FLAVOR LOG // 016
Share
Why We Chose the Ice Cream Truck
There are certain words that don't really need an explanation.
Ice cream truck is one of them.
Say those two words and you can almost hear it before you see it: that little song coming down the street, dollar bills and loose change in your hand, and the scramble to catch it before it gets to the next stop. You're trying to decide what you're going to get while you're still chasing it, hoping the truck doesn't drive away before you get there.
That's what makes the ice cream truck so interesting to us. It's one of the last pieces of shared Americana we have left. From Brooklyn to Boise, the words ice cream truck mean pretty much the same thing. The neighborhood changes, the truck changes, but the feeling doesn't.
That feeling was a big reason we chose Ice Cream Truck as Season 2 of Flavor52.
The other reason was flavor profile.
When we started looking at the ice cream world, we noticed something pretty quickly: a lot of classic ice cream flavors naturally make sense with coffee. Vanilla, chocolate, caramel, butterscotch, nuts, cookies, marshmallow, brown sugar and cream all have something that works well in coffee.
Coffee already brings roasted, chocolatey, nutty and caramelized notes of its own. That gives those flavors to attach to.
So we started asking a different question.
Not just "What ice cream flavors do people love?"
But:
"Which of those flavors can become great coffee?"
That's where the season started to get interesting because not every flavor cooperates.
Creamsicle was one of the ones that made us think twice. Citrus and coffee can be tricky because you're bringing additional acidity into something that already has acidity and bitterness.
We eventually got it to work, but the answer wasn't as straightforward as orange, vanilla and cream, as you might think.
That was dealt with in the previous Flavor Log.
So that's why we chose the ice cream truck. It gave us a feeling almost everyone recognizes and a whole world of flavors we couldn't wait to put into coffee.
MISSION STATUS: Season 2 started
Flavors Released: 9 / 52
Throwbacks Season 1: Complete
Mondays Missed: 0
World Record Status: progressing