As a man who likes both alcohol and coffee, it seems only natural to mix the two (but never before driving or operating heavy machinery, kids!)
Anyway, I think most of us are aware that you can make a rather nifty Hot Toddy by adding a shot of rum, scotch/bourbon, or brandy to your coffee, but what other spirits or liquers work well with coffee?
So far, I’ve discovered Kahlua and coffee is delicious (and could get me in a lot of trouble if I drink too much of it!), Tia Maria is very close, and, for that extra alchol/coffee crossover, it’s hard to go past coffee with Baileys instead of milk in it.
So, help a fellow caffeine junkie/alcoholophile out and suggest alcoholic drinks that mix well with coffee, and let’s see if we can’t expand our recipe books a little…
Amaretto and Bailey’s make a good coffee drink and Chambord is good with coffee but absolutely divine when added with a good chocolate liqueur such as Godiva.
The classic is Irish coffee – sugared coffee with Irish whiskey mixed in and topped with whipped cream. Sounds godawful to me (mainly because it has coffee in it), but you might like it.
Someone gave me a bottle of Mozart liqueur for Christmas. It turned out to be a really ritzy chocolate liqueur and apart from swigging it straight from the bottle I couldn’t think what to do with it. One hot day I was making iced coffees for me and my visitor and since I don’t keep sugar around I chucked in some Mozart and we soon discovered that that is how to make the perfect iced coffee. Coffee, milk, alcohol, ice, whipped cream. The bottle was quickly used up.
Espresso and Grappa (Caffe Corretto) is yummy… it translates as coffee that has been “corrected” by the addition of hard liquor, the Italians are on to something.
Sambuca, Ouzo, Raki and Pernod also work very well in coffee…but you have to like aniseed/liquorice type things.
Goldschläger is nice- it ruins the effect of the gold, but it tastes good, again, best if you like cinnamon. Der Lachs Goldwasser is good too- nice and orangey.
Jägermeister sort of works…again, you have to like Jägermeister.
Amaretto, Triple Sec and Kirsch are good as well.
Sloe gin and coffee packs a punch, as does plum brandy and coffee.
I have tried Czech Absinth in coffee- I absolutely wouldn’t recommend it.
All of this experience is from buying bottles of the local fire-water while on various holidays- at some point during the holiday it gets mixed into coffee- either as a night cap or a hair-of-the-dog situation.
Oddly enough, the best Irish coffee I ever had was in Paris, France. They started with irish whiskey at the bottom of a clear glass cup, steamed it with the cappucino milk steamer gadget to make it hot, layered espresso on top of it, then topped it with whipped cream. It tasted great, and was a joy to behold, with the white, black, and amber layers clearly delineated. You could carefully drink and get all three flavors at once, but they still retained their individual characteristics.
I’ve also discovered that, for a slightly Caribbean flavour, you can mix Bacardi with Coffee, and if you like Liquorice, Ouzo and Coffee is also a possibility…
We make up a batch of homemade Baileys here on a near-weekly basis (just made on an hour ago). It is truly great in coffee. I’ll send you the recipe via email if you like…and have an available address.
Let me know.
