Waste Cold-Brew Grounds Into Coffee Liqueur.
Look, coffee beans are fucking expensive. Coffee grounds still have a lot of the good shit in them. If you are buying good coffee, you probably want to get the most out of the beans.
Given I had already seen how far I could extract some grounds as cold-brew, I figured why not go further, throw in the cheapest vodka from the corner shop, some sugar, and see if I can get a passable liqueur out of it for making mixed drinks with? This has been done to death with coffee grounds from drip machines, espresso machines, and suchlike with good results.
So, the ingredients.
- "Some amount" of wet, fresh, coffee grounds from cold brew extractions. Still in the container. In my case, a 1 litre Simax media jar.
- An approximately equal, by volume, amount of brown sugar.
- A small bit more fresh coffee, somewhat finely ground. Probably unnecessary, but I wanted to give this the best chance possible and had some extra grounds in my grinder that needed a home.
- A 700ml or so bottle of vodka.
- Additional water if needed.
Put in the extra coffee and sugar, add the vodka, close the lid and shake. Add some make-up water if you see fit to expand the volume a little bit. This will also decrease the alcohol percentage.
Leave for about 48-72 hours somewhere.
Filter it off, pressing the filter a bit to ensure maximum extraction of goodness.\
Bottle and store, probably be good in the fridge for a few months? I guess?
Ok, tasting notes - very, very strong on the chocolate, and needs to breathe for a minute or two before drinking, there is a weird almost "musty" smell that carried over initially, that I'm unsure where it came from. Totally serviceable in a cocktail, or on its own, and has not killed me or made me blind.
I'll leave it a bit while I knock up a batch using "fresh, not extracted otherwise" beans and see if I can blind taste test it and write an update in the future.
The filter paper and its contents - the now thoroughly extracted coffee - is entirely safe to compost normally.