Everyone has their own way of dealing with the coffee situation aboard airplanes. I take a simple approach: I drink it. I dunk a cookie and I drink it. Others opt for something a little more involved. We’re talking full on pour-over and/or espresso systems here. But there is a third path and it is where we find none other than America’s weather man Al Roker. Apparently Roker is a bit persnickety when it comes to his coffee and so to ensure he his preferred caffeine fix gets through airport security, he freezes it. And somehow it works.
As anyone who’s had to chug-a-lug of hot coffee at bag check can attest, the TSA have pretty strict rules around what they will allow through. In particular, any liquid over three ounces. That’s a no go. But what Al Roker presupposes is: what if it isn’t a liquid? It feels like the sort of solution that will get you a side eye from the TSA agent, or a “nice try” at best before they make you put your coffee brick in the trash can.
But as Roker tells People, it works. He initially tried it by freezing a bottle of water that, when he presented it during the screening, was told by the supervisor that it is “absolutely allowable.” With the proof of concept in two, Roker took it a step further and froze his favorite coffee beverage, which he states is Blue Bottle’s iced coffee. And the results were the same. Roker and his non-liquid beverage passed through security without issue.
Then, according to Roker, “halfway through the flight, it’s defrosted, and I have ice-cold iced coffee on the plane.”
The Today Show weather man notes that the coffee must be frozen when it is presented to security. If it starts to melt or turn into a slush, it is then beholden to the TSA’s 3-1-1 rule for liquids.
Roker’s mile high MacGyvering doesn’t stop with coffee though. He’s also has a, I don’t know what you’d call it, a recipe maybe, for a key lime pie crust sort of thing. Apparently, if you take Biscoff cookies and squeeze some lime from the beverage cart on them, the result is like the crust of a key lime pie. I mean, you can use Biscoff to make a not tiramisu, so why not a not key lime pie crust as well?
It’s all too much work for me, but I’m not mad at the ingenuity. Of course then you’re left with cold coffee, so that’s not ideal. Perhaps you could freeze a coffee concentrate to mix with in-flight hot water, which may or may not be really gross. As for me, I’ll stick with my tried and true airplane coffee hack: I order the coffee. I drink the coffee. I dunk the cookie. I enjoy the coffee.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
