The new old way to drink coffee this summer is with bubbles.
Portland coffee juggernaut Stumptown will be offering a cold brew tonic at all of its locations, and smaller coffee shops like New York's Box Kite and San Francisco's Saint Frank Coffee have been serving fizzy iced joe for a while.
Of course, the O.G. carbonated coffee drink is the Manhattan Special, est. 1895 in good old Brooklyn, New York. The drinks you'll be seeing in cafés won't stray far from the Special's main ingredients — coffee, carbonated water, and cane sugar (a bit too much if you ask me).
According to Eater.com, Stumptown will make its cold brew tonic with one part cold brew and two parts Fever Tree tonic water, with a Luxardo maraschino cherry garnish. At Box Kite, baristas simply empty a shot of espresso over a glass of iced tonic water.
There are more decadant variations, too. New York restaurant Northern Spy and café Irving Farm each do carbonated coffee with a heavier hand. Available on and off the menu, depending on the location, Irving Farm's espresso egg cream is a frothy mix of Saratoga seltzer, chocolate and vanilla syrups, cream, and espresso. Northern Spy, an airy, seasonal restaurant in Alphabet City, does a coffee seltzer with iced coffee, seltzer, chicory, simple syrup, and organic cream.
As someone who's thrown back a few Specials and tinkered with coffee tonics at home, the drinks do manage to make iced coffee feel even lighter on the palate. And then of course there's a slight bitterness. It's all very Italian. Try it. You'll be tickled.
