Episode 22 - Mint Coffee Experiments

As you may have noticed, this episode is a little longer than normal. In fact, I believe it's our longest yet. This is because we tried not one but four different coffees. Here's a breakdown of each recipe followed by our opinion on how they came out.

Note: We used dark roast coffees across the board for brewing.

Experiment 1: 

Mint Leaves in Coffee

For this one we just tore up some organic mint leaves and tried steeping them right in already made cups of coffee, kind of like tea leaves in hot water.

Leuke's Thoughts:

★☆☆☆☆

Nope.

Chad's Thoughts:


☆☆☆☆☆ (no stars)


Do not try this at home! It was just gross, it tasted a lot like our mint tea coffee (see below). Just bitter and sour. Didn't have a good smooth, minty taste.

Experiment 2: 

Mint Leaves Ground into the Coffee

Since that didn't work (like at all), we mixed mint leaves and coffee beans, then ground and brewed it all together. I'm not going to tell you how many mint leaves to use. I think we did maybe three or four, and it wasn't very strong. You might want to add more for more flavor.


Leuke's Thoughts:

★★★★☆

This was, in my opinion, a pretty decent success. It had subtle mint flavor underneath the coffee taste, and I'd say everything blended pretty nicely. If it had any flaw, the mint was maybe a little too subtle.

Chad's Thoughts:


★☆☆☆☆

Brewing the mint leaves and coffee together was much better! It was still bitter and sour but I could definitely taste the mint in it a lot better. I still wouldn't drink it every day.


Experiment 3: 

Candy Cane Coffee

For this one we ground candy canes and coffee beans together and brewed the mix. For this one we used all natural, non-artificial candy canes. Make sure you don't use anything with artificial colors or flavors, they'll mess with the taste and ruin a perfectly good cup of coffee!

I used the "straight" part of the cane (breaking off the curved portion), for 1 large cup of coffee.

You can also just melt candy canes into your coffee, but from my experience that can be hit or miss. I would say that doesn't work as well as this does.

Leuke's Thoughts:

★★★☆☆

A very successful combo. I'm rating it low because it feels like cheating to use something with sugar in it. It occurs to me now that we should have tried making coffee with pure peppermint oil. The results would have at least been interesting. Maybe next year! Everything tasted good but I don't like to intake extra sugar where I don't need to. Not something I'd drink more than once or twice a year.

Chad's Thoughts:


★★★★★

I could drink this about every day. The candy cane sweetens the coffee and you get a good peppermint kick along with it. Being a big fan of peppermint I loved this coffee. 


Experiment 4: 

Mint Tea Coffee

Similar to the black tea and milk coffee we tried way back in Episode 15, which to date still hasn't made it to Youtube (We had some recording issues. I'm still hoping to get it posted eventually). We put mint tea bags in coffee instead of hot water to brew them.

Chad and I used different teas for this one. I believe Chad used Celestial Seasonings Peppermint tea, while I went with Stash Tea's Moroccan Mint.

Leuke's Thoughts:

★★☆☆☆

It wasn't gross? That's maybe the best I can say for this one. The mint flavor wasn't that strong, and it didn't mesh as nicely with the coffee. I would say one of the other methods we tried is better worth your time, though I admit a different mint tea could have different results, so feel free to prove me wrong!

Chad's Thoughts:


★★☆☆☆

I'm just not a fan of coffee and tea. Once again it made the coffee very bitter. I could taste the peppermint pretty strongly but the bitterness I just can't go for. 

Trivia:

In today’s trivia we continue our look into coffee history. It has been famously banned five times. In Sweden circa 1746, King Gustav III outlawed coffee and all coffee related “paraphernalia”. Apparently the authorities might even take your cups and dishes. Apparently, in order to better understand coffee, the king ordered it be tested on death row inmates. These unlucky prisoners were forced to drink coffee until they died, so the king could find out how much coffee it would take to kill a man. Doctors watched as they pleaded for their lives and begged to go to the potty. 



So there you have it. Did you try a mint coffee? Let us know how it went! Next week we continue the Christmas coffee fun with Caribou's Reindeer blend, in our first head to head Regular vs Decaf battle.