Homemade coffee liqueur
The homemade version beats the original at the thing that matters most: it tastes of coffee, not caramel. It is cold-infused from whole beans and ready in three days.
Ingredients
- 200 g medium-roast coffee beans
- 750 ml white rum, brandy or vodka
- 1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
- 300 g brown sugar
- 150 ml water
Preparation
- Break the beans with the back of a knife until they are in two or three pieces. A three-day infusion needs that open surface for the coffee to come out in time: whole they would not make it, and ground they release a sediment there is no getting rid of afterwards.
- Put them in a jar with the alcohol and the vanilla. Seal it and leave it at room temperature for 2 to 3 days, shaking once a day.
- Do not push it further: from the fourth day the coffee starts giving up its roast bitterness and the liqueur turns harsh. Cold infusion is not a race, but it does have a ceiling.
- Strain through a fine sieve, then repeat with a paper coffee filter. That second pass is what separates a clean liqueur from one with a cloudy bottom, and it is the only step in the recipe that asks you to wait.
- Make the syrup with the brown sugar and water, let it cool completely and stir it into the coffee. Bottle it and wait a week before drinking.
Bartender’s notes
Is it anything like Kahlúa?
They share the idea, not the result, and the difference is sugar. Kahlúa is a good deal sweeter, and caramel is the first thing you taste in it; this recipe starts from whole beans infused cold and keeps the coffee out front. With the 300 grams in the list it comes out frankly dry, closer to a Mr Black than to a Kahlúa. If what you want is a stand-in for a Carajillo or an Espresso Martini, raise it by half again and you have it.
Is there a faster way?
Three days is already the fast lane: traditional licor café macerates for weeks. You can cut it shorter, but always in exchange for something. With the coffee ground rather than cracked the extraction is done in hours, and the price is filtering two or three times and still not getting it properly clear. Heated — warming the spirit with the coffee — it drops to minutes, and that is the worst of the options: the heat carries off the fine coffee aromatics and leaves the roast bitterness exactly where it was. If you have three days, spend them.
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