Agua de Garage

With the impending heatwave looming, we thought it was the perfect time to give the Agua de Garage the spotlight it deserves and shine a light on the drinks, its history, and the design process behind it.  

The Backstory. 

When summer roles around, we get excited. For those at the Roastery it can mean only one thing. It’s time to craft our summer drink. A task we take pretty seriously and does invoke a certain amount of competitiveness to promote individual creations over others.  

Amongst this years contenders we had a watermelon cooler, experimented with blueberry syrup (this ended up as part of Canterbury’s blueberry matcha), but eventually settled on the Agua de Garage.  

Created by Sam, our Head of Coffee, the drink is an infusion of hibiscus, with fresh lime and ginger juice, and a touch of spice and brown sugar for some extra intrigue. Sweet, zingy, and cooling to the core.  Other names were workshopped, aggie gaggie or ag de gag to name but two, so feel free to come up with your own too!

The History.  

The Agua de Garage takes its name from its inspiration, the Agua de Jamaica, which surprisingly has literally nothing to do with Jamaica. Rather, the drink hails from Mexico (“Flor de Jamaica” being hibiscus in Spanish) and is staple of taquerias throughout the country alongside other flavours of agua fresca (meaning fresh/cool water) such as watermelon or papaya.  

According to Mexican folklore, agua frescas were first created by the Aztecs using fruits and the ice of the dormant  Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl Volcanos. Whilst hibiscus likely came to Mexico whilst it was under Spanish colonial rule.  

Not much is known about the inception of Agua de Jamaica as a drink but given the ubiquity of both agua frescas and hibiscus in Mexican cuisine, its almost certain it was simply a product of natural progression. 

The Drink.  

Traditionally, Agua de Jamaica is just a hibiscus infusion with a little lime and some cane sugar. Whilst delicious, we wanted to turn up the punch a tad and create something a bit different.  

Adding ginger certainly took things up notch, with a dab of brown sugar to counterbalance the tartness. Whilst the inclusion of allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg, gave the drink some added layers and complexity, resulting in a well rounded summer cooler that’s just a little bit different to what we usually might have on offer.  

 We love it, we hope you will to. Grab a glass or takeaway cup at any of our sites before the summer ends.