Coffee + Liquor = Awesome

[LoneSavant]

SO, I'm a little uninspired...I need to do a tasting tomorrow morning, pairing different styles/blends/roasts of coffee (which, exactly, will be a surprise to me) with different liquors/liqueurs for interesting/unusual/exciting taste sensations and all that.

Everyone knows the basics, but I'm working with a very well-stocked bar, and they're expecting new and unusual combinations.

What are your favorite/most interesting coffee-liquor combinations or cocktails?

[KatieLoeb]

White chocolate Godiva and Amaretto (Luxardo, the real stuff, not DiSaronno).

Dark rum and Starbucks liqueur.

Mozart/Godiva Dark Chocolate and Grand Marnier.

Tuaca/Licor 43 and Frangelico.

Famous Grouse and Mozart/Godiva Dark Chocolate . (Scotch and dark chocolate are delicious together!)

Irish Whiskey and White or Dark Chocolate liqueur for a Chocolate Irish coffee.

Brandy and Chocolate.

That ought to keep you busy....

[Richard Kilgore]

So, how did it go? What pairings did you try?

[cdh]

A real favorite for me is the "cafe corretto" idea-- a shot of well made espresso with a small splash of booze. I'm partial to bourbon. Just a little tiny splash is enough to get a giant interplay of flavors going on in the cup. The traditional "corrector' is grappa, and that's good too, but bourbon really sings when dosed into an espresso.

[cdh]

Back to the question at the top of the thread- Rereading it makes me wonder if you're asking about particular coffees (either varietal or roast) and how they play with booze?

I do have to qualify my bourbon + espresso rec insofar as I don't use the very dark roast for espresso. When I use commercial coffee, I use the New Mexico Pinon... which is by no means a "dark roast"... probably a "city plus to full city" in roaster jargon... certainly no evidence of letting it go much into the second crack (not blackened or oily). I really don't know what would go well with a very dark roasted espresso...

If you're working with varietal coffees and a custom roaster, you can get all kinds of interesting flavor components to stand out, and pairing some of them with booze could be very interesting. Recently I had a Nicaraguan Pacamara bean had an unmistakable tangerine quality when roasted to full city... so that would call for a fruity grappa, maybe a moscato or malvasia. Some South American beans can be made to do chocolate, nuts, even coconut... which would pair well with either brandy or bourbon. Some Red Sea coffees get a strawberry, blueberry, or apricot thing going on in them... Haven't tried it, but the thought of a drop of tequila in them sounds sort of promising.

The commercial problem with all of these suggestions, however, is that the tiny amount of booze necessary to achieve the desired flavor is nowhere near enough to qualify as a "drink" in the minds of customers, so setting price point will be tough when you're trying to factor in the price of the liquor license you need to serve them at all.

[Jon Savage]

A real favorite for me is the "cafe corretto" idea-- a shot of well made espresso with a small splash of booze. I'm partial to bourbon. Just a little tiny splash is enough to get a giant interplay of flavors going on in the cup. The traditional "corrector' is grappa, and that's good too, but bourbon really sings when dosed into an espresso.

Coretto is the bomb especially using grappa

[Shamanjoe]

My favourite combination has to be a nice dark roast with either some Amarula cream liquer, or Bailey's. The fruit flavour of the amarula works well with a darker roast of coffee, and the Bailey's is just one of those automatic combinations, at least for me.

On the more unusual side, I'd have to recommend either Tuaca, or a little splash of a good brandy. The vanilla notes in the Tuaca should work very well with any roast coffee, and brandy goes very well with a lighter roast in my opinion, to let all the subtleties come out from both the coffee and the liquor.

If you want a really off the wall pairing, there's a company in Oregon, I believe, that makes a spruce liquour. It has an unbelievable spruce/pine aroma and a quite grassy taste to it. I would pair it with a very dark roast of regular coffee or maybe a double espresso. Definitely not a pairing for everybody, but it might be good for a specialty item.