Getting creative with cold-brew: In Rhode Island, a company makes a line of coffee extracts, while in Washington, they add weed to their cold-brew
Editor’s note: Our summer series on cold-brew coffee began on Saturday, June 28, and continues each Saturday through July. To read part 1, go HERE. To read part 2, go HERE. To read part 4, go HERE.
By Jeremy Martin
As we have been spending the early part of the summer cruising around the wild world of cold-brewed coffee, we decided it was time to check in on a couple regionally specific variations. This installment of Barista Magazine‘s “Completely Cold Brew” summer blog series offers up coffee drinks from both the west and east coasts of the United States, as we make stops in the states of Washington and Rhode Island.
If you’re old enough to remember James Dean’s character in Rebel without a Cause, or at least recall seeing a pictures of Jim Stark, you’ll remember that he had a fondness for both a smooth cigarette and hot cup of coffee. And why wouldn’t he? In the mid 1950s, cigarettes screamed rebellion and black coffee was the beverage of choice for the deep-thinking set, not to mention the pairing of the two was considered classically cool.
Hell, director Jim Jarmusch even made a movie about it titled appropriately enough, Coffee and Cigarettes, whose lone plot device was to aim a camera at celebrities holding court on a number of topics, all while puffing and sipping away. But let’s be honest, cigarettes are bad for you, nicotine is highly addictive, and frankly burnt tobacco doesn’t have the allure that it once possessed.
But what if there was something else that could be added to our coffee, some other plant with stimulating effects, one that wouldn’t leave your tongue tasting like a Weber grill?
Enter Mirth Provisions, a Washington company whose line of Legal brand cold brew is infused with cannabis and comes in a varity of flavors.
Despite the commercial cannabis industry officially opening for business on July 8 the state of Washington has yet to give the thumbs up for retail food products containing THC, which will keep Legal cold brew off the shelf for the time being.
Though it’s not yet a regulated product, company founder Adam Stities insists the creation of legal cold brew will meet all FDA quality standards.
œI don’t think there’s anyone else out there doing cold brew with cannabis, Stites said in an interview with The Seattle Weekly. œIt’s certainly not like you show up with an eighth (of pot) and a cup of Starbucks. There are various extraction methods and levels of refinement we go through in the process.
But what do you do if you don’t happen to live in the Evergreen state, but still want a unique cold brew experience? Perhaps you create it yourself.
Dave’s Coffee of Charlestown, Rhode Island offers a line of coffee extracts. While not strictly for cold brew per se, the coffee syrup can be used as an additive for cocktails, cooking, or simply to be cut with water and poured over ice.
Mocha, vanilla, original, and decaf come in 16-ounce bottles and are made using small-batch, hand-roasted coffee in the same 12-kilo drum roaster the family-owned company has been using for years.
Despite its diminutive size, Dave’s recently began a partnership with Crate and Barrel to offer it’s coffee syrup in 89 retail locations across the United States.
œOur focus is on quality and exceeding customer expectations. In this way, Crate and Barrel is a perfect fit for our product line, Dave Lanning, CEO of Dave’s Coffee, said.
Rhode Island in particular is the perfect state for Dave’s, considering the official beverage of the Ocean State is a concoction called ˜Coffee Milk,’ which is exactly what it sounds like: cold milk flavored with sweet coffee syrup.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeremy Martin is a freelance writer and photographer who has reported on coffee, craft beer, college sports, and business for a variety of publications over the past six years. A veteran of the café industry and graduate of Western Michigan University, Jeremy lives in Seattle where can often be found making sandwiches from whatever is left in the fridge and cracking wise for the amusement of his adoring wife Amanda.
