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Its pretty rare that I get to write about something coffee related that gets my wife really excited. She has reached a point where my jabbering on about coffee has been somewhat tuned out. And I honestly can’t blame her.
Last weekend she threw me a curve ball. It was Saturday morning and like most weekend mornings our six year old was up before seven. To think that I used to consider getting up at 11 AM early.
We generally try to rotate in these situations to give the other person a chance to sleep a little longer. As it happens it my turn in the rotation. Before I left the room I heard this crystal clear voice from under the comforter say:
“Can you make a pot of coffee?” Me? Coffee? I thought.
“No problem.” I replied.
“Hey, put one of those Tastefully Simple Vanilla Bean Chillers in the bottom of the pot.”
“Okay” I replied, slightly befuddled.
So downstairs I went. What the hell was a chiller? And how did something with the word Chill fit into brewing coffee?
Reading over the instructions I was sure she was still asleep, it called for milk and crushed ice after all. Despite my concerns she assured me that it was an alternate recipe.
I should mention that my wife sells Tastefully Simple as a home based business, consequently I get a lot of things to sample. So I put the Vanilla Bean Chiller in and started to brew some coffee.
The effect of the additive was actually more interesting that I had anticipated. The Vanilla Bean Chiller turned the coffee color into something almost like a butterscotch beige. Definitely not what I had expected it to look like.
But how would it taste?
It tasted like you would expect vanilla flavored coffee with cream to taste. I made the mistake of using vanilla flavored coffee for my first pot which turned it into a pot of vanilla flavored coffee on steroids, but it was still good none the less.
I started to think about why anyone would want to use something like this when flavored creamer is so easy to buy. A few thoughts came to mind:
- It’s a dry good — If you like the occasional taste of vanilla and don’t want to keep something in liquid form around such as creamer or flavoring, its nice to be able to store this in your pantry.
- No Hassle Coffee — I can see a possible use for this in a larger scale party situation. Throw a mix in, brew a pot and pour. Done. No muss, no fuss and no worry about whether there is cream or sweetener available. The flavor is not overpowering at all which makes it something that a wide variety of people will enjoy.
- Coffee Independence – Unlike some products and combine the coffee with the flavoring, the Vanilla Bean Chiller lets me enjoy the coffee I want to use. Love Kona? No problem, use it.
Tastefully simple is sold direct through their corporate website or via an independent consultant. Sadly the Vanilla Bean Chiller is not currently available on the Tastefully Simple website, however if you do a consultant search for your area, they very often have extra stock available that you could buy direct.