What's in My Mug Will Keep Me Warm
By Chuck Sudo in Food on Feb 6, 2007 4:15PM
This is the weather for which the term "cabin fever" was coined. Take a look out your living room windows, ladies and gentlemen, and gaze in amazement at all that exhaust flowing from chimneys. It's enough to make most of us crawl further inside the furnace room lullabies of down comforters while numbing our brains with our latest Netflix selections. The men in Chicagoist's family call it "brass bra" cold. When the mercury freezes, sometimes the last thing you want to be drinking is a beer slightly warmer than yesterday's official high from O'Hare. You want something that'll raise your core temperature, get your motor running, and look forward to pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training next week. However, what if you aren't the mulled wine type? Or, maybe you're proud of your English heritage and refuse to drink Irish coffee. Maybe you're not the type for a short amaretto. Few people want to make a wassail in this weather.
Thankfully, there are other liqueurs available that will give your coffees, teas, and plain hot water just the spike you need to make it to Thursday. Some of these liqueurs even surprised us when we added them to hot beverages. Following the jump, we'll offer some recommendations for you to try. Do so in moderation, please.
We're gonna admit to a fondness for Kahlua. We even carried a tiny bottle around with us last Halloween so we could mix "caucasians" at parties (we were in costume as the Dude, and darkness did wash over us at various points). Put a gun to our head, however, and we'll choose Tia Maria over Kahlua any day. We like to spike our coffee with Tia Maria. It isn't as viscous as Kahlua, with a nice note of vanilla to complement the coffee flavor. A generous 1.5 ounces of Tia Maria added to black coffee is all you need.
Agavero is a tequila liqueur, a blend of reposado and anejo tequilas, infused with damiana flowers. The damiana flower is reputed to have aphrodisiac qualities in some Central American circles. Other Latin American regions smoke damiana leaves for relaxation; it reputedly provides an effect similar to smoking marijuana. Their flowers emit an odor similar to chamomile. Naturally, this would pair well with a chamomile tea. You can also add Agavero to rosehips and malty teas, like rooibos, lay back, and stare at the ceiling while playing the Allman Brothers.
Zen is a green tea liqueur produced by Suntory and marketed by Skyy Spirits. Consumed by its lonesome, it's a sticky, syrupy concoction that we were hard pressed to find any flavors resembling actual green tea. However, Zen makes one hell of a mixing liqueur. We haven't had this much fun with a flavored liqueur in quite a long time. We've replaced it for Jameson's in a Presbyterian recipe (the "Zen Monk"), but the genius cocktail is something we stumbled upon by accident, through a friend. Add a shot of Zen to an eight-ounce cup of hot water. Squeeze a slice of lemon into the mix. Voila, you now have a "Zen toddy." Diluted, the flavor of green tea really comes through, complemented perfectly by the lemon. It's almost as good as drinking actual green tea.