dandelion coffee

Why feel guilty about the weeds in your backyard when you can harvest them??  As an apartment dweller not long ago, I urban foraged the weeds along the sidewalk edges of people's lawns.  Now I have plenty of weeds in my own backyard!  Though, of course, I might like to have a little more intentional growth as well someday...

We recently had a whole lot of bushy dandelions that were thriving.  I pulled them and harvested the roots for roasted dandelion coffee.  It makes for a neat variation on your standard cup of coffee - sort of like chicory coffee in New Orleans. 

I followed instructions from Prodigal Gardens.

coffee liqueur

We were actually planning on starting a coffee liqueur before the liqueur class that Eric mentioned in the previous post, but the class motivated us to do it asap. We changed the proportions of the recipe a bit compared to the class example. In particular we went with whole coffee beans rather than ground and increased the amount since the have less surface area. Hopefully straining will be easier at the end. We used 1/2 c. whole coffee beans bloomed in 1 c. hot water and then mixed with 2 c. sugar and 2 1/2 c. vodka. We will let the coffee beans soak for a month or longer if it needs it and shake it up once a day if we can. Then when a month is up, we'll filter the liqueur and optionally let it sit another month for more flavor development. We'll see about that last optional step...

cold brew coffee

Cold brew coffee is great in the summer because you can make iced coffee without having to make hot coffee or espresso first. It's easy too. You just put coffee grounds and water in a french press and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Cold brewing makes a less acidic and smoother tasting drink than regular coffee. Supposedly it has less caffeine too...

We've tried two different water-to-coffee ratios:

2:1 - this concentration is good for mixing with milk or water. I actually used the same grounds four times before discarding them.

4:1 - close to the usual french press ratio

Neither really stands out as a favorite, but 4:1 is less work.

I've also been enjoying a lot of cold yerba mate, which like coffee brews in cold water just fine. A french press works great for mate, as does the ol' jar + bombilla method.