Espresso Martini.
Two ingredients. Our Licor de Café is built for this drink: cold brew coffee, little sugar, and the sugar that is in there is muscovado. So the drink needs neither syrup nor a neutral spirit beside it. The foam on top is not egg white, it is carbon dioxide from the espresso. Which means the coffee machine decides more than the shaker does.
| Ingredient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Licor de Café | 5 cl |
| Espresso, freshly pulled | 3 cl |
| Kirsch de Bâle, optional | 0.5 cl |
Pull the espresso and go straight into the shaker, on top of the liqueur. Add ice, shake hard for twelve seconds. Double strain into a chilled coupette, through both the bar strainer and the fine strainer. The foam settles within ten seconds.
No sugar syrup, no vodka. Most of the sugar and neutral alcohol in an Espresso Martini is there to compensate for a coffee liqueur that is too sweet and too weak in coffee. Remove that problem and the workarounds go with it.
If you want the drink stronger, use the classic build with Davos Vodka. It is further down under Related.
- SpecValue
- Glasscoupette, chilled
- Icein the shaker, not the glass
- Garnishthree coffee beans
- Methodshaken
- In the glassabout 10 cl · about 12 % ABV
- Time3 minutes plus espresso
The maths: 5 cl at 24 % is 1.2 cl of pure alcohol in an 8 cl build. With roughly 25 % dilution that is 10 cl in the glass, or 12.0 % ABV. Hot espresso melts more ice, so the figure drops accordingly. The build with vodka comes to 18.6 % ABV.
Why fresh espresso is not optional.
Brewing releases the carbon dioxide the bean has held since roasting. It sits in the crema and escapes within one to two minutes. Shake inside that window and the gas whips up with the coffee oils into a fine crown that holds for two to three minutes.
Espresso from a thermos gives no foam at all. The drink tastes similar and looks like cold coffee. If you have to prepare ahead, chill the espresso fast and accept a thinner crown. Egg white has no place here.
So the order of work is reversed. Espresso first, shaker second. The machine sets the pace, not the station.
What goes in the cup before it goes in the glass.
A ristretto is too dense and lays bitterness over the liqueur. A lungo pushes acidity forward and waters the drink down. The usable shot is the ordinary one: around 18 grams in, 25 to 30 millilitres out, 25 to 30 seconds.
The roast sets the direction. A dark roast brings chocolate and roast notes and sits with a liqueur built the same way. A light roast brings fruit and acidity that stays readable as a second layer above the cold brew. Both work, they are two different drinks.
Our liqueur is made with cold brew rather than hot extraction: cold water pulls fewer bitter compounds and less acid out of the bean. In the glass the roast of the liqueur sits under the acidity of the fresh shot. That tension is what carries the drink.
It is sweetened with muscovado, unrefined cane sugar in which the molasses stays in the sugar instead of being spun out. White sugar brings sweetness and nothing else; muscovado brings sweetness and a dark, faintly liquorice note that settles under the roasted coffee. That is why the liqueur can carry the drink on its own, and why an Espresso Martini made from it needs no syrup.
| Shot | Volume | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Ristretto | 15–20 ml | dense, bitter |
| Espresso | 25–30 ml | the spec above |
| Lungo | 40–60 ml | sour, thin |
Three bottles from the Aktienmühle.
We make the liqueur and the vodka ourselves, three hundred metres from the Rhine harbour. The kirsch is the half centilitre that takes the drink from good to ours.
Licor de Café
Cold brew coffee liqueur from Santa Rosa, Honduras, single origin, organically grown, green coffee from a women's cooperative. Roasted at miró in Zurich, finished at our place in Basel. Sweetened with muscovado, and not much of it, which is why no syrup goes into the martini.
CHF 38 — to the bottle
Davos Vodka
Grain vodka cut with water from the Sertig valley near Davos. For the classic build, when the drink should be stronger. Neutral, so the coffee stays in front; a flavoured vodka would get in the liqueur's way.
CHF 39 — to the bottle
Kirsch de Bâle
Half a centilitre is enough. The trace of bitter almond from the cherry stone settles underneath the roasted coffee rather than beside it. Mix it this way the first time and you will look for the cherry and not find it, only more depth.
CHF 44.90 — to the bottleLondon, late eighties.
Dick Bradsell built the drink in Soho and called it a Vodka Espresso. The bar had an espresso machine next to the station, unusual at the time, and that machine is what made the drink possible at all. The name Espresso Martini came later, although there is neither vermouth nor gin in it.
The familiar anecdote about a model asking for something to wake her up is credited to Bradsell himself. It cannot be verified, and the name of the person changes with the telling.
What holds up is the mechanism. Coffee and spirits used to live in separate rooms, one in the café and one in the bar. A machine behind the counter put them together.
Four things that make the difference.
Shake hard, twelve seconds
Shorter means less foam, longer means more meltwater at the same temperature. Twelve seconds is the point where the crown stands and the drink still has body.
Double strain
Bar strainer and fine strainer. Ice shards keep diluting the drink while it stands, and they break the crown from below.
Chill the glass
Ten minutes in the freezer. A warm glass takes the cold out of the drink in thirty seconds, and the foam collapses with the temperature.
Three beans, no cocoa
The three beans are convention and release roast aroma at the nose as you drink. Cocoa powder tastes good but sinks into the foam and pulls it down.
Three turns off this road.
The classic build with vodka
4 cl Davos Vodka, 3 cl liqueur, 3 cl espresso. That gives 12.5 cl at 18.6 % ABV, a noticeably stronger drink with less coffee in it. This is how most bars make it, because there the liqueur cannot do the work on its own.
Old Tom instead of vodka
Our Lumberjack's Gin is an Old Tom sweetened with Canadian maple syrup. With coffee it makes a denser drink in which spruce needle and roast sit side by side. Juniper gets on with coffee better than you would expect.
Neat over ice
The liqueur on its own, 6 cl over one large cube. The quickest way to find out whether the coffee carries the liqueur or the sugar does.
Espresso Tonic
No alcohol and still worth it: espresso over ice, topped with tonic. The quinine meets the bitterness of the coffee and the carbonation lifts both. In summer more guests at the distillery order this than the martini.
Spirito de Café
Same coffee, distilled rather than macerated and left unsweetened. A spirit, not a liqueur, and therefore a different drink. In the shop whenever we bottle it again.
Distil it instead of mixing it.
In the workshop you blend your own gin from more than twenty single distillates. If you want to understand why roast notes and juniper work together, smell the distillates one by one before you mix them.
- Three hours, every Thursday from 17:30
- CHF 180 per person
- 0.5 l of your own gin, the recipe is yours
- Aktienmühle distillery, Gärtnerstrasse 46, Basel
More on the Negroni, the Gimlet, the Moscow Mule or all our serves.