Taste Test: Bridgeport Coffee Company's 'Bubbly Creek' Coffee Soda

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Jun 12, 2014 9:00PM

Photo credit: Chuck Sudo/Chicagoist

When thinking of weird flavored sodas, coffee has to rank high on any list. Coca-Cola tried (and failed) to bring a coffee-flavored soda on the market with Coca-Cola BlāK. Currently there is Pur Java and Café Cola on the market. Fans of homemade soda can make their own coffee-flavored syrups for use in Sodastreams and other forced carbonation systems. But how does one find a balance between the bitter finish of coffee and the sweetness of a soda?

Bridgeport Coffee Company hopes they struck the right tone with their new Bubbly Creek soda. It’s made with extract from a cold-brewed version of their Hardscrabble Blend roast, sweetened with pure cane sugar and bottled by Filbert’s Soda. Response to the soda so far has focused on the name, a nod to the area of the Chicago River’s South Branch immortalized in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for the gases emitted from the carcasses dumped in the river decades ago by long-gone meatpacking houses.

Bridgeport Coffee Company owner Mike Pilkington told DNAinfo Chicago he wanted “a different experience” from iced coffee. “I think it's surprisingly unique.” That it is. Bubbly Creek isn’t inoffensive but it does have a flavor profile that requires some acclimation. Of Bridgeport Coffee Company’s blends, Hardscrabble is arguably the mildest of their roasts and, by extension, the most versatile. (It makes for one of the city’s best pour-overs and Bridgeport Coffee Company sells cold-press Hardscrabble by the gallon.)

Hardscrabble lacks the excessive bitterness of dark-roasts and you get the sweetness of the coffee beans, the main reason Bridgeport Coffee Company is popular with neighborhood residents and coffee nuts across the city. The sugar content only enhances the sweetness of the roast and the cold-pressing means you have less acidity in your soda.

Would it be a go-to soda? No. I would use it as a mixer with, say, a dark rum or a bourbon; Bubbly Creek is ideal for amateur mixologists to experiment with. The more bottles you buy the more money Bridgeport Coffee Company can donate to help transform Bubbly Creek. Proceeds from sales of the soda benefit The Wetlands Initiative, a local group dedicated to improving the quality of Chicago’s waterways that has targeted Bubbly Creek for years as a possible wetlands preserve.

You can buy Bridgeport Coffee Company’s Bubbly Creek soda for $2 a bottle at any of their three coffee shop locations: 3101 S. Morgan St., 5030 S. Cornell Ave. in the Hyde Park Arts Center and 1021 S. Delano Court West at the Roosevelt Collection.