It’s one of the most popular recent additions to the cold coffee category: a cold foam topping that adds richness, flavor, and an appealing visual quality to the delight of coffee lovers everywhere.
Adding cold foam is also a winning proposition for quick-serve establishments and convenience stores. Businesses that offer this specialty can gain access to the prized craft coffee market and the opportunity to serve cold coffee drinks and other beverages at a premium price point.
If your facility is already equipped with the dedicated space and staffing to offer crew-serve foods and beverages, then adding cold foam as a topping can be a smart move that will help you get more out of existing equipment and inventory. And we can help you add this option cost-effectively, with minimal disruptions to your operation and staff.
What’s Needed to Make Cold Foam
A successful cold foam program begins with equipment, ingredients, and processes chosen to ensure speed of service and cost-effective operations. And with a strategic plan, you can make the preparation process easy and fast, even for new employees.
You may already have much of the necessary equipment, particularly if you’re using Vitamix blenders to prepare menu options like milkshakes, frozen coffee drinks, and smoothies. Give this equipment an additional use by adding cold foam to the list. With a combination such as The Quiet One® paired with the Aerating Container, you can make cold foam in under a minute using chilled skim milk.
The Aerating Container will aerate the milk with its unique blade, which is actually a disc perforated with holes. The design quickly incorporates air into the milk, expanding the volume by up to three times. Among dairy options, chilled skim milk is the most foamable base ingredient, and will produce a dense, stable foam quickly. Alternatively, you can use chilled 2% milk with similar results.
While there are other ways to make cold foam, using The Quiet One® Blender and Aerating Container is a highly flexible approach that also allows you to flavor each batch to suit your customers. The size of the container, at 32 ounces, is convenient for making single or multiple servings.
From a staffing standpoint, the special container is very easy to use with The Quiet One® motor base, which comes with two one-touch programs dedicated to making foam, one longer than the other – although both are done in under 30 seconds. Simply add the milk and desired flavorings to the container, press the button, and the blender will do the rest.
While ingredients and temperature also affect the outcome, in general, the longer blending program results in a denser product with more stability, while the slightly shorter program turns out a looser, pourable foam. In both cases, the foam will gradually smoke down into the beverage, although the rate at which this occurs varies by recipe and processing power.
Using the Aerating Container also makes measurement easy for employees: A pour of milk into the container to the height of the blade equals about 3 ounces – the quantity needed for one serving of cold foam.
A Great Addition to Many Beverages
Cold foam goes well with a wide variety of cold beverages. It’s perfect over ordinary iced coffee, as well as cold brew, and nitro coffee, all of which can be held or served from the crew-serve area of the store.
The topping also works well with other bright, bold, and tart beverages you may be serving. Potential pairings include fruit-infused chilled beverages and iced teas, ranging from herbal blends to fruit teas to chai.
Topping the beverages with the thin layer of dairy foam adds both visual contrast and a creamy counterpoint. And because the topping can hold up well, it won’t immediately mix into the beverage as would milk or cream.
How to Customize Cold Foam
Cold foam is easily customized when it comes to both flavor and thickness, making it easy for your staff to accommodate requests from customers.
The foam can be served plain or flavored according to your customers’ preferences. When it comes to flavoring cold foam, you’ll want to keep the recipes simple, beginning with ingredients you already carry in inventory. Flavored and sugar-free syrups you may already stock are a great go-to option that are easily dispensed into the blender container by the pump.
You can also prepare large batches of dry blends that are ready to go and easily measured out into the container by the scoop for each serving. Potential ingredients include cocoa and instant espresso, sweeteners like granulated sugar, and spices like cinnamon, all combined in the desired ratios ahead of time.
Around the holidays you may also consider swapping in spices or flavors as limited-time offers that will resonate with customers during the season. It may be as simple as adding a peppermint-flavored syrup or creating a powdered blend made with cinnamon and clove, for example.
You might also consider adding a new SKU to your inventory if it will allow you to craft a trending flavor of cold foam. If adding to inventory is a concern, be strategic about what you select: Choose shelf-stable options that will be popular with customers, will be easy for your staff to use, and that won’t easily perish. For example, you might opt to purchase an instant espresso powder that will allow for the easy creation of a delicious Dalgona whipped chocolate coffee topping.
Yet another way to flavor cold foam is to simply garnish it immediately before serving with a sprinkling or drizzle of sugars, cocoa powder, caramel, and the like.
When it comes to customizing foam texture, you can opt for a more pourable cold foam to help make serving easier and faster for your staff. Alternatively, thicker, denser varieties of foam that are spooned on top of beverages may be more stable and hold up longer.
Try These Cold Foam Recipes
Here are a few simple cold foam recipes that are easy starting points for a variety of cold beverages. They’re also built around commonly stocked ingredients and the use of The Quiet One® with the Aerating Container:
- Basic Cold Foam
Begin with a versatile recipe that works with many beverages and is easily customized: Add 3 ounces of cold skim milk (poured to the height of the blade) to the Aerating Container, fitted on The Quiet One® blender. If desired, flavor the milk with about ½ ounce of vanilla syrup or other flavored syrup before blending. This amount equates to 2 full pumps of syrup from a one-liter dispenser bottle. Pump dispense volumes may vary by bottle size, so you may need to adjust the number of pumps accordingly. Choose program 31 for a loose, pourable foam or program 32 for a denser foam.
- Espresso Cold Foam
Create a chocolate espresso foam perfect for iced coffee, nitro coffee, and cold brew: Fill the Aerating Container with 3 ounces of cold skim milk and flavor with 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of instant espresso powder, and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar or 1 pump of simple syrup, assuming a pump dispense volume of ¼ ounce of syrup per pump and adjusting if necessary. Run on program number 32.
- Matcha Cold Foam
Make things even easier with this single-process recipe in which the drink creates its own foam layer: Combine 1 cup of chilled skim milk with 1 cup of ice, 1 teaspoon of matcha green tea and 1 pump of simple syrup in the Aerating Container, adjusting the number of pumps if necessary, based pump dispense volume and desired level of sweetness. Blend ingredients using program 31. Pour into a glass, garnish with additional tea powder, and serve.
All of these options allow for a great deal of customization and flexibility, so don’t be afraid to experiment and see how easy it can be to tap into the cold foam beverage trend.
For more information email us at letstalkcommercial@vitamix.com.