feeling adventurous with your coffee?

ever since my work relocated to martin place, i've been getting my morning coffee's over at mecca espresso - regarded by many as the best coffee shop in sydney (or one of the best).

one morning, i rock on over for my usual 10-10.30am coffee break and i bump into fellow coffee-nerd roly. so we give each other a nod and he's like 'yeh trust to see you here' and i'm thinking the same thing. so we're waiting for our coffee orders and having a quick chat about coffee and a few other things (ok i'm lying - it was all about coffee) and then roly asks me a rather serious question 'so what do you drink?'. i tell him my usual boring latte + 1, so he suggests the following to me...

a long black with a dash of hot milk + 1 sugar. i'm not much of a long black drinker but being my adventurous self (yes i know very life-on-the-edge stuff) and open to suggestions, i decide i'll try and make one at home on the coming weekend to see how it goes. weekend comes around and i warm up my imat napolitana...

1 teaspoon of sugar...

1 espresso shot (looking good)...

add some hot water to about 3/4 cup... (yes i now know to pull the shot over the hot water so to not burn the espresso)

heat some milk up and top up coffee...

and BAM! where my boring latte usually tastes warm, smooth and calming... this drink was a slap in the face! it had the raw taste of a long black but the smooth finish of a latte. now i know that roly's suggestion was 'a long black with a DASH of hot milk', i had already decided 1/4 hot milk would be more to my liking than just a dash (since i'm a latte drinker).

so anyway the following monday, i order the BDHM+1 (i think thats what she wrote?) and burn my tongue trying to drink it. didn't like it much - thought it was too 'long blacky' for my taste.

i have since tried a few other combinations and my fave sits somewhere along 1/2 long black + 1/2 milk. this morning i spotted some condensed milk on the kitchen bench and replaced my sugar with this... turned out to be fantastic coffee! thanks roly - looks like i've found a replacement for my latte at home... at least for mornings where i want a bit more bite in my drink.

so there you have it, if you're feeling a little adventurous one morning - try a half long black + half hot milk + 1 sugar (or condensed milk if found lying around). perhaps theres already a name for this that i don't know of? let me know your thoughts.

(can you see the face in there? is my coffee trying to tell me something?)