Chicory is a plant whose roots can be ground and baked to create a cheap coffee substitute; a practice that is popular in New Orleans. This blend of coffee and chicory from Café Du Monde is surprisingly delicious on its, with a smokier, woodier flavour than most coffee. However, apparently New Orleans is also down with the practice of putting coffee in weird things:

This rub, probably designed for flavouring meat, contains garlic, chipotle, other spices, and yes, coffee. Someone must have figured the flavours go well together, so the next logical step is to mix the rub with actual coffee. I decided to do so with an old fashioned rim job.

Before continuing, I have to introduce a new mug to the Putting Weird Things in Coffee family:

I have no idea who Danielle is. I believe an ex girlfriend left this mug here after celebrating the miracle of childbirth with some friends. I trust that Danielle and her little blessing are doing well, and I will think fondly about them whenever I use this commemorative mug. Now let’s see what it looks like when smeared with coffee rub gunk:

I wet the mug then dipped it in the rimmer, not unlike a caesar. Then, in goes the chicory coffee.

You know, this isn’t terrible. The garlic, and especially the chipotle, go well with the chicory coffee in a weird sort of way. If it were mixed in the coffee it would be overpowering, but after a few sips I only taste a hint of the rimmer, which adds some saltiness and additional smokiness to the coffee.

Yeah, not bad. I’d toss some beads at this coffee if it showed me its boobs at Mardi Gras.

I’d like to thank my sister Andrea for bringing me this stuff, and I’d also like to thank Danielle, whoever she is, for the lovely mug.

And isn’t coffee all the better when it’s not only doing the water dance with your tastebuds, but providing you with life-saving warmth? It’s even better with rich, creamy, buttery additions, which can help provide that extra layer of blubber to protect against the biting cold and/or threats from beyond the Wall.

Looking through my chambers for such an addition, I came across some butterscotch pudding that had, sadly, expired several months ago. Good thing a true coffee warrior realizes that minor concerns such as “expiry dates” are all in the mind. Even though the brown butterscotch powder had, curiously, turned pink:

No matter! Coffee is all about revival, resurrecting expired ingredients like fearsome and delicious wights.

I used this coffee from Idealbrew.co . They were kind enough to send me a free sample of their service, which sends three coffee samples from three different roasters, every month, for about $10 per month. Delivered right to your door, so you don’t have to brave the winter air to acquire it. They didn’t even ask me to plug them, but check it out anyway.

I added cream and the bepinkened pudding powder to a drinking receptacle, then stirred it with a staff of cinnamon. It immediately began to regain its colour.

The end result was a elixir that was thick and creamy, with a hint of the warm spice of cinnamon. I could feel my arteries toughening up, bracing themselves for the coming winter. Mission accomplished.

Stay thirsty my friends, and may the odds be ever in your favour, and a Lannister always pays his debts. (?)

See also: Blood pudding in coffee.

Yep. It’s primarily boiled and congealed cow blood.

It came in frozen patties, which started off reddish, as you’d expect, but as I fried them up I found out why it’s called black pudding.

Just dropping this in coffee wouldn’t do much, so I got out the old Magic Bullet and threw a chunk in.

It ended up frothy and strangely grey in colour.

The Magic Bullet did its job, and the end result was only slightly chunky.

I was dreading trying this one. I’m not squeamish, obviously, but the idea of solidified blood invokes some deep dread in me that makes me want to barf then pass out. We all gotta face our fears though.

On its own, the blood sausage was chalky and dry, with a bit of a burnt taste. It wasn’t as dreadful as expected, but I didn’t eat much. In coffee, though, the burnt taste is actually complimentary. The fat (or “suet”) in the blood sausage gives the coffee an extra smooth creaminess, as seen in other meat-based coffees. The warmth of the coffee also seems to have brought out a sweet smell from the blood that is surprisingly pleasant.

I expected this to be a “take one sip, retch, throw the rest away” experiment, but here I sit, still sipping from this weird grey coffee. I can’t call it an unqualified success, because knowing what it is still grosses me out a bit, but I also can’t call it a failure or recommend against trying it. Vampires? Leeches? Maybe they’re on to something.

What is stopping anyone from being both a coffee person and a tea person? Come to think of it, what is stopping anyone from drinking coffee and tea at the same time? Let’s find out:

We’ll do this Tassimo-style. PC’s new dark roast is one of my favourite coffees for the wasteful little machine, and I was given some green tea by Twinings, which by its very name implies it is supposed to be twinned with something else.

I got a big cup and brewed (er, “brewed”) one after the other. Unfortunately, the machine seemed to sense a disturbance, realizing that a black magic violation of the natural coffee / tea separation was about to happen, threatening to tear a hole in the fabric of spacetime and usher in a world where cats play with dogs, fire is made of water, and Canada wins plenty of gold medals at the Olympics.

It voiced its disapproval with the dreaded four blinky lights.

Luckily, the damage was already done. The unholy union of coffee and green tea sat in my cup, looking like…well, coffee.

The taste is not entirely terrible. It’s like green tea that’s too bitter, or dark coffee that’s too watered down. I was happy to drink the whole thing, but I don’t feel compelled to do it again. Still, I’m happy that I’ve managed to bridge the gap between coffee and tea. If only all of us could put aside our preconceived notions and jam disparate things together, the world would be a better place. That’s what this blog is all about, really. You’re welcome.

I feel it’s appropriate that I preface this post with the disclosure that I’m no saucy-boy-come-lately. For as far back as I can remember I’ve put HP Sauce on all sorts of things that aren’t normally considered saucable, such as McDonald’s fries, and potato chip sandwiches. I even put that shit on my Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. So I was intrigued, upon watching the 2003 Irish film, Intermission, to witness the characters in the film pouring HP Sauce into their coffee.

At first, everyone is surprised to see someone doing it, then they would try it themselves, and eventually it really caught on. I had no idea whether the film’s writer had discovered this recipe himself and wished to inform the masses via celluloidal means, or, if it actually was a daft thing to do, and he was playing a joke on the audience, many of whom (okay, me) would try it themselves.

I set out to find the answer.

And then I became distracted and forgot about it for several years.

Until, whilst casually browsing the Gazet van Antwerpen at a lovely little café along the banks of the Reie in picturesque Bruges one recent afternoon, I happened upon a slight piece concerning a website called, well, this one. I clearly recall thinking: Oh, I saw a film once about people putting something weird in coffee, followed closely thereafter by: I wonder what that film was and what weird thing may it have been?

I set out to find the answer.

You’ve probably already guessed what it was, and what the weird thing was, so I decided to try it myself, being careful not to get distracted before I could follow through with my mission.

This is how I went about it:

I got some coffee and sauce.

Then I made the coffee, poured it in a cup that I keep mainly for that purpose, though I occasionally use it for orange juice when all the glasses are dirty and I couldn’t be bothered washing one, and put the sauce in the coffee-filled cup; exactly half as much as you’d use for a medium-sized serving of McDonald’s fries.

(I had first tried mixing the sauce pre-brew. That didn’t work.)

It tends to get a little filmy (not to be confused with celluloidal), I discovered, when you let it sit too long while writing guest blog entries.

This extra time is decidedly unrecommended, as it also allows greater opportunity for free-floating errant dog hairs to wander into the cup that you must try to remove from your teeth later.

This can be an annoying task, particularly with the knowledge that it wasn’t due to first indulging in cunnilingus (with a woman, not a dog)…

…and that you haven’t got to partake in that particular indulgence for several months, and you can’t help but wonder, due to your advancing age and proportionally declining appearance, if you’ll ever have the opportunity again and, really, what’s the point of going on?

And the result was fabulous! It turns out the film’s writer was not punking his audience, and that HP Sauce in coffee is, indeed, quite delicious. I shall henceforth enjoy my coffee in this manner as often as I remember to do so. I’ve set up a reminder on my iTracker so that every morn, just as the coffee has finished brewing, it prompts me to insert the sauce.

Some of the more disturbed viewers of this site may be pleased to notice the residue upon emptying the cup does not look at all unlike a toilet bowl the morning after a rather well-attended Taco Bell party.

Great tip from How To Basic on Youtube.

(via Jeff Preston)

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.