It’s been a while since we’ve carried a Coffee Bean Direct mug, but we recently updated our bean and arrow logo and decided to celebrate with a new mug design. Our durable and beautiful Artisan stoneware mugs are for you lovers of things rustic, beautifully imperfect, and one of a kind. Here’s our first batch, fresh from the kiln at Goose Creek Pottery in Rosemont, NJ, where potter Ted Green makes each wheel-thrown mug, one at a time.

These mugs are a labor of love and made by hand. As a result, they vary slightly in size and glaze pattern. Dishwasher and microwave safe, they are functional works of art, worthy of our fresh-roasted best!

Infusing alcohol is a creative way to put a personal stamp on your favorite cocktail recipes and preserve the flavor of the season’s glorious fruits, herbs, and flowers. Enjoy your infusions all summer long or reward your shoveling in February with the taste of sunshine.

While fresh ingredients take days or even weeks to fully infuse, tea and spice infusions reach their best flavor fairly quickly and make a great place to start. Vodka’s neutral flavor makes it pretty foolproof as far adding ingredients goes. When choosing a base for your infusion, keep in mind that a higher alcohol content will increase the extraction power. High proof spirits (100 proof or higher) are diluted with water to a drinkable level once the infusion is complete. If you’re sticking to tea, which infuses easily, a lower alcohol (80 proof) content is perfectly fine, no dilution required.

What you’ll need

Vodka, 80 proof. We use Grey Goose, because we like to be fancy, it’s very drinkable infused, and because of the word Grey.

Loose leaf Earl Grey black tea. We also offer an organic version, but conducted our experiment with our standard Earl Grey. Both use 100% real oil of bergamot, extracted from the rind of bergamot oranges.

A tea strainer. We used the Hook Handle Tea Infuser, a simple metal strainer. If you’re using a finer cut of tea, you may want to strain the infusion through a coffee filter.

The Ratio

For every 1 cup of vodka, we added 1 teaspoon of loose leaf tea.

The Method

Add your desired amount of vodka and tea, in the ratio above, to a mason jar or other sealable container. Add the lid and shake to combine. Let it sit in a cool place, away from light. The flavor should be just right at 12 hours, but you can definitely drink it much earlier. After just a few hours the vodka will be tasty, but the bergamot flavor dominates. It takes a longer time for the black tea flavor to emerge, and it’s worth waiting a few more hours for. Enjoy  it cold, strained over ice, make yourself a martini, or try it with grapefruit soda (the earl greyhound).

• Your favorite pie filling
• Ol’ Smoky Moonshine cherries (as a garnish on top)

Combining rich coffee with sweetened condensed milk, Vietnamese iced coffee can quickly become a habit in the summer.  The traditional recipe uses a Vietnamese press, which brews a single serving of strong coffee into a glass containing sweetened condensed milk. Pour the mixture over ice and you’ve got something magical.

I’ve always thought this would be a fantastic ice cream flavor, but heat makes me lazy, and all that stirring sounds like hard labor. Popsicles to the rescue. Sweetened condensed milk is blended throughout the top and bottom layers of this recipe, so you get a nice mix of the coffee and sweet cream flavor at the top, finishing off with a little vanilla at the bottom.

What you’ll need

Popsicle molds for 12 pops

2 cups of cold dark coffee (we used our French Roast coffee, brewed in a French press and cooled)

1- 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1-1/2 cups heavy cream

Non-stick cooking spray (optional)

Directions

• Whisk the cold coffee and 2/3 cup of sweetened condensed milk together in a bowl and pour the mixture into your molds until each is about 3/4 full.*
• Freeze for 2 hours or until the mixture is slushy, but frozen enough to hold a popsicle stick. The harder first layer is, the better the separation will be. A slightly softer layer will create a swirl effect, which is just as delicious.
• In the meantime, mix together 6 tablespoons of the sweetened condensed milk, 1/4 teaspoon vanilla and 1-1/2 cups of the heavy cream.
• Fill the remaining space in the molds with the cream mixture (you may have a little left over, depending on the size of the mold).
• Freeze until very solid. Sweetened condensed milk takes a while to harden. Let it sit overnight or longer.

* A word about popsicle molds: 

Having a stick come out in your hand while the rest of your frozen treat remains stuck in the mold is a frustration no one should have to suffer ever. I recommend silicone molds, but managed to have success with the  old-fashioned plastic kind by spraying a little non-stick cooking spray inside before adding the coffee/milk mixture.

If that idea grosses you out, you can also dip the frozen pops in a bowl of warm water for 30 seconds or longer before pulling the sticks gently. I recommend doing that anyway, spray or no spray. While they are an awkward shape to eat, Dixie cup pops might be the simplest method of all. Simply peel the paper off, no tugging (or heartbreak) required.

Sometimes when you can’t decide between two great things you should just try them together. The possibility of a new great thing is worth the risk that you will ruin them both. It’s a stuffy 89 degrees today and while a tall glass of iced tea sounds perfect, so does a margarita. Tea-ritas it is.

Tea-ritas are a thing, we did not invent them. There are many variations, and we tried a few before finding our favorite. Tea with a strong flavor stands up best to tequila, which is why we used English Breakfast black in our recipe, brewed strong. The result was a little like an Arnold Palmer with a kick, the black tea flavor perfect with the lime juice and Triple Sec.

Directions

Add 1 cup of strong black iced tea (we used Organic English Breakfast) to a cocktail shaker. Pour in 1 shot of silver tequila, 1 oz triple sec, 1 shot of  fresh lime juice, and 1/4 cup simple syrup or agave syrup. Shake it over ice and strain into a glass with a salted rim, if you like that sort of thing. Garnish with lime.