Lupus wrote:Out of curiosity, all the coffee infused alcohol recipes I have seen on spirit forums use a brewed espresso as its base. Where ese when infusing other flavours, they use the raw material. Eg limoncello uses lemon peels, the apple pie spirit uses cut apples and raisins/ sultanas. Why don't the coffee recipes use either the whole bean or grinds?
On a coffee forum, I have seen an example where a coffee nut used a cold drip filter set up to infuse vodka. Cold drip filtering coffee uses time to extract the flavours and oils of the coffee bean. Rather than pouring hot water into a pile of grinds, cold water is slowly dripped through a cup of coffee grinds, with a similar amount of water dripping out the other end. The process is incredibly slow, but produces a really smooth brew, minus the harsh bitterness of a heated cup. In the other forum, instead of ice water dripping onto the grinds, vodka was used. :)
Is there a reason why the recipes on spirit forums do not use a similar method, or use whole beans immersed in the spirit like it does with fruit?
I wouldn't mascerate coffee grinds in the vodka as you get so many different oils in the beans, some of which are quite unpalatable, and come out at higher temperatures, the vodka would draw those out. Whole beans might work, but as long as you took them out after a couple days or else you would get the said bitter flavours.
I might just settle for a bottle of bickfords ice coffee syrup, cheating I know but oh well it's what I use for my coffee stout and I have some on hand.
Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 12:08 am