Can Espresso Become a Chewable Solid Coffee Bar?

Katsuyuki Tanaka, owner of the Japanese café Bear Pond Espresso, has launched EXPERIENCE, a coffee bar that looks like chocolate but contains no cocoa. It is made from coffee beans, water, milk and a small amount of sugar, with 50 milligrams of caffeine per bar. Each piece is handmade and sold only at his café for $6.25.

The bar carries the concentrated flavor of espresso with a smoky note and the granular texture of coffee grounds. The idea fits a wider trend of using coffee beyond the cup, including products built from coffee grounds and even green coffee bean material. Unlike instant powder, which is meant to be dissolved, this format is eaten.

For coffee lovers, spilling liquid coffee and staining their clothes is always a minor but persistent annoyance. If it were turned into a chewable solid, would that be less troublesome? Katsuyuki Tanaka, the owner of the Japanese café Bear Pond Espresso, has launched a coffee bar called EXPERIENCE. It looks much like a chocolate bar but contains no cocoa at all—only coffee beans, water, milk, and a small amount of sugar. Each bar contains 50 milligrams of caffeine. On the palate, you can feel the intense, concentrated flavor of espresso, along with a subtle smoky note and a granular texture of coffee grounds. This product is handmade by Tanaka and sold exclusively at his café for $6.25, offering a new idea for turning coffee into a food.

Whenever people need to perk up, their first instinct is usually to reach for a cup of coffee. But in the eyes of coffee professionals, compared with the stimulating effect of drinking coffee, the moment the coffee grounds scatter during grinding is even more invigorating. At the same time, coffee lovers also face a common problem: there are always one or two items in the wardrobe that have accidentally been stained with coffee.

Faced with these troubles, a solution now seems to have been found. Since coffee is easy to spill when drunk as a liquid, why not simply turn it into a solid food to eat?

However, a scene immediately comes to mind: some brave soul clutching a jar of instant coffee powder and gnawing on it directly. Hold on—that is clearly not the right way to go about it.

As the economy and technology improve, coffee has gradually become a symbol of quality of life, and its usage scenarios have become increasingly diverse, from drinking to eating, and even to applying and wearing—almost everything is covered. Edible coffee-flavored candy has long been commonplace, and more and more food brands are beginning to pay attention to the huge market behind coffee. Some brands have even tried using coffee grounds and even green coffee beans to develop foods with different flavors.

Coffee Workshop previously introduced a food made from coffee grounds. Because cocoa butter was added, it was named coffee-ground chocolate.

Recently, a café in Japan called Bear Pond Espresso launched a coffee bar similar to a chocolate bar, named EXPERIENCE. What is interesting is that this coffee bar contains no cocoa at all. According to the introduction, its ingredients are only coffee beans, water, milk, and a small amount of sugar.

After peeling off the rough-textured wrapper, this coffee bar presents the rich, concentrated flavor of espresso, even carrying a faint hint of smokiness.

Katsuyuki Tanaka, the owner of Bear Pond Espresso, said that this coffee bar differs significantly from a chocolate bar in mouthfeel. Many people are already used to the silky texture of chocolate bars, but in this coffee bar you can clearly chew the granular coffee grounds.

Tanaka further explained that the coffee bar can fully serve as an ideal substitute for coffee or a chocolate bar. Each coffee bar contains 50 milligrams of caffeine, and the flavor can be made using different coffee beans according to demand.

Katsuyuki Tanaka is a barista with a distinctive personality. After resigning from a high-paying job in the United States, he went to Japan to open a café. Rather than catering to customers' preferences, he insists more on making the coffee he wants, and even the well-known dirty coffee was first created by him.

The birth of this edible coffee came from a hotel chain that once proposed cooperating with Tanaka, hoping to promote and expand its brand influence. But the problem was that an espresso machine could not be moved to New York at any time, nor could a cup of satisfying espresso be handed to the audience at a conference speech. Thus, the idea of making an edible coffee emerged and gradually became one of his signatures.

However, it is not easy to buy this coffee snack. Because the coffee bars are made entirely by Tanaka himself by hand, the output is very limited, and they are sold exclusively at the Bear Pond Espresso café he runs, priced at $6.25.

The most interesting thing is that, compared with a cup of coffee that requires a machine to make and a container to hold, this solid coffee is especially convenient. It is like a key—just put it in your pocket and take it out to use directly when needed.

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.