This morning I saw a can of Hillside Coffee in a self heating can. Of course, I had to give this a try. I'm a big fan of canned coffee, especially the iced Asian style.

I picked up the French Vanilla and Chai Tea flavors.

To heat the can is pretty simple. You simply pull the bottom cover off. The instructions say to wait until the pink dot turns white before drinking it. The pink dot is heat sensitive.

And punch down on that bubble with the greenish looking water in it. The bubble pops easily and the water flows out.

The simple reaction is water and quicklime. Quicklime is calcium oxide and the addition of water causes a exothermic (heat producing) reaction. The result is slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) which is a component of mortar in cement. Not exactly health food, but not deadly poison to be near your drink.

Sure enough, in a couple of minutes the coffee was hot and sure enough the pink dot was now white.

The heat of the can ws good, not boiling hot like you get a some places, but definitely a hot cup of coffee.

The flavor was good, but sweet. I was hoping for a little more coffee and a little less French Vanilla, but if you like those Starbucks frappa-latte-chinos with all that stuff tossed is, you'll like this.

Obviously I had to open the thing up to see how it worked.

This video shows how the pieces go together. The water and quicklime mix in the central cylinder, heated the coffee that surrounds it. Good thermal distribution method. I did get a few strange looks at the office as I walked around with what looked like a marital aid.

The size of the whole thing is decieving. While it looks like a pint sized cup of coffee, it actually only hold 9.5 ounces of coffee. A typical small cup of coffee is about 12 ounces.

Still, it's kinda fun and would make all the difference on a cold morning outdoors when there is no place to get hot coffee.