19 November 2007

Coffee Root Beer

Coffee root beer is a creation of my younger days, working long hours (or what seemed to me at the time to be long hours) at a barbeque restaurant as a dishwasher. Our benefits package included run of the soda fountain (barring unreasonable abuse). This is the time when black coffee, in copious quantity, became a staple beverage of mine, but I also concocted a somewhat unique beverage that was a little more thirst quenching than a slug of day-old cold coffee, but still with a bit of extra caffeine kick for those long evenings .

There is nothing complex to the making of coffee root beer; it is as simple as it sounds, with a variable ratio depending on taste. I like a ratio of three parts root beer, 1 part good black coffee. One is best off chilling the coffee before adding it to the root beer, and never (as I did) try to funnel hot coffee into a 2-liter almost full of root beer. This will release all the carbonation into foam, and generally make a mess.

The resulting coffee root beer has the bitterness and flavour of the coffee balanced by the nutty sweetness of the root beer. Coca-Cola's "Blak" product was an annoying preemption of my idea, marketed towards the energy drink crowd and ridiculously overpriced. But simple, humble coffee root beer is an excellent drink.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, ummm.

Not sure how to respond to that. I guess I have to try it now.

Like, right now. I'll get back to you on it.

Also, does your overflowing root beer coffee 2-liter compare with the overflowing toilet caused by the incompetent janitor at the Joe Herndon Branch Davidians compound?

SQLFunkateer said...

No comparison, I am happy to say. If it had been comparable, there would have been rivers of root beer pouring out our front door into the street.

I'm sure better coffee would improve it too...I used the crappy stuff I had on hand (Folgers) which I've always found to have a nasty burnt popcorn taste when made to the strength I prefer. So get out your Freedom Press and brew up some coffee root beer.

I make no guarantees that others will enjoy it like me, though.