The beautiful Hailey Fontes with a glass of Rico’s Nitro Coffee

You are more hipster than me if you have heard about Nitro Coffee, invented in 2012 and evidently taking the world by storm. I’d never even heard about it until this morning at the Mercado Orgánico, where Rico’s Café had an icy cold keg of the nitrogen-infused, cold-brew coffee that’s creamy, frothy, and a beer lookalike. In fact, when Marianne (owner of Rico’s) offered me a glass, I told her I couldn’t drink alcohol so early in the morning!

Nitro Coffee debuted in Austin in 2012, when it was served by Cuvée Coffee on tap at the Slow Foods Quiz Bowl. Draft beverages are all the rage these days—wine, kombucha, sparkling tea—and it’s great to see that Marianne and her brewmeister husband Rogelio are keeping Mazatlán up with the times. When you fill a glass with Nitro Coffee, it’s beautiful: foamy, with waves of color filling the glass. Check out the video below to see:

A keg of Nitro Coffee

I normally drink coffee with cream, but Nitro Coffee is so smooth that I thoroughly enjoyed it served black. It was almost like drinking a glass of Guinness, but with a caffeine kick! Rico’s is not yet offering Nitro Coffee at their cafés, but it will be at the Mercado Orgánico, and I suggested they make it available by the keg for private parties (I was sad not to be able to get a keg of Tres Islas Beer for the holidays, but fortunately for them demand outstripped supply).

By the way, Rico’s is planning to get their expresso machine to the Plaza Zaragoza so we can enjoy their organic, local-roasted coffees any way we want them. They just need to figure out the electricity and water situation, which is taking a bit of time with the turnover in municipal government.