Is there anything better than a glass of rum after coffee, when your eyes start to close, and your pants feel incredibly tight? A “coffee flavoured rum”, says Gianni Cocco, Italian Coffee Trainer at the Accademia Italiana Maestri del Caffè (AICAF, Italian Academy of Coffee Masters) and consultant for some Italian refreshments and roasteries, undiscussed protagonist of virtuosity and creativity behind the coffee shop counter. Get ready for a coffee cocktail recipe for real champions, with all the steps gently listed hereafter to enhance our favourite drink in a glass, and not just in the traditional cup.
At the end of every good meal, or in the morning right when you get out of bed, coffee in Italy is the drink par excellence, undiscussed protagonist of our daily breaks. To sip a warm, steaming cup, while sitting in a corner of the city, or standing at the counter chatting with the barista, is a unique experience, almost like a ceremony, to be enjoyed on your own or with company. This is why it’s incredibly hard to truly analyse this experience, to place coffee in a different context from that which accompanies us in our familiar cup. Yet, its distinct taste should help us see its natural potentials, even beyond its traditional tasting, thanks to the ability to flavour every kind of combination, to enhance tastes and give an exotic touch to the recipes we prepare, whether it’s a cocktail or a dish to be served at the table. Let’s see what I mean, with an intrusion of alcohol in our coffee!
Let’s prepare our work station with the proper machinery and ingredients needed for our recipe: the rum-based coffee cocktail is awaiting!
We will start preparing our cocktail by introducing a very useful tool: a kitchen siphon, the great novelty for home cooking of the last few years, borrowed directly from the kitchens of great star chefs and the counters of the most creative and imaginative barmen. I think this is a great tool, it isn’t too expensive, it’s ergonomic and has a catchy design: based on the gas we inject into it and on the type of kit we use, we will be able to try it in many different ways, obviously depending on the ingredients we choose and on our final goal.
The siphon will be very important to flavour our coffee rum, thanks to the Rapid Infusion technique we can try. We owe this to American mixologist Dave Arnold who first discovered its advantages, especially when it comes to the conservation of the fresh flavour and the balanced taste of its ingredients. Try it, you won’t be disappointed!
And of course, we can’t compromise the quality of the ingredients. Be sure to choose a good rum, but also good coffee beans, as this is the real maker of our recipe. My advice is to choose a single plantation product, ideally naturally processed, with a good body, low acidity, and hints of chocolate and caramel, medium roast.
It’s time to “get your hands dirty” and watch your rum-based coffee cocktail slowly come to life. We will start by grinding the coffee, and will then enjoy all the power of Rapid Infusion in the kitchen siphon. We’re in for a good one!
We need to start grinding about 50 grams of coffee with a particulate between 800 and 1,000 microns. We want it to be as homogeneous as possible, so be sure to use a coffee grinder you really like!
Put the grain coffee in the chamber of the siphon and pour the rum in the same canister, delicately mixing the ingredients with a spatula. It’s time to apply the steel filter from the Rapid Infusion kit on the nozzle of the container. This will retain most of the particulate to make sure the hole of the valve doesn’t clog during degassing, as this would compromise the next use.
We are ready to close the siphon, screw the top, and replace the usual cream spout with the specific silicone gasket tube found in the Rapid Infusion kit. We can now load the two cartridges of nitrous oxide (N2O), with a 1’30’’ infusion interval between one and the other. Remember to shake the siphon well in between loads.
Technically speaking, when we inject the gas inside the siphon N2O dissolves into the rum, while the pressure that is created - at first, equal to 20 bar which then decreases until stabilising at around 6-9 bar - pushes the alcohol in the pores of the coffee, facilitating the extraction of its chemical compounds and solids.
Just a few more steps before you can taste your coffee cocktail, protagonist of this page signed by Gianni Cocco, a real acrobat of mixology and Italian Coffee Trainer at the Accademia Italiana Maestri del Caffè.
Making sure the siphon is in a vertical position, squeeze the handle and disarm all the gas towards the outside, which will be released from the spout with the gasket. Open the siphon only after all the gas has been released. Remove the sieve and pour all the rum, which still needs to be filtered to eliminate the particulate of the coffee - to do so, I prefer using an AeroPress, very reliable for these operations.
The advantage of quick cold brew is that it catches all the noble and delicate scents of coffee, without extracting the bitter and stringent components, thanks to the siphon and Rapid Infusion.
Now your rum is finally flavoured! You can enjoy its pure taste and drink it cold, or you can use it to prepare fancier cocktails, it’s up to you! So just sit down and enjoy!