To most of us, grabbing a coffee comes as naturally as breathing. There is something fundamental about the infusion of flavours that coffee presents. No matter how you like your coffee, the taste of this particular liquid will pull you in every time.
Whether it’s the bitterness, the sweetness, the sourness or even the savoury nature of coffee that tempts you, that taste makes our mornings better and does its best to get us through that mid-afternoon slump.
So it’s not really a surprise that it is now also a taste we want to take into the evenings. After all, a good coffee liqueur can satiate our cravings for both alcohol and coffee, all in a neat and tidy cocktail glass.
Yet choosing the right Coffee Liqueur is like selecting the perfect coffee. Various factors, such as base spirit, sugar content, and even the bean profile, will affect your enjoyment of a coffee liqueur. And everyone has their favourite.
Independent distillers—many of whom proudly extol the beans they use, tell you what country they were sourced from, and, as you might expect, whether they’re Fair Trade—are trying to get their piece of that pie.
That’s especially true considering that coffee liqueurs are relatively easy to make; producers either steep grounds in or mix cold brew with an alcohol base and then add a sweetener and additional flavourings, like vanilla.
Like coffee itself, Coffee Liqueurs have gone through a renaissance in recent years, and with the rise of the liqueurs, a rise in the variety and taste of coffee liqueur cocktails have also occurred. No longer are we only presented with a White Russian or an Espresso Martini.
It seems that across the globe, bartenders have been busy creating new drinks … which, of course, they first present to fashion models, just to be sure the drink is able to both wake them up and f*ck them up (as Dick Bradsell did decades ago).
So next time you’re in a bar, try whatever the coffee cocktail is on the menu (they are bound to have one) or suggest one of the cocktails listed above. ‘Cause without the inclusion of Coffee liqueur, it’s possible your next cocktail won’t amount to a hill of beans.
