Lots of bacon.

Set the bacon aside. Then pour the coffee into the bacon grease; just a bit more coffee than there is grease. I used a dark roast brewed extra strong, but a milder coffee probably would have been better.

Add some flour to thicken and make it look like gravy. Use a sifter to avoid chunks.

Let it simmer for a few minutes. Stir it often with a whisk; mine got chunky even after sifting, so you might have to whisk that gravy vigorously. Yeah. Yeah, real vigorously. Now that’s gravy. Oh yeah.

Tenderly spoon that gravy onto whatever you’d like. I treated it like Hollandaise, pouring it over an egg, slices of bacon, and an English muffin.

The gravy on its own was pretty bitter (probably due to the strong coffee) but not entirely unpleasant. Poured on top of everything else and with a little extra salt and pepper, it was quite good. A rich, earthy, smokey, meaty sort of meal. I was full for hours after eating this. I accosted a young woman (hi Danaë) and asked for a second opinion, and she liked it even more than I did. My gravy brings all the girls to the yard.

I’ll label this a success, but next time: 1) Milder coffee; 2) Maybe a touch of sugar to sweeten the gravy; 3) Think of a cool name for it.

The quest for bacon coffee is still ongoing. I’ve got a few leads and orders in the mail that may lead to breakthroughs. Stay tuned.

Obligatory aftermath shot:

Edit Feb 23: As some kind commenters pointed out, gravy made with pork drippings and coffee is known as red-eye gravy, especially in the southern U.S.

Haggis is a traditional Scottish dish, made of a sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs, mixed with oats and spices. It’s known for being simmered in a sheep’s stomach, but I didn’t have one handy, so I had to settle for tupperware and a microwave.

You can read about my experience with the haggis itself over on my other blog: Food Review: Haggis in a Can. But this is a coffee blog, so you can probably see where this is going.

I put the microwaved haggis into a cup, then added coffee and sealed it. I let it soak for over 48 hours, to make sure the spicy meaty taste had time to infuse into the coffee.

When I took it out of the fridge and opened it, the smell was not entirely pleasant. I still had to give it a chance, though. I set up an apparatus to filter out the chunks, leaving only pure black haggis-flavoured coffee. Or at least that was the plan.

I ran into a problem. The meat had made the coffee oily and thick; so much so that it refused to drip through my coffee filter. I had to carefully squeeze the filter, coaxing it out the bottom a squirt at a time, not unlike milking a cow. I did this twice, to make sure no chunks remained. It was a slow process, and yielded only a tiny amount of thickened coffee.

Ah well, it’s enough to get a sense of the taste. Bottoms up.

Oh, no. This is not good. Salt is the first taste that hits my mouth, but then the unmistakable taste of mashed up sheep heart, liver, and lungs hits me. It’s a dark, bitter, lingering taste, made even more unpalatable by the coffee.

Oh Christ. This is like drinking the vomit of someone who just won a gravy-chugging contest.

I got some on my fingers and the smell won’t go away. Oh God. I keep washing them. I keep washing my mouth out. It’s still there. Will this be with me forever?

Oh Jesus.

Do not want.

At least I also got this in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

It’s much better. All the taste of Scotland, without feeling like you need to induce vomiting just so there is a more pleasant taste in your mouth.

Oh yeah, obligatory sink shot:

Sorry.

See, I’ve been doing a full time job lately, and that takes up time. Specifically, it takes up mornings, which is when I tend to drink coffee. I can’t exactly be pouring gravy into the office coffee machine, so work really puts a limit on my experimentation. I can’t pick up slack during my evenings either, because the caffeine would keep me up all night and make those gravy-free mornings even more miserable.

But wait, what about caffeine-free coffee?

I’ve never drank coffee for the caffeine. Other than keeping me from sleeping, I don’t feel any effects of the stuff; my body seems immune to perkiness enhancement. I might as well remove the caffeine and add the possibility of late-night experimentation.

It limits which kinds of coffee I can have, but have you seen this blog? It’s more about what goes into the coffee than the coffee itself. I think I’ll find enough variety.

Hey, what about you? Do you drink coffee for the caffeine, the flavour, or both?

First, blogfriend Brian Raymond pointed me to this Satanic coffee from Geekologie:

I can only assume the barista sweetened it with the blood of infants and added the milk of murderous cows for colour, yet still referred to it as black coffee.

Next, in this old post of mine about butter in coffee, a commenter named Nathan linked to this article about HOW TO MAKE YOUR COFFEE BULLETPROOF. Spoiler alert: you put butter in it.

I’ve done this a few times before. Butter Chicken Coffee Minus Chicken was not too shabby, but Cafe Benedict caused involuntary convulsions. This David Asprey fellow recommends unsalted butter, which would probably be bearably delicious.

He also goes a bit further, claiming that this coffee provides “level energy” for 6 hours, “programs the body” to burn fat, and will “make you feel Bulletproof” (yes, with a capital B). These claims seem to come from the “I made this shit up because it sounds cool” school of nutrition rather than, you know, science, but hey, whatever it takes to justify chugging butter. I wouldn’t recommend testing the Bulletproof claim, however. Placebos don’t work so good against bullets.

I’m working on some, um, interesting coffee creations. I will be back to write about them when I have time. By the way, buying stuff from the PWTIC store or leaving a tip, on that sidebar to the right there, would really inspire me to hurry my butt up. Hiiint.

See also: Optimum Biopower Xtreme Coffee.

But first let’s look back to the Coffee Hack we hosted in February. It was a resounding success, with all sorts of adventurous people showing up, many with their own ingredients to try in combination with coffee.

We had all the coffee hardware you could dream of.

Including a beer infuser, which sorta maybe almost worked. It’s at least good in theory; Mill Street’s Coffee Porter is one of my favourite beers.

Labels were important. Participants created coffees that were everything from sweet to spicy to savoury.

Unusual brewing methods were as abundant as unusual ingredients. Co-organizer Laura tried out some delicious flavoured cold brew coffee. Other co-organizer Andrew “Twitch” Berdan handled the Turkish coffee. He also brought some home-made ingredients, like this from-scratch cottage cheese:

It didn’t look appetizing, but the cheese didn’t affect the taste of the coffee much, so I’d say it’s neither recommended nor a disgusting failure.

My main contribution stemmed from the idea that traditional Thanksgiving foods—turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pie—all go well together, and leave you feeling warm and satisfied, but also sleepy. How can we possibly have all the goodness of Thanksgiving without the sleepiness?

Coffee. The answer is coffee.

(The following pictures are courtesy of Jody “3oh6″ Bailey; more pics here)

Step 1: Brew coffee with low salt chicken broth in the water.

Step 2: Add gravy powder and instant mashed potato mix.

Step 3: Add cream and sugar. Top with whipped cream. Garnish with more gravy powder.

Step 4: Top with cranberry stuffing biscotti. This was another of Twitch’s creations, and was delicious on its own and dipped in coffee.

The Thanksgiving coffee itself, oh man, I was not expecting it to actually taste good, but it was like a family holiday in my mouth. Just a bit of each ingredient made sure nothing was overpowering (like the downfall of many of my creations, saltiness). I quickly gave thanks to every known deity for leading this liquid comfort into my belly. Thanksgiving coffee is worth trying.

Bottoms up to a successful Coffee Hack. Let’s do this again sometime.

You are in luck, fictional PWTIC reader. PuttingWeirdThingsInCoffee dot Com is proud to be a part of the world’s first Coffee Hack! It ain’t internet smells, but if you can get to the fine city of London, Ontario, Canada on February 12th, you can see me and others doings very weird, almost unforgivable, things to coffee.

We’ll be brewing coffee in uncommon ways then putting unusual things in it. This will be at the UnLab—a shared hacker space where unconventional is unoffensive.

This is a collaborative event, and all are welcome. Get more details and post your ideas at the Coffee Hack Wiki, and confirm your attendance on the Coffee Hack Facebook page (or just show up).

tl;dr info:

What: Coffee Hack, in which weird things are done with coffee.
When: February 12th, 2011, 2:00pm.
Where: The UnLab. At the Convergence Center (lower level), 999 Collip Circle, UWO, London Ontario.
Why?: Why not?

Regular pictures and words from the event will roll out on PWTIC.com over the next few weeks.

See you there or see you square.