“Assume Nothing!” A mantra for The Crown as we worked towards opening our doors in March of 2019, the phrase became a Menu section, encouraging our visitors to drop their preconceptions and be open to new and delicious experiences. And now it’s the title of a recipe series, for you to recreate at home. Here’s to a year of assuming nothing!
Petal & Pod
A nitro-charged floral cold brew coffee concoction with sugar, spice, and everything nice.
Ingredients:
- 4 gallons Cold Brewed Coffee Concentrate
- 5 grams Cardamom Seeds
- 1/4 tbsp Rosewater
- 1 quart Sugar
- 1 quart Water
Directions:
For this recipe, you’ll want to have some cold brew on hand. At the Crown we make our cold brews in big Toddy systems using 5 pounds of coffee and 4 gallons of water. The coffee is ground coarse and steeped in big paper filters for 18-24 hours before being drained. If you don’t want to make 4 gallons of coffee all at once, it’s easy to make cold brew in a French Press or other smaller device with the following recipe:
Add the coffee to your press, cover with the water, stir to break up any clumps, and then cover and refrigerate for 12-16 hours. At the end of the steeping time, press and drain. This recipe can be easily scaled up: the approximate ratio of 1:8 will work for any amount of coffee.
Petal and Pod takes well to many kinds of coffee.
The syrup is sweet and floral enough on its own to elevate darker roasts and plainer flavors, but also pairs well with lighter roasts, so consider using your sweeter, more floral, and citric coffees too!
For the syrup, you’ll need to use a 1:1 ratio of sugar to water. Add the sugar and water to a pot and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve all the sugar. Add the Cardamom seeds and boil for 5 minutes, until fragrant. Remove from heat and place in a container. Allow to cool at least to room temperature, if not chilled in the fridge, before adding the rosewater. Rosewater is very potent! Start with 1/16 tbsp of rosewater, or just a couple drops, and slowly add more to taste – it should be present as a flavor without overpowering the cardamom (or your palate). If you’re making a scaled down version, try using a dropper that will allow you to add only a few drops at a time.
Once the syrup has completely cooled and rosewater has been added, mix with the cold brew. At The Crown, we use 1 quart of the Cardamom/Rose simple syrup for 4 gallons of cold brew. You can scale this down using a 1:16 ratio to make your desired amount of Petal and Pod, or 235g of syrup per gallon of cold brew.
We served this drink as a nitro beverage, charging the keg on a Nitrogen line to infuse it with nitrogen bubbles and make it feel velvety smooth. If you’re making it at home, you can replicate the nitro effect using a whipped cream charger with nitrous oxide. Simply place your petal and pod mixture in the whipper, seal, and charge with gas cartridge, shaking it to infuse the gas evenly. Then, release the gas before unscrewing the top of the whipper. Carefully pour the liquid into a glass, and voila! You’ve got a Petal and Pod.
Description:
At The Crown, we appreciate the flavors inherent to the coffees we have on hand, but we also understand that introducing flavors in the form of sweets and spices is a time-honored tradition for a reason – it’s delicious. You will never catch us shaming anyone for adding cream or sugar to their drink, and in fact, sometimes we like to do it for you.
For the Petal and Pod, we wanted to serve up something sweet and easy drinking yet refined. In honor of flavor traditions from countries that have been adding sugar and spice and everything nice to their coffee for centuries, we looked to cardamom and rosewater. We added the resultant syrup to our cold brew, and it was a winner in terms of taste but left us wanting something textural to complete the experience. After charging the mixture with silky nitro bubbles, we really had something to write home about – a delightfully complex and sophisticated floral flavor with a velvety smooth body. Delectable!
