The Unsolicited Endorsement: Nitro coffee

It pours like a Guinness or a Boddington’s or something, blasted with a nitrogen charge that runs through the tap system and arguably makes nitro coffee what it is. And what it is, is a cup full of cool, smooth happiness.

Nitro coffee is new — new to the Triad anyway, though people have been enjoying it in bigger cities since 2015 or so. It’s basically cold-brew coffee, kegged like beer and run through a tap system pressurized by nitrogen, so that its infused with tiny bubbles that add texture and, they say, amplify the effects of the caffeine.

As far as I know, you can get it at just three places in the Triad: at Krankies Coffee in Winston-Salem and, in Greensboro, Green Joe’s and the Starbucks just a few blocks away on Battleground Avenue — it is the only Starbucks in the Triad pouring nitro coffee right now.

I’ve been trying to keep my intake down to three or four a week. I got my last one just this morning at Krankies: a 16-ounce, with no ice.

I set it on the table and watched the layered sifting of the body, appreciated the creamy head. I added a dollop of half-and-half that bloomed down to the bottom of the cup and slowly rose against the settling of the coffee.

It was beautiful.

The taste is everything I need it to be: cold and smooth, with enough body that it demands to be sipped or even slurped and hypercharged with enough caffeine to get me through whatever it is that comes next.