For me I have never found a good cocktail with espresso or coffee that I think could be a go to cocktail for me. With the espresso “martini” use of vodka does not add anything to the cocktail beyond alcohol. And the use of Kahlua or coffee liqueur hinders me from “controlling” the coffee flavour, where I am stuck with the coffee flavour of the liqueur chosen. Adding to this the stupid use of martini in the name when it is not a martini drives me mad. Like I have said before in the Irish Coffee post, that is not a cocktail for me. When I have browsed around on the internet for a coffee cocktail, I found one that thought could do with some minor changes. The one I found was on Difford’s guide called the espresso daiquiri. Apart from the same name issue that the espresso “martini” has, it has a great base for tweaking around.

What I would want in a (cold) coffee cocktail is a spirit that pairs well with coffee. For me, that could probably only be rum and brandy. I chose rum, like the espresso daiquiri. I also chose simple syrup instead of coffee liqueur as sweetener. One thing that can be done here is to use brown sugar instead of regular white sugar in the simple syrup, thus making the cocktail more flavourful. Since I used a rum with lots of flavour, I did not consider this choice of white sugar over brown sugar to detract from the cocktail. The use of sugar allows me to have the coffee flavour coming from my chosen coffee. I am not an expert in coffee and used a normal espresso, freshly brewed, that I usually like. The tricky part is to get the proportions right. The right amount of sweetness, coffee and rum is usually hard to find, my trick here was to use the cocktail calculator by cocktailchemistrylab to find a balanced cocktail. By knowing what I want from the cocktail, I knew which ratios I was willing to sacrifice for the cocktail to be enjoyable. I found the ratios shown in the recipe below to work rather well.

When it comes to flavour this cocktail is balanced towards the rum. The rum chosen will basically decide if the cocktail is tasty or not. I used the plantation three stars, choosing another rum may result in an undrinkable cocktail though it might be worth a try. That said, the cocktail was smooth, with the main flavour being the rum with the flavour of the coffee being notably present. There is sweetness present, but it is not dominating or detracting from the cocktail. My opinion of this is that it takes the positives of the rum and the espresso and complements the flavours in a really nice cocktail.

My Recipe:

• 2.5 oz (7.5 cl) Rum
• 0.75 oz (2.25 cl) Espresso
• 0.5 oz (1.5 cl) Simple Syrup

Add the ingredients to a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled Coupe glass and garnish with a few coffee beans.