In Search Of Raktajino

It all got started with a discussion about Deep Space Nine.

My brother and I were talking about the regular presentations of the various Star Trek series on BBC America. Yet, very seldom do you see any episodes of Deep Space Nine on that channel. However, I subscribe to Netflix and Verizon Fios recently added access to Netflix to its services; so I set up my brother on my Netflix account and showed him how to access DS9 and that should have been that.

However, it’s been a while since I’ve watched DS9 myself and it got me thinking about Raktajino. or simply put, Klingon coffee. While not as rabid a Trekkie (or is it Trekker‽) as some, I have my moments when I get engaged with a topic and won’t let it go. So it was with raktajino.

Like the deconstruction of the Klingon language, you just know some enterprising person had come up with a recipe for Klingon coffee as well. So, I called upon my trusted friend, Google Assistant, to direct me to a recipe.

Mikeylito: Hey, Google! Recipe for raktajino.
Assistant: Here are some results from the web.

There were recipes for an alcoholic beverage which I’m anxious to try and a couple of convoluted non-alcoholic ones which are spicy equivalents to a Dunkin Donuts Dunkaccino.

One correspondent, pen name Siderite, has an entire blog post, The Quest for Raktajino, where he explores the chemistry of creating a recipe. Another young lady, pen name MommaTrek, has another blog post, also titled The Quest for Raktajino, that has the two predominant recipes found on the web for this coffee/cocoa hybrid.

Oddly enough, the most bland description of raktajino comes from “The Star Trek Cookbook” (ISBN:0671000225). In it, the authors, Ethan Philips (a/k/a “Neelix”) and William J. Birnes, describe the beverage essentially as an aged java mixed with “dark French roast or Italian espresso beans that you grind yourself.” What?

After all this investigation, I have devised my own recipes for the non-alcoholic variety and they are presented elsewhere on this site but are basically similar versions of the coffee and cocoa combination. They are dubbed Raktajino Dark and Raktajino Light. They are works-in-progress. The recipes may be updated depending on how adventurous I get in the future.

And so it goes.

Beverage: None