Wash your Cocktails

During my last days in a non-dry-state (the opposite sounded off), where alcohol isn’t banned, I wanted to create some cocktail of my own. It had to have coffee involved, since I had nice dark roasted beans from Honduras. I did a quick search for James Hoffmann and coffee liqueur. This led me to a recipe for Coffee Amaro.

For a tutorial specifically on Milk Washing, see Advanced Techniques - Clarified Milk Punch by Cocktail Chemistry.

While James’ setup is fancy-ish, I was on a (tight) budget. I wanted a nice tasting thing for very little hassle. So here is my attempt at it.

Ingredients

• 55g of Smirnoff Vodka (Orange flavored is okay too)
• 11g of Dark roasted coffee, ground close to espresso
• 1 small lemon
• 1g tea masala
• 15g sugar syrup (2 parts sugar, 1 part water)
• Salt
• 15g Whole milk
• 1 Paper/Cloth filter
• 1 V60 (Optional)

Recipe

1. Add Vodka, ground coffee and tea masala in an air-tight glass container.

2. Mix them well and set it aside in a cool dark environment for 24 hours.

3. Take a medium sized bowl, add whole milk in it first.

4. Now strain the coffee-liqueur decoction throught a metal sieve onto the bowl.

5. Slowly add a few drops of lime, while stirring the mixture, to curdle the milk. The curds will take away all the harsh tasting compounds.

6. Strain the resulting mess through a paper filer into the vessel of your choice. I used a V60 with a (rinsed) paper filter.

7. Since the “curds” tend to clog the paper, the filtering will be a lot slower. This also helps in filtering the liqueur clearly.

8. Add the sugar syrup to the clean punch. Shake or stir.

9. Enjoy!

Notes

1. Use whole dairy milk, otherwise it won’t curdle, and you would be left with a milk+booze+masala+coffee something.

2. The cocktail had a much more pronounced coffee taste when drank after a day. In case you were chasing that.

And of-course, drink responsibly!