I donāt know about nitrogen, but carbonated coffee is vile (I do cold-brew, and have a SodaStream, so I had to try it).
When I saw the headline I was very excited that Starbucks was finally making good on my decades-old plan for better iced coffee, namely putting a dollop of liquid nitrogen in freshly brewed hot coffee to instantly convert it to iced.
Liquid nitrogen is cheaper than dirt (in fact, nitrogen is the active ingredient in dirt!) and the method actually works great once you get the hang of adding extremely cold liquid to fairly hot liquid. No melting water ice, none of this fizzy nonsense, none of the absurd rituals of concentrating and diluting to make iced ācoffeeā that most places do now.
Unfortunately, since cold-scalding accidents or inadvertent pressure buildups leading to explosions are more or less guaranteed over a given time horizon, it doesnāt really scale up. I mean, I still think itās a great idea, but itās just so hard to find baristas with the kind of raw physical courage you need for good iced coffee these days.
Whelp, you just named the newest coffee shop in SF.
Kitty Koffee
I can attest itās a delicious treat, but cost prohibitive at $5 bucks for a 12oz serving. My local go-to coffee joint has had it for over a year.
I heard that there is an ice cream chain that uses LN to instantly make ice cream out of whatever ingredients you choose.
Looking forward to trying it.
I think this is the one youāre thinking of, for all of our Los Angeles mutants: http://icecreamlab.com/
That must be itā¦ I think that our friend mentioned Little Tokyo.
Now Iāve got to thinkingā¦
Sterilize a keg of coffee in a sealed, stainless steel keg. Age it on oak with just a touch of malto-dextrin (for body), and serve it out of ācoffee enginesā cold. Also, design a plastic cup with a lid that looks like an imperial pint.
Based on my one-time experience with Pepsi Kona I donāt have high hopes for this, either. The writer of that linked article pitches several questions to the reader, which I will now answer for those who have not had the pleasure:
Are coffee and cola as compatible as cherry and cola, and as chocolate and milk?
No.
Is this a marriage made in marketing heaven?
No.
Or could it be as misguided a move as reformulating Coke?
I think you see where this is going.
Nitro-infused cold-brew is ācarbonatedā in the same way Guinness is carbonated, more or less; itās not like drinking bubbly, fizzy coffee, as the bubbles are so small. What you get isnāt coffee soda. Itās creamy and smooth, like a coffee milkshake without the dairy, and the tiny bubbles play a trick on your tongue of making it seem sweeter than usual.
Okay, that sounds delicious. Iām in.
Summary for those who havenāt read the whole thread yet: Coffee + CO2 = regret; Coffee+ N2 = heavenly unicorn rainbow streams
The Amazon link to the cloth bag is for something called
###Pure Joy-bag Nut Milk
and Iām happy that now Iāll never have to order one of those face-to-face from a real person.
Golly, last time I asked for that, I received something extremely different.
Starbucks is also selling wine and beer now. Maybe that nitrogen system will get used for that as well (the beer, not the wine).
Usually CO2 is used to pressurise beer and send it out of the taps, but Guinness uses nitrogen.
And what does the photo at the top of the article look like? Exactly.
