Drink Ideas that *Didn’t* Work Out

Occasionally on this blog I post drink ideas such as the Cafe Cubano and the Dufrain. Though I get ideas from all over, I like to experiment on my own from time to time with making new types of drinks. Sometimes they work out, and I’ll continue to share ideas on this blog as I discover them. Sometimes they don’t work out. Just for fun, I thought I’d share some drink ideas I experimented with that didn’t come out as I’d hoped.

• Brewing star anise with the coffee grounds–When coffee became scarce and expensive in New Orleans in the early 20th century, many turned to adding chicory root to stretch out their coffee rations despite its unpleasant taste. In that spirit I tried using unpodded star anise to add a rich licorice flavor to my coffee brew. Unfortunately the result came out something like dirty, sour tea. (For the record, anise makes a great tisane by itself.)
• The “tequilatte”–some liquors complement coffee very well. Tequila is not really one of them. In the interest of full disclosure here, I’m not a huge tequila fan. Patron makes a coffee liqueur that’s acceptable, but since I feel like adding coffee-flavored liqueur to coffee is kind of cheating, I used regular tequila. It was…okay in coffee by itself, but adding it to a latte? Blech.
• Vanilla extract and sugar in place of vanilla syrup–I typically prefer my coffee black, but that’s not to say I don’t enjoy sugar or syrups occasionally. In a rush one morning I noticed I was out of vanilla syrup, so I hurriedly used a packet of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract instead. Basically the same thing, right? It wasn’t the same.
• Irish espresso–a macchiatto is just an espresso with a dollop of milk, so I thought replacing the milk with irish cream would be a home run. Unfortunately the thickness of Bailey’s turned the result to a dense sludge. It actually didn’t taste that bad, but its cough-syrup-like consistency was off-putting.