Brütal Coffee
Let’s take a look at a few coffee creations that will melt your face and make you feel like a real man (even if you are a woman).
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.
Coffee Hack 2011 + Thanksgiving Coffee
In non-coffee news, I’ve pretty much got a PhD now. The push to get it done meant a dearth of PWTIC posts, but now that I’m a doctor, what will I use my newfound brains, skills and talent for? Well, doing more gross stuff with coffee of course.
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.
PWTIC Live! Coffee Hack on February 12th
The number one complaint I get from PWTIC readers goes like this: “Hey, I like words and pictures as much as the next fictional PWTIC reader, but what I really want is to see this stuff in person. I constantly dream about the sights and sounds of weird coffee, and—oh my gosh—sometimes I even dream about smelling and tasting it. Why can’t I experience this? Will you please invent a way to transmit smells and tastes over the internet tubes?”
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.
Gingerbread Houses Perched on a Mug
Oh just look how cute these are:
Little gingerbread houses perched on a mug! The smell alone would probably enhance the flavour of coffee in that mug, but I don’t think anyone would be too disappointed if the house got soggy and fell in. Gingerbread lattes have been my drink of choice for keeping warm through the snowstorms around here.
Here is how to make your own precariously perched gingerbread houses, and thanks @nataliese for tweeting about this.
Chocolate Hazelnut Assplosion
I had big plans for hot sauce. I dribble the stuff on everything I eat, so I have four different kinds in my fridge. A nice idea, I thought, would be to try the whole series of sauces in coffee, then have a post comparing them all, with an intricate rating system to help you, dear reader, choose the perfect hot sauce for your morning beverage.
Here is how those plans got derailed.
Assplosion was a lovely gift from my family. It’s not a great hot sauce; it’s spicy enough, but hadn’t really lived up to its name. Still, I had to try it first, to start this series with a “bang.”
The only coffee I had ready was chocolate-hazelnut flavoured. And you know how chocolate with chili in it is all the rage these days? I thought I’d enhance the chocolate with some Fry’s cocoa and go for that idea in drink form.
I’ve been watching Dexter a lot lately, which makes red drips remind me of blood. That was probably the first sign this wouldn’t turn out well.
When it was all mixed up, the smell was … alarming. It literally hurt my nose a bit, with the combination of bitter cocoa and noxious spice. Ah, but I had to try tasting it anyway. For you, dear reader. All for you.
All I could taste was the Assplosion. I only put a few drops in, but it overwhelmed the coffee, hazelnut, and chocolate such that all they did was add some bitterness and enhance the illusion that I was drinking poison. Or ass.
I want to give other hot sauces a chance. Maybe it’d be better with regular coffee and no chocolate. Maybe there is a sauce out there that can contribute to the pleasant coffee / spice balance I experienced with curry coffee. But I can’t bring myself to try any more; not any time soon.
Plus, I’m starting to feel a rumbling down below.
Putting Flowers in Coffee
I was at a lovely dinner party, when conversation turned (as it often does in my presence) to weird coffee. As we retired to the drawing room, the party’s host — a culinary master with experience in flavours both traditional and exotic — mentioned that she had procured a jar of an unusual beverage additive.
She could not risk her life by telling me which underground market in which Asian country she had smuggled the rare florets from. However, she did let me take some, in order to distill it into my own elixir.
I cannot read the codified script on the jar, but I am told these are dried flowers of some sort. They also appear to be shrunken. Although originally created to add zest and vitality to tea, my specialty is in the transmutation of coffee.
I used black coffee with a small dipper full of sugar.
I had trouble getting over the dead-June-bugs-in-a-puddle look, but once I did, the taste was not the least bit unpleasant. It was quite like sipping coffee among the flowers of a botanical garden. Or like putting a dab of perfume in your morning brew. Except less poisonous. I could feel my spirits lifting and my humours balancing almost immediately.
Perhaps for Valentine’s Day I will sprinkle my true love’s coffee with ground up rose petals. Wouldn’t that be romantic?
WOULDN’T IT?
P.S. I cannot explain the style this post is written in. Thanks to Vivian for the flower things. You can probably find dried rose buds(I think that’s what these are) wherever unusual foods are sold.
The Mojijoe
When I was in Cuba, I fell in love with the Mojito. Its mix of strong rum, sugar, lime, soda water, and fresh mint is a refreshingly refreshing drink to beat the summer heat.
But now, as hot summer days turn to cool fall nights, we’d rather have a drink that lights a fire within us rather than squelching the sun without. Can we keep the rummy minty goodness of a Mojito, but rejigger it into something toasty? How about a warm cup of Mojijoe?
First, get all your ingredients:
I started with the sugar (2ish tbsp), mint (4-5 leaves), and just a squirt of lemon juice. I didn’t have a muddler handy, so I used the back of a spoon to mash it together just enough to bruise the tasty oils out of the mint leaves.
I added the rum (1.5 oz) next, then stirred and mashed a bit more. I used dark rum rather than the usual white; I thought it would compliment the coffee better.
Then the coffee. Then stir.
But um, I wouldn’t recommend the fancy glass. Oww, poor fingers. I guess mugs have handles for a reason. Also, the mint leaves kinda get in the way. So you may want to use one of these deals:
After all that, how’s it taste? Good! With the rum and mint, it’s very reminiscent of a crème de menthe-based dessert coffee, except the fresh mint has a more authentic taste and smell. It’s very rich; a whole mug may be too much. However, just a few sips were enough to have the intended warmth-in-the-belly effect.
The Mojijoe is going in the success category.
Putting Weird Things in Coffee 
