“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!
SparkleFritz
A classic-cocktail-inspired sparkling iced coffee with complex florality and a little bitterness.
Ingredients:
Yields 4.25 gallons. Can be scaled down easily at home, just keep a 1-16 ratio of syrup to coffee for a sparkly refreshing drink)
- 1/8 cup dried juniper berries
- 1/8 cup dried elderflower
- ½ tsp gentian root
- 1 tbsp dried or fresh yuzu zest
- ½ tbsp dried rose petals
- 1 quarts sugar
- 1 quarts hot filtered water
- 4 gallons iced coffee
Directions:
Add the juniper berries to a medium pot, with just enough hot water to cover the bottom of the pot. Let the berries warm and soften, then use a muddler to crush them up a bit.
In a makeshift cheesecloth or coffee filter bag, add the elderflower, gentian root, yuzu zest, and rose petals. Tie off at the top, leaving enough room in the bag for things to expand move around a little. Not too tight.
Add the sugar and 2 quarts of hot water to the pot with the juniper berries. Once you get the sugar mostly dissolved, add the bag of spices. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer for 30 minutes.
Cool, carefully remove the bag, and strain. The remaining liquid is your Sparklefritz Syrup!
To re-create the kegged beverage we served at The Crown, add 1 quart of syrup and 4 gallons of iced coffee to a 5 gallon keg and charge with CO2. For an at home version, try using the same 1:16 ratio of syrup to coffee and use a soda stream to carbonate.
Description:
What the heck is a “SparkleFritz”? It’s a drink we made up! I love iced coffee (flash brew, not cold brew), and I love floral coffees. I REALLY love floral iced coffees, but much to my dismay, all coffees are not created floral. So we forced the issue
For this recipe, I drew some flavor inspiration from classic cocktail ingredients like gin, chartreuse, and St. Germaine, which create a complex florality with some bitterness to it as well. If that’s not your cup of joe, feel free to swap in your favorite flowers, or change the citrus as you please. I’m sure lavender would be delicious! My original recipe had chamomile in it, I hate chamomile, so I took it out! Have some jasmine? Toss it in!
By adding a floral simple syrup to delicious flash brewed iced coffee, we created a lightly sweet cold coffee drink with delicious floral notes like rose and juniper, coupled with a touch of citrus (yuzu, in this case). Then, as we are wont to do at The Crown, we asked “What if we make it bubbly?” It was awesome and sparkly and floral and fritzy and delicious, and thus the SparkleFritz was born.
-Alex Taylor, Tasting Room Manager
