Coffee lovers, and especially iced coffee lovers: Have you had coffee milk, the official* state drink of Rhode Island?

Like chocolate milk, coffee milk is made by adding coffee syrup to cold milk. If you like iced coffee with sugar and a lot of milk, coffee milk is the easy way to make it at home. There’s no brewing, no need to keep a container of iced coffee in the fridge. Just pour a glass of milk, add coffee syrup and stir.

It also works for people who prefer alternatives to cow’s milk.

Top quality coffee syrup is a sweetened coffee concentrate made from fresh-roasted coffee beans. It is produced by straining water and sugar through ground coffee. (Supermarket brands tend to be artificially flavored.)

While the precise origin of coffee milk is unclear, several sources trace it back to the turn of the 20th century in Providence’s immigrant Italian population.

The first coffee syrup was introduced by the Silmo Packing Company of New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1932. In 1938, Eclipse Food Products of Warwick, Rhode Island began to promote a coffee syrup product; Autocrat Coffee of Lincoln, Rhode Island came to market in the 1940s.

In addition to coffee milk, you can use the syrup for:

 
*Rhode Island named coffee milk its official state beverage in 1993, after a competition with Del’s Lemonade, another Rhode Island specialty.

Dave’s Coffee is a certified organic coffee roaster that operates an espresso bar and bakery in Charlestown, Rhode Island. The coffee syrup is an all natural artisan product made:

 
By contrast Coffee Time, the best-known supermarket brand, is made with high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, coffee extract, caramel color and potassium sorbate.
The syrup is made in small batches to ensure quality. Choice Brazilian coffee beans are roasted by hand in a small, gas fired roaster to bring out nutty, sweet, smooth, roasty and smokey flavors. The roasted beans rest for two days; they’re then ground and cold-brewed for 18 hours in a special stainless steel kettle.

The brewed coffee is mixed with pure cane sugar, brought to a boil and simmered until the syrup reduces and the sugar begins to caramelize. It’s bottled in amber glass, which protects the syrup from light.

Get yours at DavesCoffeeStore.com.

It’s a great gift idea for coffee-loving moms and dads, and other deserving family and friends.

If you need a kosher syrup, you can buy Autocrat on Amazon.