Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

So I just bought a soda stream because it was on clearance for like 70% off. And now I am making all kinds of interesting beverages. So I thought we needed an interesting beverage thread in case any of the rest of you also like interesting beverages. And I will start by sharing what I made yesterday, which was sparkling water mixed with cotton candy flavored snow cone syrup that I bought at Michael's.

Also a lot of cold-brewed fruity herbal teas. Take 6-8 tea bags, put them in a 2L pitcher of water (+/- sugar), and leave it in the fridge overnight. Delicious. It only really works well with fruity teas, though. I find that other kinds just taste bad if you leave them in water for that long. Tried it with peppermint tea once and that was a disaster.

cold-brewed!? does that really work?

I'm going to pick up a huckleberry soda sometime this week.

Also forwarded a promo email from Sbux about their Pumpkin Spice Latte (it has its own acronym, guys) to my boyfriend as a joke. An evil joke. I call on Concorde to join me in celebrating our basic-white-girl-ness with all things pumpkin spice, and scarves. So many scarves.

Once the weather cools down I will again be making special hot chocolate at work - I wander over to the shake flavors and add things like marshmallow sauce, caramel, mint, vanilla, coconut, etc.

Until then I just drink Dr. Pepper with cherry or vanilla syrup.

I recently had a snapple iced tea that was red tea, pomegranate, and raspberry... it was kind of weird, and tasted more like a soda than a tea, but nice!

I like really dark hot chocolate, and if I'm feeling ambitious I love it with a little mexican hot chocolate and lemon/orange zest.

Cold-brewed really works, but you need to leave it in there for at least 12 hours. It is the perfect lazy way to make iced tea.

Yes, true tea you need to be more calibrated on the bitterness.

Yeah, I would never try making black or green tea that way. Apparently cold-brewed coffee is a thing now, and it is a thing of which I am very skeptical.

A guy at my work loooooved cold-brewed coffee. He left about a month ago, but he was really into it.

Ummm, for those of you who like alcohol drinks, root beer + vanilla rum is pretty amazing.

For those of you who don't like alcohol drinks, Virgil's root beer is pretty amazing.

I love cold-brewed coffee, myself. Try Califia.

Less coffee lately. Trying to budget means less Starbucks visits. Cold brew IS delicious, though. Once it starts getting cold again, I might start bringing mate in a gourd to drink at work.

Lots of brown liquors. Bulleit Bourbon is good. A friend got me Macallan 12 year single malt scotch recently, which is delicious. Fruit and oak notes. If I was a little richer I'd be so into fancy scotch.

Sour green apple watermelon icee at Wawa.

Digit wrote:Sour green apple watermelon icee at Wawa.

!!! That sounds so good.

Cognoscente wrote:Less coffee lately. Trying to budget means less Starbucks visits. Cold brew IS delicious, though. Once it starts getting cold again, I might start bringing mate in a gourd to drink at work.

Lots of brown liquors. Bulleit Bourbon is good. A friend got me Macallan 12 year single malt scotch recently, which is delicious. Fruit and oak notes. If I was a little richer I'd be so into fancy scotch.

What is the experience of coffee like? Is it sort of like hot chocolate with less sugar and more bitter?

Whistler wrote:

Cognoscente wrote:Less coffee lately. Trying to budget means less Starbucks visits. Cold brew IS delicious, though. Once it starts getting cold again, I might start bringing mate in a gourd to drink at work.

Lots of brown liquors. Bulleit Bourbon is good. A friend got me Macallan 12 year single malt scotch recently, which is delicious. Fruit and oak notes. If I was a little richer I'd be so into fancy scotch.

What is the experience of coffee like? Is it sort of like hot chocolate with less sugar and more bitter?

Straight black coffee is tough to get used to. It's very bitter. Nicer roasts bring more complex flavors to it, but plain ol' coffee is tough and you have to kind of make yourself like it. Cream and sugar help.

The fancy coffees: latte, cappucino, macchiato, etc, have various levels of milk and foam. Adding sugar to those is sort of getting closer to what you're suggesting. A mocha is milk and cocoa with a shot of espresso (concentrated coffee), and that's the closest you'll get to hot chocolate. If you've never tried coffee before and want to, a mocha is a real easy first step.

I pretty much always drink mochas. It seriously is hot chocolate with the slightest twinge of coffee. Sooo good.

Has anyone tried kombucha? All of my BYU hippy friends are drinking it and making it (which sounds terrifying to me). I think it looks and smells gross and so I have never tried it, but I am missing out on something tasty?

I tried the kind you can just get at whole foods and it was really.... uh... Not my thing.

I tried kombucha once. More like kom-POO-cha, right?