Thursday, August 09, 2007

Make It Right

So if you know me, you know I love coffee, and my favorite drink is an Iced Mocha. When made right, it's the greatest thing in the world, but it can be easily screwed up. Peet's Coffee makes it right. Mix chocolate syrup with the espresso and then pour equally with the milk over ice. Almost everytime its perfect, but occasionally its a little weak because you get too much milk. Starbucks uses syrup, which is the NECESSARY ingredient to make it correctly, but they use way too much and they burn their beans. My teeth usually hurt after drinking theirs. The trick is to ask for half the normal amount of chocolate and then it is drinkable, but still not great. Some places like Diedrich's Coffee use chocolate powder. It is passable, but I don't like it. You end up with grit at the bottom of the cup. Now for the two worst possible ways to make the drink.

1. Almost all the coffee shops in La Jolla, CA use chocolate milk in their drinks. I have no idea why they do it, but it tastes terrible. Luckily there is a Peet's there now.

2. There is a bar/smoke den/coffee shop in the student union at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee that offers something they call "Daddy's Mocha". The rancid smell of cigarette smoke should have warned me, but I really needed coffee that day. They mixed regular black coffee with a package of swiss miss hot chocolate. It was one of the worst things I have ever tasted. One sip and I threw it away. Why didn't they tell me the real coffee shop was in the bookstore? Their coffee was much better.

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