Serving up a sample of this delicious new Coffee Milk Slushy to a customer at the coffeehouse, which she’d never heard of before, I mentioned the drink “coffee milk” was more popular on the East Coast. She replied that she was from the East Coast and had never heard of it.
So, taking that as kind of challenge, the way you challenge a Scrabble word play, we decided to do a bit more research. Turns out that I was not wrong – Coffee Milk is more popular on the East Coast. In fact, it is the official state beverage of Rhode Island. But it is still not widely known there, either. Turns out we were both right.
So what is a Coffee Milk Slushy?! Well it’s pretty simple really – we make a coffee syrup in the kitchen (we make all our syrups in house), add it to milk, and put it in the slushy machine to give it an iced-milk consistency. The flavor is lightly coffee, sweet, and refreshing. The caffeine content is lower than a cup of coffee, but still enough that you will feel the buzz.
(Not served in a Cortado glass unless requested.)
Another fun tidbit about Coffee Milk is that when it was coined, the term “milk shake” meant syrup added to milk and shaken. A milkshake as we know it today, ice cream and syrup whipped together, was known then as a “cabinet”, which probably referred to the dispenser of such a creation was part of a large refrigeration cabinet in the back of the restaurant. (source)
The most complicated step in making coffee syrup is getting the sugar to water ratio correct. While we boil other syrups to infuse spices and dissolve the sugar, you don’t want to boil coffee and potentially change its flavor. So, the measurements must be precise. You can see Justin putting in the careful work below.
Coffee milk slushy is currently available at the Coffeehouse on Capitol Hill, and will be available for the remainder of spring and into early summer.
If you are not able to make it to the Capitol Hill location, you can try our coffee syrup in milkshake made over at Meg’s Hamburgers in Pioneer Square (truly delicious).